Instant Replay #1

A single bead of sweat dripped down my forehead as I lay there, still as a corpse. The hot Oman sun bore down on the Gulf below, burning with a fury unlike anything I'd ever experienced. In the distance I could hear the dull thud-thud-thud-thud of helicopter rotors, and something else -perhaps the grinding of tank treads over torn road?- though loudest of all was the silence.

And then I saw her.

x_illyria ran across my line of sight, sprinting from cover to cover. The 12x scope of my Dragunov SVD tracked her every move. Her head hit the sweet spot in my crosshairs. I smiled, and started to tighten my finger on the trigger. Just as I was about to proclaim my superior ownage over her I felt myself moving... And the cold steel of Baxy 1080's Combat Knife drove its way into my heart, while he ripped the dog tags from my neck, a trophy. One he would collect a few times that night.

Last night was one of the most fun evenings I've had with Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360. Though there were only 10 of us on at most, small teams on full scale Conquest maps, it was some of the most frantic, hilarious, and skilful gameplay imaginable.
 

We're by no means fantastic soldiers, as x IRGRL x proved every time she attempted to fly a jet (though she was still marginally better than iCripsy!) but with such an evenly matched group of friends, we didn't need to be. Winning or losing wasn't the aim here, it was all about having a laugh, and trying things we normally wouldn't have been able to do with a full server of gung-ho veterans.

It started with a 2v2 Conquest match on Metro, with way too many tickets for so few players, but quickly grew into a 4v4 skirmish, capping bases then sprinting back to reclaim the one you'd just lost.

We then moved to night tank wars on Tehran, with a few visits to the Canals and some of the B2K maps. It wasn't hard to see why Rebel 181 called his tank 'Smashy' after that, as he left a trail of destruction in his wake.

Pidgeo's LMG Bullet Hose was almost reminiscent of Jesse Ventura in Predator, minigun in hand, stoic defender of flags, and ender of kill streaks. JohnnoshArk got lucky, and pinched my tags from me twice, but my retribution was swift and vengeful, my repeated crouching on his corpse both a victory dance and a warning.

Even though we ended our last match at 1:30am, I still wanted more... So tonight, you just may see a glint from up there on that crane. And it just might be the last thing you see.

-          Jiggsy

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