I'm tired of dying

Sometimes I just get tired of dying. It doesn't matter how much fun I'm having with friends if all I ever do is just die, I'm not going to like it. It gets frustrating not lasting more than 15-20 seconds into a match before my body separates into tiny pieces from someone's well placed shot. Sometimes a girl needs a fighting chance. After all isn't that what first person shooter games are set up to do?

When I get in this mood it's hard to find a game to play with friends when all they want to do is kill people. I don't blame them. Sometimes I can't wait to get into a game and blow someone's head off. But since their skill level is so much higher than mine sometimes it's a hopeless night of repeated deaths for me. And that's not any fun.

Now, if I told my friends I didn't want to die I'm sure they'd do everything they could to not kill me; maybe not even shoot me. And if I was the last person left on my team they'd probably all stand there and let me walk up to them and kill them. While on one hand this would eliminate my dying woes, on the other hand it's patronizing and I'm way too competitive to get a kill or a win that way. I want to earn it. I take great satisfaction sneaking up behind someone and tagging them (frag or smoke grenade, it doesn't matter). Yes, I know I should just play for the fun of it and I do . . . mostly. I just want to get in on the action every now and then.

I can usually put together one stellar match per night. My aim seems to be spot on. My instincts seem to be honed to perfection. But having any control of when or which map that happens on I have no idea when it will happen. And the following map? Those maps are always worse than terrible when it comes to my performance. That's just how I play and I've come to accept it.

What I can't accept is always dying all the time. I've played Gears of War for over a year and half now and I don't seem to have gotten much better than when I started. But when I went back to Star Wars Battlefront the other night I was at the top (or close to the top) of the leaderboards every round without even putting much effort into it. Yes, I've played Battlefront longer than Gears but I would think I would be seeing a return on my time and practice investment by now in that game.

So for now until the foreseeable future you'll probably see me playing single player games like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon or any number of Arcade games. If I'm playing a multiplayer arcade feel free to join me. But my friends shouldn't worry about me being away from the shooter genre for long. All it takes is one bad day at the office for me to get an overwhelming need to go home and blow someone to bits. As long as I can do that it won't matter how many times I die.