I like gaming, you see. Sometimes I think I could binge-play all night and all day if pesky life didn’t intervene. The positive effects of video games on the brain are pretty well documented and I could make the argument that they’re a healthy way to maintain neuroplacticity and cognitive function. Truth is I just love the experience.
So why not write about it?
This isn’t an account of one particular video game; more a composite of multiple video games. They’re crunchy and they’re fast. They aren’t necessarily the deepest narratives, of course, but they don’t try to be.
They also like to dump you right into….
…Another fight. The marine saw two spike-tongues clamber low over the broken ridge to his right. They slid across the jet black rocks, spindly limbs picking their lithe way toward him. They’d be where he stood in seconds. But mere spike-tongues weren’t the real threat here; his eyes were focused on the wracker.
Almost as wide as it was tall, it stood as solid as the rocky outcroppings of this desolate open plain. In contrast to the spike-tongues, the wracker’s approach was brazen. Its stomping, ponderous gait was the fastest its thick slab of a body could move. It couldn’t use cover; it didn’t need any. Its beady, putrid green eyes bored directly at him across thirty metres or so of shadowy bedrock, the implicit challenge obvious.
There were no true surprises on this world, only constant impossible ambush. There were no tactics, only the steady push forward through flesh and bone.
The marine sprinted left before the wracker could raise its catapult-like arms. He dove toward the closest cover, a waist-high boulder of razor sharp stone. The spike-tongues skittered after him like lizards after prey. The bitter air moaned as the wracker’s first semi-gaseous projectile barged through it behind him. He slid behind the boulder on standard issue knee plates now worn almost smooth. The airborne gas ball detonated with a sickening wave of overpressure.
One spike-tongue was caught in the projectile’s blast. Its slender arms and legs spun like shrapnel, severed joints flailing. He heard the other close the distance, leathery feet sprawling hungrily over the ground.
A sulfurous stench from the gas detonation wafted in just before the spike-tongue did. It caught in his throat and choked him as his body rejected the unbreathable air. It almost slowed him down. The spike-tongue leapt around the marine’s meagre cover, scythe talons first. He fired the shotgun on impulse. The creature’s lank body snapped back. It sailed several metres from the blast and flopped lifeless like a bundle of sticks.
The wracker thudded inexorably toward the crouched marine. It would be readying another projectile inside its writhing guts already. No time to stay on the defensive. He sprung from behind the boulder and charged toward the wracker’s sweaty bulk. It was winding up for another throw. He thrust the shotgun’s muzzle toward its boxy head and planted four rapid shells in it. The sprays of scattershot punched oozing cavities out of its cheeks and skullcap. Storming gunfire slapped its massive head around and spoiled its aim. Two incandescent gas balls flew wide, sparing the marine a burning demise. Yet still the behemoth came on. One tainted emerald eye was spattered in drooling pieces across the mound that passed for its forehead. The other stared down at the scrambling human with depraved anticipation.
The marine’s urgent rush placed both combatants less than three metres apart, more than close enough for it to heave moist burning gas onto him. For a heart-dropping moment, his boots scraped on fractured obsidian gravel. Only the lumbering thing’s own dragging mass granted him the half-second enough to dart to the right. It hesitated with another gas ball half formed as it realized he was no longer in front of it.
He scrambled backward with the need to escape the blast radius. He pointed the shotgun one-handed as he crashed onto his armored back. The gun fired. The shot missed. The wracker bent its treetrunk arm in a deadly windup. The chill of the stone ground seeped unnaturally beneath his skin. He mashed the trigger again.
The edge of the gunblast caught the edge of the growing gas ball. A bladed shockwave blew past him as the unreleased projectile cooked off. Half the wracker’s body liquified itself into stinking biological napalm. It tried to take another step and simply collapsed into a flowing greenish conflagration. The smell of hissing, bubbling monster tallow was unbelievable. He rolled onto his stomach to shield himself from the spitting blaze and felt it lurch from the odor. Still on the ground he had time for one quick scan for threats, then his body seized and violently coughed up everything in it.
* * *
Dribbles of caked vomit joined the crusted patina of inhuman blood on the front of his armour vest in the crisp air. He could still taste the bile in his mouth but that was far better than the reeking lump of twisted monstrosity whose legacy still hovered in his nostrils. The green fire was gone. The black stone and purple sky were silent and empty again. The ever present tor still taunted him above the rocky plain.
Eight shells remained in the shotgun, less than a single magazine’s worth. Over the jagged slabs and behind the fanged promontories, far more enemies than that probably lurked. Dire, but not desperate. A looted plasma carbine was still strapped at his shoulder. His fallback ace.
He trudged over to a dirty stream flowing sluggishly in a shallow creek bed. The water on this nightmare world tasted like headaches and venom but somehow was consumable. It was as if the planet itself wanted to keep you alive so you could suffer longer.
For hardly the first time, he wondered how long it actually was. What was the year? Why did he walk beneath infinite contusion clouds? What was his original mission? He sensed, rather than remembered, vague glimpses of memory: A suborbital gunship as it landed, noise like thunder, scorching metal. It was the last warmth of any real kind he recalled feeling.
A rueful grin cracked part of his face between mouthfuls of brackish water. Speculating on the not-right-now had crept into a hobby. It was dangerous because it was distracting.
The marine was closer to the tor. That was important. It was the objective. He could see it clearly now, studded with grey fortifications in a suggestively human style. Base or lair, friend or foe, there was no indication.
He stood up, shotgun ready as always, and got moving.
There's No Going Back 