Steve sits in the chair after having turned on the TV and the Xbox 360. Bill is sitting on the corner of the bed, facing the TV. Both have a controller in their hands. Halo loads up and Steve navigates through the menus and enters a game entitled "4v4 Slayer" on the map Sanctuary. On screen an opponent crosses in front of Bill, and Bill says "Hey buddy" before going after him. Suddenly Bill is sniped from across the map and screams "What the bastard! I thought I was red!".
Meanwhile, Steve has acquired the Battle Rifle and is walking towards the center of the map. The noise of a nearby grenade is heard and Bill tells Steve to "Watch out!". The grenade explodes and Steve is unharmed. Steve continues towards the center of the map and says "Watch this shit" before moving out from behind his cover and shooting at an opponent with the Battle Rifle. Another opponent appears and after Steve has killed the first he attacks the second, then pulls behind the wall to let his shields charge. Once his health is full, Steve darts out and surprises the same opponent who had become engaged with another battle.
After killing him, the swoosh of a sword is heard and Steve quickly turns around and backs up while throwing a plasma grenade. An opponent has just appeared around the corner, pursuing Steve with the sword, and is stuck by the grenade. When he explodes Steve shouts "Yeah! Got the sword douchenator!" Bill then chimes in, "I'd like to have the sniper rifle, I'll tell ya why, Reed, In the game of Spiderman, I mean Halo, --" Stops talking and chases an opponent, then kills him with the shotgun while shouting "Ahh! there's a dead one -- Bitches!" Soon after, another opponent attacks Bill from behind. Steve says "I'm coming" and starts running towards the battle, but is too late and Bill is killed.
Bill's cellphone buzzes, signaling an incoming text message, and he looks down to read it. On screen, an opponent runs by and assassinates Bill, he looks up from his cellphone and says "Dammit". He looks back down to his cellphone and begins texting back, using his thumbs to type. Meanwhile, Steve has acquired the sword and is pursuing a group of opponents. He rounds a corner and sees them all shooting at a distant enemy. He leaps up and kills the first one with one swipe. The other two turn around and start shooting but Steve is already on the second one, killing him. Before going for the final opponent, Steve yells "Oh ho!" and as he kills the last one, he is shot at from the other side of the map and is killed. He yells "Shit!". Meanwhile, Bill has finished texting, has focused back on the game, and is gathering weapons. He looks out into the middle of the map and sees an opponent on a machine gun turret. He throws a plasma grenade high into the air in the direction of the gunner and yells "Common far stick!". The grenade lands on the opponent and explodes, killing him. Bill screams "Yeah!" and Steve lifts his hand up for a high five while saying "Oh boy, fucking awesome".
Steve is running around on one side of the base and kills an opponent with a weak gun then says "He's not the greatest". He then goes on to kill another opponent with the Battle Rifle and gets a "double kill" award, but takes heavy damage. He then says "whew, almost died", and hides behind a wall to allow his shield to charge. Bill is in the center of the map and runs by a doorway. In the corner of the screen, inside the doorway, are several opponents shooting across the map. Bill throws several grenades in and kills the two opponents. With these two kills the game is over. Steve says "yaaay".
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6 comments:
While writing this I found it hard not to participate, especially as my friends talked directly to me. I would try to ignore them and just write what they were saying.
I think I could use more description of what was happening outside of the game, instead of focusing so much on the game itself.
I really like the style you wrote with. Instead of having no clue who the observation was talking about you could connect with Bill and Steve but at the same time it was still a "textbook" observation writing in the sense that it followed all the criteria. My only suggestion is line breaks. It would make the reading a little easier.
Cool story, sounds like an exciting game.
I would like have more description of what is going on outside the game, and more description of what is going on in the game as well. I know halo has some cool graphics when people get killed. It is great when a body flies through the air etc. Description like that could be nice.
OK...I thought that was a good observation. You maintained present tense language which clarifies the post as an observation.
It gets kind of hard to read with no page breaks, but that is an easy fix. I liked how you used actual dialog but don't rely on that...It can take away from certain parts. Maybe putting the dialog in bold or italics could make things flow better.
Also try and describe the actual game aesthetics. You talk about grenades being thrown...maybe you can describe the sight after one of those grenades are thrown to help bring in those people who have never even seen Halo. I liked this one!(douchenator)
Quite the exciting and fast paced observation. There was a great deal of attention to what was going on and a lot of information relayed.
Half the time it felt like the observation was taking place on the couch, the other half was taking place inside the game itself. I can't decide whether this is intriguing and beneficial to the enjoyment, or deters from the observation and makes it more confusing.
Also, the phrase:
"Common far stick!"
Is that vernacular for "Come on far stick!"? If so, I might type it "Com'on" since "Common" looks like common
Fun stuff, Saturday was Halo 3 Beta day over at my place.
I actually got lost here: "4v4 Slayer" on the map Sanctuary. On screen an opponent crosses in front of Bill, and Bill says "Hey buddy" before going after him. Suddenly Bill is sniped from across the map and"
The transition from the loading screen to actual gameplay needs to be described.
"signaling an incoming text message, and he looks down to read it. On screen, an opponent runs by and assassinates Bill, he" I know this is not referring to the screen of the cell phone, but other readers may not. Be sure to include clear transitions. When writing from observation it's easy to skip them.
"opponent with a weak gun then says " which gun? why is it weak? How do you know it is weak?
I love the last line, but you may want to summarize for your audience the victory conditions of the match as well as the score.
You do a good job of including dialog and salient details. However, the post needs to be reworked for organization.
As a reader familiar with gaming, and Halo, I struggled with following the order of events, this will be even harder for someone without my background.
In addition to paragraph breaks, be sure to include transitional statements. Take each paragraph and re-read it, asking yourself if it makes sense as a unit, then use phrases or sentences that will tie one to the next.
Remember that having detail is important, but it's having the details that convey to the audience what was happening that really matter.
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