Gaming
Even pros make mistakes – the only difference is they’re paid to be this bad.
Everyone’s been there. You’re the last one alive, the weight of your team spectating your POV from beyond the grave is so heavy you can almost feel it with each key press and mouse click. You’re moments away from glory, but then the pressure hits – a tidal wave of adrenaline, all the wrong buttons and bam, you’re dead. Mistakes were made.
But you’re a scrub, there’s no way anyone who can make a tangible living out of CS:GO would let the same thing happen, right? Right? Well, it’s funny you should say that. Here are five videos proving pros are human, too.
This one, from IEM Gamescom last month, still hurts. It’s like a deep, physical burning sensation, somewhere between your stomach and your lungs. It starts with the leap in your heart when TSM’s Karrigan sees the last man standing for Team EnVyUS, KennyS, back turned, attempting a plant. A perfect moment. But then your heart plummets, further and further with each missed shot. Fair play to Kenny, though. That was a nice double flick shot to put on the scoreboard.
This time EnVyUS are on the receiving end of some hard luck when Shoxie finds his way in behind the Cloud9 lines. Honestly, this could be considered art. The elation of seeing the entire enemy team facing away on Long, and the crushing despair, symbolised by the single shot to the head, and his fallen corpse lying still for the rest of the round. Build a museum to house this video.
How the tables of fate do turn: it is Cloud9’s time to feel the burning shame of failure. This one’s a lot more literal than most other failplays though, as three – count them, three – players brave the flames of a molotov in order to defuse the bomb he’d just planted. There wasn’t any real time issue forcing them either, as pronax and the rest of Fnatic had already been dispatched. They must just really like fire.
And once again, from hero to zero, pronax finds himself in the firing line of public humiliation. He at least escapes by a whisker as it’s his former n!faculty teammate pyth from many moons ago in 2013 who takes the full brunt of bad karma. Hitting 2-4 instead of 4-2 during the buy round lands him with an M249 instead of the AK he was surely aiming for. What follows is somehow even more cringe-inducing. Always think before buying your guns, kids.
This is where the chain breaks. There is no linking segue to Get_Right’s infamous knife moment in the Copenhagen Games Grand Finals last year. Nor does there need to be. This is the pinnacle of plays that should have been great, but aren’t. The NiP rifler picks up a 3K defending the site from a tense retake attempt by Virtus.Pro. A grenade and his team-mate Fifflaren have already taken out one person going for the defuse, and his AK picks up two more.
But with snax the final member of VP left to win the round, huddled in the middle of a smoke cloud defusing the bomb, Get_Right goes in, knife slashing his way blindly until he hits flesh. Five hits is all it takes, but it’s not enough, snax is already finished. At least NiP went on to win the finals, so he doesn’t have this moment hanging over him forever. In his defence, there’s not a lot else he could have done. Can’t hit what you can’t see.
