I first became a gamer very young. By time I was 10 my brothers and I got our first exposure to the PlayStation craze and were hooked ever since. As the years passed and the PSs got upgraded, we upgraded along with them until the PS3. With all those versions we always had to have at least one soccer game.
My brothers and I were some of the neighborhood's Fifa titans. When it came to facing off against our schoolmates, the competition skyrocketed. Yet even then, very rarely would someone beat me twice in a row.
By the time I moved to Kenya in 2012 I had already developed quite the ego, believing that even rusty, all I'd need was a training game or two in order to decimate the big bad du jour. A delusion I managed to reinforce a few weeks after my touchdown.
You see, there was this classmate we shall call Chris. Chris had an XBOX 360, I'd never played on XBOX and though I didn't particularly feel like betraying Sony, I knew beggars couldn't be choosers so I obliged when Chris invited, Mike, Bryan, David and I for an afternoon of gaming, liquor and munchies. Rinse, repeat, we did this most days after classes despite Chris living far from all of us. The walk could be brutal.
Anyways, after a few days I had gotten the hang of the controller and my skills were shining brighter than ever. At this point Chris was the only one constantly giving me trouble, but I'd give him just as much trouble.
Fast forward a few weeks Mike decided to switch hostels and switched to one 10 minutes away away from mine. More and more he started telling us about this guy who lived in the same hostel, Matt. According to Mike, Matt was an unbeatable beast and that if we had any balls, we'd challenge him! At first we didn't particularly care as we felt Mike was exaggerating but dude kept insisting so much we eventually gave in.
So one day as we're all chilling at school, Mike motions us to Matt, introduces us and tells him that we'd like to challenge him at Fifa.
With a ridiculously wide smile he said something like this;
"Ok, pass through anytime."
In retrospect, that smile should have let us know that we didn't want that smoke.
The next red flag should have been how almost every gamer who'd played against him pitied us when they'd learn of our blunder.
Later not so much later, we learned that when casually playing, Matt goes easy. But when actively challenged, mercy becomes a foreign concept, make it a drinking game and blackouts are on the house.
Anyways, that same day we took him up on his offer and headed to the slaughterhouse after class.
We all got demolished!
I don't remember exactly everybody's score sheets, I just remember he beat each one of us with double digits while we barely managed to score against him. Except David, David just said f*ck it at one point and dipped before his game ended.
If my memory serves me right he had 11 goals and I had 2 by the end of our first game. Sadly this time I couldn't blame the X factor since we were playing on PlayStation 3, not that he would have heard me in the middle of his evil laugh.
So, it's about time I flesh out Matt's character a bit more. Dude is a calm collected stoner, deceptively smart and always fun to hang around. He took no prisoners when gaming though.
When playing against you, he made sure you felt moment of despair, and through his facial expressions or iconic sound effects, he would antagonize you every chance he got.
Good thing he didn't like drinking, once tipsy/drunk his trash talk game was Vegeta savage, and made worse he'd still have the feats to match it.
But don't get it confused, that type of scenario wasn't limited to just Fifa, but all the 1v1 games that were in that hostel. From Naruto Shippuden to 2K#, to COD and everything in between, he was a beast. Yes, even if it was your game more often than not he would be running circles around you after a day or 2 of playing for the first time.
Same thing applied to 1 payer games. If there's such a thing as a gaming prodigy then that's him.
Actually, his dream has always been to one day create his own video games, and last we talked he was still somewhere in Canada pursuing that dream through his studies. I wonder what he's up to now.
Now I hope you understand why it was imperative that I beat him and why I bought a big a$$ bottle when I did so the first time. It didn't matter that it took me at least a dozen matches to get there, I'd freakin won! And with our spectators we caused an unnecessary commotion, with me being extra.
To be fair to myself, everyone acted the same way when they'd manage to defeat him, turning such rare occasions into events in which even the non gamers of the house would join to genuinely celebrate with you.
However if no one saw you defeat him or if he didn't acknowledge it, then it didn't happen. Good thing he wasn't a sore loser as most times he accepted his losses, just don't get cocky while recounting your victory, or else.
I went onto defeat him 3 more times, each time making my day but never matching the sense of accomplishment of that first time!
The last time I played against Matt was in 2016, and the next next time I played Fifa after that was in 2018. That's when I noticed it. I was at a friend's who had a PlayStation, played regularly, and with other friends who also played regularly. I lost 2 game, won the rest by large margins and by the end of the night I was just toying around with my food.
That's when I actually realized just how versatile my skills had become, since among the people I was playing against that day, 2 of them I used to play against before my Kenyan excursion and they also pointed it out.
But do you know what's even trippier than that? That evening or shortly after, I contacted Mike and told him what had happened. He laughed and told me the same has been happening with him, as well as with most of those who used to constantly challenge Matt. 馃槀
Anywho, since then I've only gone to play PS two or three more times and pretty much the same thing happens every time. My new base level is beast level, or so I like to believe.
PEACE!!
