If you had the chance to snag a ten million
dollar prize and the title of Best Assassin in the World, would you do it? And if you’re stupid
enough to say yes, how would you survive?
I’m going to break down the mistakes made by
our tournament champions, see if we can make better decisions and ultimately attempt to
beat THE ASSASSINS in THE TOURNAMENT.
Small town England has lived peacefully for too
long. Middlesbrough, the arena for this year’s tournament of assassins, is a middle-class
industrial town off the tourist trail, full of the sort of people who toss their drunken
priests out on the street and eat cream cakes for afternoon tea. If you’re Father MacAvoy, you
spend your time using your priest’s collar as a sort of pity badge and asking God why he
hates you so much. Little does he know, the big guy hates him even more than he thinks.
The real competitors in this game are scattered across the rest of this clueless quaint city.
They seem to have been told ahead of time that the tournament would take place here, that
the game isn’t restricted to the city limits, and that there are no limitations in terms of what the
players can bring into the game. There appear to be no rules at all, save one – Kill or Die.
The night before the tournament begins, they all take a dose of bye-bye juice before
ninja surgeons creep into their rooms and implant tracking devices into their abdomens.
This tracking information is available to all the players at any time. The players have
24 hours to exterminate their competition or the tracking devices will explode.
While we don’t get a rundown of all 30 assassins and their special skills, Master of Ceremonies
POWERS introduces us to a few fan favorites.
LAI LAI ZHEN - The best assassin
in Asia for the last three years who grew up killing for the Chinese Triad.
The odds for her start at 10-1.
ANTON BOGART - A stealthy French assassin and
parkour expert. His odds start at 9-1.
YURI PETROV - A Russian special
forces all-rounder who kills without mercy. His odds start at 12-1.
MILES SLADE - A wild card psychopath from Texas with odds that start at 25-1.
JOSHUA HARLOW - A champion who won the last tournament seven years ago and who has returned
to find the killer who murdered his pregnant wife. He’s given legacy odds of 2-1.
Unbeknownst to Powers, there’s also a sixth special contender – FATHER MACAVOY, that
pitiful alcoholic priest who’s about to have the worst day of his life.
Is it just me, or does this feel like a lazy man’s Mortal Kombat?
Look, we obviously know this tournament starts WAY before the game actually begins.
You wouldn’t bring a saber to a pistol duel, and we’re not showing up to this thing with
anything less than a full arsenal at our disposal and all the above board googling
and dark web searches we can make.
The players knew the game would take place in
Middlesbrough. We don’t know how much lead time they had, but if I had any at all, I’d find a map
of the town and begin using street view to look for chokepoints, defensive positions, and the best
sniper placement. To make it easier on myself, I would also place weapons in strategic places
around the city. That way, if I run out of ammo or lose a gun, I’m only a few blocks away from
a reload. Same as the Most Dangerous Game.
I might also scour the city for human sized
metal boxes that I could use to block the GPS signal coming from my tracking device. It’d be
the perfect place to ambush a fellow player when they’re chasing us, by stepping inside,
disappearing from their tracking screen, and then using that cover to shoot them
in the head while they’re confused.
Strategy number two: we’re coming into the
game with our own gear. Maybe we don’t go full Splinter Cell with it, but close. We’re
talking a Honey Badger PDW with a 9 inch barrel with suppressor in 300 BLK and night vision
goggles to ambush targets in the dark, when we are going to do most of our killing. The
Eotech HWS 300 Blackout with a 2-dot reticle will allow us to still make precise distance
shots with either sub or supersonic ammo and a 3X flip magnifier. With an IR laser
mounted to our rifle, we can target other assassins using our night vision goggles and
they would have no idea we’re there.
For our secondary, the Laugo Alien with a
suppressor and microdot, we’ll also want a mounted light that gives off at least 1200 lumens and has
the ability to strobe for close quarters combat. We also want to carry a few 9 bang flashbang
grenades, which as the name implies sets off nine flashbangs. We want to tie a chem light to
it, which we can crack before throwing to magnify the light output and get everyone staring at it
so you can kill them while they’re distracted. Don’t forget to pick up some electronic hearing
protection as well. Going deaf mid-tournament’s gonna cut our odds down significantly.
We can also prep the gear we’re wearing, like the lightweight CRYE Precision JPC 2.0 plate
carrier with a 4 NIJ plate in the front and back, which can take a single armor piercing
round up to a .30-06. To cover our head, we can wear a Protection group Denmark Arch level
3A ballistic helmet, which is rated up to a .44 mag and should stop almost any pistol
shot, so long as Agent Smith isn’t lurking anywhere nearby with his 50 AE.
The downside to all of this prep is twofold. First – it’s expensive, running you well
over $100,000. Of course, that’s only one percent of the ultimate prize money. As they
say, you gotta spend money to make money and as a world famous assassin, we would have
that kind of scratch lying around.
The second problem is that you’ll stand out
dressed like an extra from Black Hawk Down. Of course, this is England – anyone with a gun
is going to stand out, which is where carefully planted weapons caches could come in handy.
The tournament begins with 24 hours remaining. A knock at the door wakes Lai Lai. Her
tracker locates one hostile outside. Gun drawn, she advances and blocks the peep
hole with a do not disturb sign, then opens the door to find room service outside. It must
be amateur hour, because she misses the assassin crawling through the open window behind her.
He attacks from behind with a fucking garrote, because this is definitely a video game where one
Y press results in a secured kill animation. Not. Lai Lai narrowly avoids getting her head sawed
off, but wastes her ammo popping off shots beside his head. She gets the upper hand – pun definitely
intended – when she uses his own garrote to slice off his fingers, then single-shots him
between the eyes in the bathroom.
Talk about a rude awakening. That’s one assassin
down, twenty nine to go. Lai Lai’s lucky it went her way and her attacker thought bringing
piano wire to a gunfight was a good idea.
Call me paranoid, but if I know I’m going to wake
up with a target on my back, my night time ritual is gonna look like I’m barricading a bunker
for the zombie apocalypse. At the very least, I’m rigging a Home Alone-style flamethrower
trap on the windows, just in case.
Lai Lai wakes up after this other assassin,
meaning that the sedative she took wasn’t specifically calibrated to wake all the
assassins up at the same time. One early riser in this competition could knock out a few
contenders before they even wake up.
Maybe my mind goes to cheating way too early, but
in this situation, I might take a half dose of bye bye juice and pour the rest down the drain.
One very annoying wake up call or alarm later, and we have the early bird advantage
to track down the closest targets and shoot them in their sleep.
The first thing we do when we wake up is strap that GPS tracker showing everyone else’s
locations to the underside of our support shooting arm like it’s a pipboy from Fallout.
Lai Lai had no need to open her hotel door. Instead, she should have tracked the
dot’s movement on the GPS screen as he came around the building and then shot
him when he entered her window.
Speaking of trackers…
A sniper and a chubby assassin in a car track Anton to a coffee and eggs diner where he
slips into the bathroom and slices the tracker out of his gut. On the gamemasters’ screens,
this registers as him dying, until he flicks the tracker into a steaming fresh pot of coffee and
watches Father MacAvoy swallow it down. Anton’s dot reappears on the GPS trackers while he slips
out on to the street, essentially invisible.
Good God. This Anton guy came to
play, and I respect that.
Removing the tracker is a calculated risk
– everyone here save Joshua is a first time tournament champion, so we don’t know if removing
the implant will disqualify us. Having said that, when the only rule is kill or die, why
not tempt fate and see what happens?
Lowjacking the priest is a brilliant
strategy…if it works. Anton lucks out that Father MacAvoy didn’t feel that metal
pill before he swallowed. Giving the other assassins a wild human goose to chase so he
can sneak up and kill them is genius.
We could also get a thermos full of hot
coffee and put the tracker in there. Then, we could lay a bait trap for the
other players and bring the killers to us rather than playing Where’s Waldo in a city
the size of Providence, Rhode Island.
To lay the trap, we could find a narrow dead
end alleyway with a sniper’s perch above, place the thermos around the corner, forcing
assassins to fully enter the dead end, then pick off anyone who comes hunting. We need to be
sneaky about this, as a tracker beacon sitting unmoving in an alley looks like a trap. If we can
tie a string to it and slowly pull on it to give the appearance that we are moving in a direction
it will make the trap more convincing.
As Anton anticipated, the hungover
priest eventually leaves the diner, where the sniper and chubby car killer target
him as a fellow player. The sniper one-shots her competition in the car, but hesitates
to take collateral damage when the priest stops to talk to somebody. Stealth Player Anton
sneaks up behind her and snaps her neck before stealing her gun and following the priest.
That’s three of our assassins out of the game, with twenty seven and the
hapless priest remaining.
Well, Lee Harvey Oswald this sniper most
definitely is not. Sniping targets is a strong strategy for winning this game…if we don’t
lay out in the open like a baby seal waiting to be clubbed. Did she forget that literally
every player knows she’s up there? Where’s the defensive positioning? Or any cover whatsoever?
If her head wasn’t up her scopes ass and had the tracker on her forearm and spammed it like she
had OCD she wouldn’t have ended up looking down at her own ass. Rifles are RANGED WEAPONS. This
bolt action rifle she has can hit targets from 300 m or 984 ft away. Why is she so close where
anyone with a 9mm and decent aim could shoot her? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
If we’re going ranged player for this game, we’re picking a secure location, like a concrete room
with a single access point attackers will have to use to engage us. Across that access point,
we’re laying down a trip wire rigged with tin cans or glass bottles so we can hear ‘em coming.
With a marksman rifle like the M14 with a Trijicon VCOG 1-6 rifle scope, that allows for very
accurate shots with variable magnification, as well as rapid follow up shots, we’re
taking out targets left and right.
Honestly, you could hole up in your perch
until the end of the whole tournament and pick off the last player who has to
come to you to win the game. I call that the Hunger Games Special, and sixty
percent of the time, it works every time.
Lai Lai follows Anton’s tracker to a church
where she sneaks up on Father MacAvoy praying at the altar. The location gives Father
MacAvoy a plus-5 plot armor buff and she doesn’t immediately shoot him.
Riiiiiigggggghhhhht. Maybe the church is a fucking safe house.
The church doors implode. Nevermind.
It’s a distraction as Yuri the Russian cartwheels
through a nearby window and tosses a grenade. Lai Lai taps it back to his side with a bullet,
before more grenades fill the church with enough smoke for a Michael Jackson music video.
Yuri advances on Father MacAvoy, taunting him and giving Lai Lai just enough
time to disarm him. God gets a front row seat to a martial arts melee fight. Yuri spots a holy
water font and tries to drown Lai Lai in it. The quibbling priest barely manages to distract
him. Lai Lai tosses Yuri back, revealing she pulled the grenade pin on his jacket. Yuri’s guts
paint a mural across the Cathedral walls.
That’s four assassins eliminated, with
twenty six and the priest left to go.
Afterward Lai Lai sees Father MacAvoy doesn’t
have an implant scar. For some reason, she decides she has to protect him until the
implant passes through his system instead of sending him to meet his maker.
This is like a skyrim quest to kill a dragon that gets derailed by an orphan. Who knew
coldblooded contract killers had hearts of gold? At the end of this whole thing, I’m sure we’ll
learn the real treasure was the plot armored abandoned puppy we found along the way.
It’s during this church fight you start to realize all of your competitors are drama
club kids who got into killing to pay for Julliard. Father MacAvoy should be dead –
like dead-dead – right here, right now. If I see a man with a bleeping tracker kneeling,
facing away from me, it’s bang-bang goodnight before he even turns around.
This is a FIGHT TO THE DEATH, Lai Lai! For all you know, he’s kneeling with a gun aimed
at your head under the folds of his dress.
Distraction is one of, if not THE most
important strategy in a game like this and it’ll pop up again and again here.
And Yuri – what the fuck are you doing? Distracting with an explosion only to make
all the noise in the world coming through the window. You know what would also have
worked? Tossing in a few more live grenades, then pieing the corner like we did in
Rattlesnake. Two shots and we’re done here.
Once the church is full of smoke, he wastes the
distraction again to slowly pull up on the Priest instead of blowing him away at a distance. Same
dipshit award goes to Lai Lai. She shoots Yuri’s gun instead of his face. Why? Why do you
want to fight a Russian hand to hand?
Honestly, half the killers on this tournament
roster could be taken out while they’re wasting valuable distractions.
You know who’s NOT wasting distractions? Our legacy player Joshua Hawley.
Across town, he draws a killer named Cusack into a darkened parking garage and peppers him
with questions about who among the assassin group killed his wife. Cusack tells him he heard about
the kill from the rodeo psycho Miles Slade. Cusack spots someone waiting nearby, and sneaks up to
discover it’s just a pair of empty shoes – a cleverly laid trap by Joshua who appears behind
him and shoots Cusack at point blank range.
That’s five assassins down, with twenty five
players and the priest still on the board.
No one ever said a contract killer
had to be smart. Cusack – supposedly one of the top 30 assassins IN THE
WORLD – gets taken out by the old “look down, pie to the face” trick.
You were dragging the whole team down, Cusack, you dumb motherfucker.
Over in the railyard, Texas Creep Miles Slade finishes off a sixth assassin and
takes a finger trophy, before killing a dog for kicks. This guy’s really gunning for that
serial killer bingo. He moseys into the busiest gentleman’s club this side of Amsterdam.
Back with Lai Lai and the priest, she calls into the gamemasters and warns
Powers about Father MacAvoy’s tracker. Powers doesn’t care about the priest and tells
her to handle it like a big girl.
Suddenly, a truck barrels down on the phone
booth they’re in. They narrowly leap out as the truck comes for them again. The truck
crashes and catches fire. Father MacAvoy gets drawn in by the female assassin’s siren screams
for help. It’s a trap. She pulls a gun on him, just as Lai Lai shoots her in the head.
That brings us to seven assassins down, with twenty three and the priest remaining.
At this point, these assassins seem so extra to me, it feels like you could pick them off by
pointing into the distance, waiting for them to look that way, and shooting them in the head.
A vehicle could be a cool weapon in the game, if you have impeccable timing, which this
assassin does not. Twenty seconds earlier while Lai Lai was on the phone, charging through
the booth would’ve almost been a sure thing.
The problem with a vehicle is that it’s bulky,
it’s a massive moving target for gunfire, and, well, it can crash in a fiery inferno
with the wrong twist of the wheel. She would have been better off speeding
away after the first attack failed.
This female assassin in the car has terrible
timing AGAIN when she screams for help and instead of letting him pull her out, she pulls
the gun while still in the burning car.
Yeah, because that’s going to
work out well for you.
As for Lai Lai, she needs to get her head
in the fucking game. Even if she’s decided to carry Father MacAvoy to the finish line, this
assassin in the car is a tournament competition. Go over to the car and finish her off before the
angel on MacAvoy’s shoulder gets him killed.
Lai Lai prioritizes debugging the priest in an
alleyway. She watches the GPS screen but misses two approaching competitors – trackerless Anton,
on the roof above them with the sniper rifle, and a killer cosplaying as a cop who pulls up
in a squad car and paints Father MacAvoy with his scope laser. Lucky for the priest, every
player has a nifty catchphrase and a trigger finger with a three second delay.
Anton removes the cop from the game, bringing us to eight dead slayers, with twenty two
mercs and one priest remaining. Powers has even put Father MacAvoy on the board with 500-1 odds,
so he’s got that going for him at least.
Seriously, though. Disguise is a strategy
that feels deeply underused here. Dressing up as a priest or cop is a 4-D chess move
that we could exploit to full victory. It’s likely this killer killed a cop and took
his rig early in the day. If we had chosen this strategy in our “create-a-player” screen
before the tournament began, we could own this game. The Priest outfit is better for a stealth
playthrough and probably easier overall, while the cop lets you open carry in plain daylight.
If you don’t squander it missing your shots. With the MP5 he has, he should have just lifted the
weapon while still in the car and shot through the windshield, mowing Father and Lai Lai down
before they knew what hit them. There’s no need to paint on a laser effect at this distance –
JUST. FIRE. Save your catchphrases for later.
Lai Lai and the Father commandeer the cop car
as Anton somersaults off like he’s auditioning for Underworld and chases their reversing
vehicle. He lands on the hood and cements his MVP status by riding the front bumper
when Lai Lai goes to run him over.
I hope the gamemasters got
all that on camera.
Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. If another
player could do all this AND he was invisible on the only tracking gadget I had, I’d reprioritize
my gameplay STAT. Anton is our immediate priority. The tracking screen on our GPS device is small and
doesn’t seem to be adjustable. I would pull into a nearby field to test the range it actually shows,
then make it look like I’ve abandoned the priest, hide just out of range of the tracking screen
window and wait for Anton to come.
Back at the gentlemen’s club, Miles
uses a girl as cover to watch the room. Turns out there are NINE players clustered in
this club, apparently ignoring the tournament completely. Miles spots a guy with a gun and
blasts him with the business end of his shotty. Pandemonium erupts. Miles starts firing, taking
out club entertainment and other players alike. One player sneaks up on him with a knife and
receives a lead enema for this troubles.
Miles takes cover behind an upturned table and
sends another player flying. Other assassins get in on the bloodbath and Tony Montana even shows up
for a cameo. It’s all blood and bodyparts, until Joshua walks in with plot armor so heavy it almost
balances out his enormous brass balls.
He uses another player as a human shield
and picks off the other posers one by one until only Miles is left standing. Oh, Miles
and this killer cosplaying as a stripper who leaps on Joshua’s back and plunges a dagger
into his neck. Miles riddles Joshua with lead, then kills off the female player
before knocking Joshua out cold.
Eight posers were eliminated from the tournament
in this location, giving us fourteen players and the priest still in play.
Let’s just take a moment to admire the raw awesomeness and stupidity of this
club scene. Why were a solid third of the players chilling out in this bar? Why enter
the tournament at all if you’re just looking for tail and tequila? It’s almost dark
out, meaning the game’s half over.
I would not recommend entering a den of killers.
Definitely not to kinda-sorta sit in a corner and wait until you notice someone with a gun on them.
What sort of passive gameplay is this? We came to kill some friends and win that dough, not live
out our regular Tuesday night back home.
If we’re going in, we’re cutting the power
off to the building first by looking for the main breaker, normally located by the
building entrance, and shutting it off. Then, we’re tossing a 9 bang flashbang grenade
in with a chem light attached to it. This will disorient our targets. After that, we’re
going in with a strobe light attached to our gun, disorienting them further and allowing us to pick
the others off one by one with two controlled shots to the chest and one to the head.
If we AREN’T going inside, which is obviously the smarter choice here, we have a few fun options.
The first is to rig a delay on a 9-bang grenade, then toss it into the main room and let the other
players pick each other off until only one is left, at which point we could nail the straggler
in the forehead as they leave the building.
OR, we could simply back off to an
elevated position that has overwatch of the gentlemen’s club and play clean up crew
after the bloodbath eventually kicks off.
OR, if we don’t care about the
safety of any gonzos inside, we could grab some accelerant from the trucks in
the parking lot, and set the building on fire, making sure to soak all the exits heavily to
make it hard to escape. Anyone who does escape gets a love tap from our Honey Badger.
First place is looking closer by the second.
Joshua wakes up tied to a pole in the gentlemen’s
club. Miles plays with his food until Joshua asks why Miles killed his wife. Miles finishes off a
leftover player as Joshua cuts through his binds. Miles returns and cuts off Joshua’s finger and
admits he didn’t kill his wife – Lai Lai did it. As Miles goes to smoke his cigar, Joshua asks
for a drink. When Miles’ lighter flicks on, Joshua spits the booze all over Miles, setting him on
fire. Miles escapes through a hatch in the floor. Joshua steals a set of keys that happen to belong
to a gas tanker and takes off into the night.
Joshua is only alive here because Miles is
crazy – any other player would have double tapped him when he fell to the floor.
The fire breathing was awesome, though. Just remember, the death match doesn’t give extra
points for originality. Without a shot of booze and a loose screw, Joshua dies here and now.
Eventually, only six players remain – Anton, Joshua, Lai Lai, Father MacAvoy, Miles and one
other rando player named Carl Topuzov.
Lai Lai pulls over for ex-lax at a
convenience store. Father MacAvoy gets jumped by a deep fried slice of Texas Toast.
Lai Lai ejects Texas’ least wanted from the car and tosses him through the glass
doors of the gas station.
Sure, she could, I don’t know, shoot him
while he’s distracted in the car…maybe Lai Lai’s bored or something.
Miles gets Lai Lai in a chokehold, but the instinct to monologue is just too
hardwired into him. He tells her Joshua’s coming for her. She’s about to finish him off
when Father MacAvoy begs her not to shoot. She lowers the weapon as Miles suddenly screams in
pain and the tracking device inside him explodes, splattering his guts across the store.
Powers reminds him of this with a quick phone call, warning MacAvoy that there can only
be one tournament winner. If more than one player is still alive in four hours,
the trackers will kill everyone.
Joshua’s revenge rampage continues as he
barrels toward the convenience store where Lai Lai’s busy trying to talk MacAvoy
into crapping his tracker out.
Topozov comes into the gas station parking
lot hot with a rocket launcher, only to get crushed by an oncoming double deck bus.
His death drops us into a top 4 position, but his rocket launcher totals Lai Lai’s getaway car.
With Joshua on fast approach, bulldozing obstacles in his way, Lai Lai and the priest steal
the double decker and all the human cargo inside. Joshua parallels the bus and fires off
shotgun blasts. Lai Lai shoots him in the arm, making it difficult for him to return
fire. Whatever will he do?! Oh right…
