We were running down the street, the safe room was in sight. It looked like we had it made when a horde of zombies came at us from an alleyway adjacent to the safe room entrance. We were pretty close together and Whammer, our point man, ran into a small shop on the right side of the street.

Trout and I, my game avatar is Condor, followed him quickly and we circled the wagons in the corner of what appeared to be some kind of coffee shop. Razer, a noob, got through the door a split second before the mass of brain-hungry zombies burst through from the street.

So what were we doing playing with a noob? you ask. It’s not something we do ordinarily but the reason is simple, really.

I’ve been trying to get my best friend Razer to play “Dead Right,” a virtual reality, first person shooter game for some time. To up the incentive to play, I gifted him with the game and, finally, he was on his first play-through. Me and the guys were determined to help him learn the ropes in spite of the consequences for us (and our stats).

Dead Right involves four players trying to escape a zombie apocalypse through varying landscapes. The particular game, or “campaign” as it’s called, we were playing was set in an urban, city environment and we were trying to get to the roof of a university for a helicopter rescue—all while being attacked by several classes of enemies. Zombies are the base class, doing the least damage and easiest to kill. They are joined by more powerful, though less numerous, ‘special’ tougher zombies that have a variety of interesting ways to kill the players. By working together the players help each other survive to the next safe room or the final escape.

So, Razer had a molotov, a beer bottle filled with gasoline or some super flammable substance, and as he made his way across the small shop toward us turned and threw the molly at the entrance. It was a good play, a wall of fire by the door would incinerate anything that tried to go through it.

Except for one thing. Razer wasn’t clear of the attacking bodies and the physics of the game caused the molotov to bounce back after striking one of the zombies. It landed about 6 scale feet in front of us and burst, covering the entire shop with inferno. The mass of attackers prevented anyone from escaping that virtual hell and, one by one, we fell and died screaming!

That was our third restart, the noob was killing us good. If he wasn’t burning us to death he was shooting us in the back of the head or running in front of us while we were shooting. Friendly fire for the game would be astronomical. He learned fast but kept mixing things up with disastrous results.

“In a situation like that,” I said, referring to our last restart, “they’re already on you. You were in a closed area. The best thing for that situation was a pipe bomb, thrown out onto the street.”

A pipe bomb is a bomb made out of a piece of galvanized pipe. Attached to it is a beeping timer that attracts the zombies and then KABOOOM! Very good for defusing overwhelming situations.

Razer acknowledged his mistake with the fire bomb and we started out on the map we had just nearly finished. Everything was going just fine, we dealt with small swarms of zombies and the occasional specials with ease and were about half way through. I thought we’d make it this time.

Of course, as soon as you think something positive like that everything goes south immediately. Razer was on the other side of the street, looking into the open buildings for resources, what we game veterans call “shopping.” He found a pipe bomb and a health kit. He had to use the kit right away because the zombies kept chipping away at him, stealing his health away one little bite at a time.

Well, he should have been on the same side of the street as the rest of us but he was a noob and we figured he’d learn faster the hard way. On our side of the street there was a handrail that guarded against going over the side and falling a considerable distance down a cliff to rail yards far below. Having the cliff edge to our backs we had a fairly good defensive position.

Then the hoard attacked Razer and he was quickly in danger of being overwhelmed. I saw him grab his pipe bomb and he tossed it in our direction. Pipe bombs bounce around quite a bit and Razer’s bounced right over the edge of the cliff. At first the zombies turned and went after the bomb but after it went over the edge they turned their focus back on Razer.

So, we had to rescue him. The lasso special, it lassos you and drags you to it, snared Whammer and when I turned to kill it I was jumped by a pouncer, which began to rip and tear. Trout tried to save Whammer but a vomit special jumped from a nearby roof and landed squarely on his head. The vomit exploded all over everything and even more zombies joined the horde. Trout was unable to rescue either of us as he was being overwhelmed and fighting for his virtual life. Razer went down.

One by one, we fell and died screaming!

“You know,” I told Razer after the level reloaded and we were back where we started, “if you would have thrown the pipe bomb down the street you would have saved yourself and we’d still be heading for the safe room.” I couldn’t help adding, “Depending on your health, of course, a good tactic in that situation would have been to throw a molotov at your feet. Fire instantly kills the zombies that are surrounding you and you can run through the fire with only minimal damage, much less than what the zombies would give you if you remain in their midst.”

“I didn’t have a molotov,” Razer complained.

“I did but I didn’t throw it,” I said. “Probably would have killed you.”

“What a stupid game,” he said, “you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun but this game would be a lot better if it wasn’t for all these damn zombies!”

After about 3 hours and 33 minutes we finally managed to get Razer onto the chopper and he got his achievement for finishing the campaign. Since then Razer’s improved considerably. He’s up to about a quarter million dead zombies and is a regular member of our cadre. He hasn’t incinerated the team lately, I must say.

But it wasn’t easy. Noooo, it wasn’t easy.