Cheap Tricks: by The Game Reviews

Hello, class and welcome to another segment of MAP’s guide to the gray areas of online gameplay and how to counter them if at all possible. We have already covered the bunny jump and camping but today we’ll be talking about one that I discovered for myself recently, while playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live. I wasn’t sure what this is called, but I asked around and found it is commonly dubbed “the standby trick,” and this one is clearly unfair. The method behind this trick is effective and utterly irritating. Basically, it involves joining a full Halo 2 game, and then, at a certain moment when there are several enemies around you, set yourself on standby which will cause the game to lag. This will persist for several moments, accompanied by the angry muttering of your teammates until the game suddenly snaps back into action as if the game has switched from slow motion to fast forward all in one blink. It is at this time, that the no good son of a sprite who did this trick leaps into action.

You see, the first time this happened to me I was caught off guard by the transition back to the game, which ended up with my avatar lying flat on his front. This was repeated several times throughout the course of the game, but the trick behind this is to knock the enemy player off balance long enough so that they can be dispatched easily. Now, normally, I would be telling you in this part of the story about how to counter them, but I’m afraid that I can’t tell you that because I honestly have no idea. All you can do is not lose focus when it happens and, when the game returns to normal, try to run away fast before you get shot up. Anything else would require you to be Professor X.

I know that some of you out there may be calling the conclusion of this piece a cop out, a document that specifies the problem but offers no solution for same, but there are some situations in life when you cannot stop a person being an utter weasel. If, as with the previous two articles I’ve written on this subject, you find your own remedies to this “Standby trick” please send them along to feedback@thegamereviews.com Be safe out there, gamers.