I have achieved the greatest milestone in all of Ricochet. Unlike other players who have only experienced the glory of Ricochet for 5 minutes of their unproductive waste of lives, I have achieved the euphoric life changing exception to human flaws known as Ricochet for more than 1,200 hours.

Ricochet has brought me many gifts, and one of those gifts granted to me is my burned retinas, allowing a new way of peering into this world, for example, you filthy subspecies can look at something and see smooth seams and vertices, but to me, every defined corner has a distinct glow illuminating even the darkest of voids with the same semblance of a low polygonal object. The people around me are no longer just people to me, for every person I see is just a target waiting for the sweet release of a flung Laserdisc to decapitate them, breaking them from their meager existence that have been ignorant to the touch formed by the greatest thing our Creator Lord Gaben has granted to us.

You see, Half-Life was put on this Earth to distract the people of the Steam Civilization, which was built in his image to hide the true gift in plain sight. You may ask for some merit for such a preposterous statement, if you can take the time and listen to my story you too will be enlightened by the masterpiece: Ricochet.

Once I reached 1,200 hours, all servers seemingly went down to reveal only one remaining, the name of this server only contained one letter: G, even though such a queer disruption of my playtime was ensuing, I was blinded by the addictive desire to play Ricochet to pay any attention. It was password protected, but it didn’t stop me from trying to breach into the glorious arena, I tried a series of standard passwords such as: Valve, Steam, Ricochet, etc. After a great many attempts, I sat back and thought hard on some clues, the maker of all the things I’ve dedicated my life to is Lord Gaben, and the server name is just “G”, it all made sense. The password must be: “Gabe Newell is GOD”… I was correct, how could I be so arrogant and stupid, it was so obvious and everybody knows God and Gaben are synonymous.

My router began beaming my request into the entangled web and it shot back connecting me to the server, there, I sat in the goldsource downloading menu which displayed various things that were in a language beyond human comprehension. Once the seemingly endless amount of time I sat there came to an end and I was in the server, my player spawned facing my opponent. The timer rang loud while the anticipation for a glorious fight grew, the same old countdown vibrations that were hitting my ears ended and the game began.

The other player, which possessed the absence of a player name, began his launch forwards my platform, though he was quick witted hopping from platform to platform with an ease and finesse, my raw aim and skill carried me through the entire skirmish. The points stacked up and time seemed to fade away, my mind was of nothing besides the match. Laserdisc after laserdisc, my arms grew tired, my stomach ached for more snacks, my eyes burned bright red like gems, all biological interfaces stability were now corrupting, but my soul was now even more infused with the game. My opponent no longer seemed like a stranger, I began to know him better than even myself, his play style grew into appearance and his strategical follies were now unearthed allowing me to achieve the first 1,000 points and the victory I strained myself for.

The host timescale froze, and our characters were now stuck in a dimension absent of change, this broke my flow state and allowed me to tear my eyes away from the luminessence to just stare off into my dark room. This was a good chance to reflect on the event which had taken place just seconds ago. I knew I just finished an accomplishment, but, an accomplishment of what? It just didn’t make sense, why would something like that even happen? Is this real? Or am I in a dream? Before I could ponder my mind into its own world, a barrage of steam notifications came flying to my account, it was from the man I had just faced, his message read as so: “come look outside,” before I could even finish the message I heard a revving of a powerful engine drawing me from my shitty office chair. There he was… Gaben standing in front of his 2014 Porsche Cayman packed with a 911s engine. I was ecstatic and ran down to greet him, but before I could speak he put his hand up and spoke…

“Quiet, I know what you’re thinking, lets just go and all your questions will fade away, like shit games in Greenlight.”

We hopped in Gaben’s 2014 Porsche Cayman, packed with a 911s engine, and zoomed off to Valve Headquarters. I’m not much of a talker, and I didn’t get any more talkative sitting next to my all time hero and man whom is richer than both Oprah and The Don, but I could tell he wasn’t much of a talker himself as we only spoke once, which was only about his car. He went into great detail about it, especially about his cars mods which he emphasized that they were “paid mods, just how they should be!”

After a couple hours passed and the smoothness of the car ride which brought me a nice nap ended, we were at the doors of Valve’s new office. I busted through the doors and was overwhelmed by all the memorabilia that poured into my senses like a nice big glass of Ruby Red Squirt. Gaben, watched me prance corner to corner in excitement from the entrance, giving a Jolly laugh reminiscent of old Saint Nic (and its rumored they are actually cut from the same bloodline); we spent all day with each other playing Source games and just chatting it up on the latest games, I really got to know the guy on a personal level which was really nice, but we knew this was just an entree to the main meal, a meal of something which was about to shock the gaming world forever.

Gaben led me to the janitors closet, that seemed rank until he pulled a secret lever disguised as a stale box of cheez-its, that opened to a lair full of hundreds of programmers and other various game designers, we walked through the legions of workers to Gaben’s Throne. From there he sat high and mighty, drawing the utmost power from it, his voice boomed across the dark den of nerd stench congratulating me on my skill…

“YOU! Are the chosen one, the messiah, the man which will bring news that will change the landscape of gaming as we know it!” A giant projector dropped down from the ceiling and started beaming what would become everything my life was building up for.

Valve’s logo blared with its eardrum piercing music, which melted in with the rest of the cacophony that displayed a timeline of Valve and its image before fading away to a new title, the title formed from all the signature intellectual properties Valve owns to read word for word one at a time: “Counter. Strike. Global. Trade.”

And before me was a new Counter Strike game where you cant kill people or do any of the other classic things you would do in a Counter Strike game, as the game was just a fucking excel like spreadsheet meant for trading virtual fucking skins. I notice Gaben in the corner of my eye with his face making the signature look of “oh yeahhh! Check it ouuut! Ya like it?”

Not amused one bit, Gaben’s chosen Messiah walked out of Valve’s Headquarters and hopped into the nearest Uber to shuttle his ass to the nearest state that has Assisted Suicide legalized. And while filling out my form I put the disease that was killing me was: Crippling disappointment.

So yeah, I rate Ricochet a 1/10 because its entire purpose from the beginning was to promote a skin trading game.

Goodbye world, this is the last thing I write as the doctor just came in with the lethal injection.