I tried playing Halo 2 for the second time yesterday. It was a bit bizarre, but I finally seem to be adjusting to the two thumbstick look/move system that the Xbox controller uses. (For reference on my gaming abilities, the last gaming system that I had any control over was the Sega Genesis. Gaming was pretty much forbidden in my house.) I made some discoveries while I was playing, too. The interesting discovery was that I adjusted well enough that I was using the Battle Rifle and the Covenant Carbine for headshots on snipers and distant targets wherever possible. The impressive discovery is that I was actually pretty good at doing this. I was even better with the sniper rifle. We’re talking single-shot headshots most of the time.
All of this sharp-shooting got me thinking about learning to shoot when I was younger. I grew up in Arkansas where guns and hunting were pretty standard fare, and, when I was probably ten or so, my father took me out to the farm and taught me how to shoot my grandfather’s shotgun. Not too long after this, he and I started squirrel hunting together, me with the shotgun and him with a .22. Now, you don’t have to be quite as accurate with a shotgun as you do with a .22, but if you miss the first shot at the squirrel, chances are you won’t get a second shot. As a small target, the squirrel can be tough to hit; if it’s zooming around the branches after a gun shot, it’s a lot harder to hit. Despite this, I was quite good at squirrel hunting in particular and shooting in general.
Strangely enough, after having gone five or more years without firing a gun, I seem to have been able to adapt to a new method of aiming without changing my shooting style much at all. Has anyone else experienced something similar? I suppose another question to consider is how easy it might be to go in the direction opposite of the one I came. Can someone be a good shot in video games and quickly adapt to being a good shooter with an actual gun?
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