Video-gamers grab real guns

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.

They came to the desert for the video game.

Sure, but in the course of being flown out to Las Vegas, poured into The Hotel at Mandalay Bay for two nights, fed and feted to a night of partying at Pure (Paris Hilton's nightclub of choice), being given a pair of $100 sunglasses that would supposedly stop a shotgun blast from 16 feet away (the package didn't say what would happen to the rest of your face) and getting psyched to go into the desert with ex-commandos and fire automatic weapons - well, first some members of the video-game press corps had to go to a strip club.

Real guns and (mostly) real women! And they would get to shoot the guns.

The point of the hotel rooms and the clubbing and the swag and the guns was to promote a yet-to-be-released game, called [title omitted]. We can't report the game's name or the gung-ho commando book license it's based on because its developers and publicists want it withheld for a month so all the wined-and-dined members of the gamer press can report it at once on Nov. 1 - a proviso the Sun wasn't told about in advance. So obscuring any mention of [title omitted] is our way of cooperating with the [expletives deleted].

A shame, really, that we can't say much about the game, as [corporate name redacted], is the highly respected publisher of such acclaimed X-Box and PlayStation games as [elf-filled title obscured] and [science-fiction simulator avoided]. It's a first-person shooter in which the player leads a team of commandos trying to escape from behind enemy lines in [secretive nation deleted] while World War [prime number subtracted] breaks out.

"Is it fiction or prediction?" was the rhetorical question asked by the author of the books on which the game is based. The author, a former [service obfuscated] commando shall remain nameless not just because of the embargo but also because he looked like one 65-year-old who could kick our butt down the street and floss his teeth with our bones.

Bearded and built along the lines of a miniature diesel tractor, he spoke in elliptical sentence fragments laced with obscenities and metaphors such as "overload your puppy dog." He warned the video-game press to be careful who they took pictures of out at the firing range, as some of the men there might again go abroad as contractors or soldiers.

"We'll tell you what you can shoot. With the pictures," he said. "We'll shoot you with the guns. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha."

The video-game press twittered nervously.

What a sight they were, too: Electronic devices clutched in most hands, cell phones held aloft to take pictures and video, digital recorders pointed forward, PlayStation Portables held near noses and e-mail devices manipulated with dexterous thumbs. Clothes were less fashionable. One intrepid correspondent wore a strained T-shirt that proclaimed, in words, "I Flunked Gym Class." Another wore a black leather duster coat with "Star Trek" patches and also a pair of motorcycle boots. Nobody wore a tan and the only woman among them was a freelance photographer.

After a brief demonstration of the incomplete game - [title omitted] is a year away from being released - the 40-odd members of the video-game press were herded into buses and driven to the Boulder Rifle & Pistol Club's shooting range.

First, they were treated to a performance in which a team of [service obfuscated] commandos stumble upon and assault a [secretive nation deleted] outpost. After pretending to slit the throat of a sentry, the play-acting soldiers fired bursts of blank rounds and flanked their fictional foes in a sideways maneuver known as an "Australian peel." Then they pretended to blow up an armored vehicle with a smoke grenade and, out of nowhere, there was a loud bang and the last enemy fell fake dead. Hidden sniper.

The video-game press, resplendent in their blue swag hats and ballistic swag glasses, applauded.

Then it was off to guns, some available for shooting and some just for display. At the display table one member of the press, a reporter from the Web site Firing Squad ("Home of the Hard-core Gamer"), stood over the machine guns and grenade launchers and .50-caliber sniper rifle, smiling and tugging the flesh under his chin in open-mouthed appreciation.

And then it was on to the fire-able guns: a silenced MK23 caliber pistol, an MP-5 submachine gun, a silenced M4 assault rifle (with scope), an AK-47 and a selection of sniper rifles.

Some had trouble with the pistol, sending half or more of their shots piffting into the dirt instead of dinging onto a metal target. Many members of the video-game press, usually the reedy ones, had trouble with the submachine gun despite its low recoil. They were flinching before they pulled the trigger. Pretty much everyone had better luck with the rifles, at least on single-shot fire, sending round after round through menacing cardboard cutouts of communists. The people's revolutionary forces had less to fear from the automatic fire. (Although a certain class of gamer - tall, skinny, long greasy hair, patchy beards and spotty faces - was unsettlingly proficient.)

What did the pros think of the gamers?

[Name redacted], a retired [service obfuscated] commando, spent the afternoon taking them through their paces with an AK-47. ("Now, the commies do things differently; so the selector starts on fully auto ") He said he was happy that nobody got hurt, and everybody was smiling. And some of them were pretty quick on the uptake.

"This age group is really pretty impressive," he said. "People my age - I'm 50 - tend not to give people this age much credit, but they're pretty adaptable."

And how did the gamers take the experience?

"The first time I shot, I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm never going to do this again,' " said one unidentified game reviewer to a woman, who by dint of gender was probably some species of public relations person.

"Oh, I know," she said.

"The second time I shot, I thought, 'Oh my God, this is something I'm never doing again.' "

"Of course."

"But the third time, well "

"Oh?"

"It was like [expletive deleted] great."

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