Counter-Strike Player Has Accidental Matrix Moment

When in doubt, throw your gun. Throw your gun and pray

In this clip, mmberg seemingly avoids certain death by tossing their M4 at precisely the right moment. A bullet appears to ping off it—as opposed to, you know, mmberg’s face—and then they seize the moment to exact some truly righteous vengeance on their foe.

Kinja sometimes cuts off a lot of the screen, so you can watch a better version of the full thing here

It’s some Matrix shit, basically. It looks damn cool no matter how you slice it. That said, I’m now going to slice it anyway and reveal that it’s probably not quite as cool as it looks.

You’ll remember that I posted a 3kliksphilip video about the way Counter-Strike’s bullets work a little while back. One of his main findings? While thrown weapons and grenades do impact bullets, they don’t completely block them. Rather, it’s like when a bullet passes through a wall: the damage is reduced, but not mitigated entirely. Since mmberg’s unlucky enemy was using an AK, it’s entirely possible that the gun vacuumed up enough of its potency to render a headshot non-fatal. He still got hit, just not for as much damage.

So that’s theory one. Still neat, but maybe not worthy of an impassioned Keanu Reeves “whoa.” Theory two is where we board the train to letdown town. See, Counter-Strike’s guns aren’t accurate 100 percent of the time, and the AK-47 is especially guilty of momentary lapses in, you know, gun-ness. The distance in the above clip appears to be just far enough to drop the AK’s accuracy to 95 percent or so. That means that even a perfectly aimed shot will only hit 95 percent of the time. Couple that with the fact that mmberg doesn’t appear to get hit by the shot at all, and it seems likely that the bullet simply missed—and would’ve done so regardless.

Theory three (or perhaps 2B) is that the bullet missed, but the miss was caused by movement and some server silliness rather than Counter-Strike’s intrinsic weapon inaccuracy.

The short version? It’s still pretty cool that someone threw their gun at the exact moment a bullet nearly bifurcated their virtual skull. However, Counter-Strike’s intrinsic, sometimes arbitrary weirdness might’ve had more of a hand in the moment than impossible luck or divine intervention. Still, it’s revealing to examine the game on this level. There’s so much more going on than bullets soaring from point A to point B.

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