Can shooters prepare you for the SAS?

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After nine bullets the Glock clicks empty. I nonchalantly slip it into my thigh holster as the grim-faced instructor peers at my paper target, examining the damage. I've never felt this cool.

"Right," says my instructor, in full SAS gear. "Swap the gun to your other hand and do that again."

He watches my face go from cocksure to confused before he bothers with an explanation. "When you're coming round a corner, your gun needs to be in the corresponding hand so the Tango doesn't see your shoulder coming round first. If your gun's in the wrong hand he could go make a cup of tea, come back and still take you out before you've even seen him."

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I swap the gun over. Suddenly I'm holding something cold and alien, and lining up shots takes forever. He's turned me into a grandma.
This humiliation is taking place at Warfighters, an institute just outside Rugby where a mix of ex-special forces guys and crazed enthusiasts pride themselves in recreating the most up-to-date combat simulations they can.

Their open-air wargames use laser painting and wireless transmission that's light years ahead of airsoft, and, as I'm finding out pretty quickly, their special forces 'Killhouse' experience doesn't mess around either.


My original aim in signing up for a day at Warfighters was to figure out if a lifetime of playing games like Rainbow Six Vegas 2 would have any effect on my real-life ability to frag a terrorist. The crash course I'm getting is going to end in me and the others in my four-man team being sent into a building armed with high-calibre BB guns capable of punching through plywood. We'll have to 'clear' the building of 'Tangos', who we're assured will be suitably armed and dangerous. The team who went before us are full of worrying stories about men hunkered down in dark corners with shotguns.

Killhouse rocks
Handguns apparently nailed, we've progressed from the firing range. We're now in the Killhouse for the first time, about to be taught the finer points of moving through a building.

The two new instructors in front of us are a tall, lanky Midlander who can't be older than 25, and a hunched, kind-looking man in his late 50s, both of them dressed in the same mental Delta Force gear. They're a buddy-comedy movie in the making, ready to accidentally arrest the hackneyed terrorists while falling over a lot and getting their feet stuck in buckets.

Then the demonstration starts, and everyone on my team, me included, lets out an actual, literal "Whoa!" In motion there's nothing laughable about these guys. They're a single, oiled machine. The moment one of them enters a room the other moves in like his shadow. When one of them stalks around a wall the other soundlessly twists and covers his back. They're swapping their guns back and forth from one shoulder to the other as easily as breathing. We are awed.

Watching them makes me think how forgiving videogames are. When you're playing a game you can survive on nothing but a quick trigger-finger and a tactical retreat. It sounds obvious, but in real life we're human. We're bags of meat. We move slowly, and one bullet kills us. If you perform anything less than perfectly in a combat situation, approaching a corner from the wrong angle, doing it too slowly, or too fast, maybe holding your gun in the wrong hand, your life is over. If anything games distance you from this, rather than making you better at dealing with it.

After the show we line up for our own peaceful runthrough of the Killhouse, the instructors shouting corrections every step of the way. Pacing is the hard bit. "You can't stop moving, no matter what," says Midlands man.

"Every second you stop is another second for a Tango to figure out where you are and take a defensive position. In reality, sending you guys into a building would be an absolute last resort. But if you have to go in then you do it as fast as you can, and you stick together."

Moving fast and sticking together. Right. That's kind of tricky when everyone's always looking in a different direction with their eyes glued to their gunsight. We've been training for hours, but the news that it's time for our proper run of the Killhouse comes far too soon. This is it.

We're given face masks, helmets and rifles to go with our knee pads, elbow pads and vests, further butchering our mobility, hearing and peripheral vision.

By the time we're told to stack up on the door my heartbeat's a drum solo. I end up second in line to enter the building, but this will not save me as everyone naturally swaps positions as you clear each room. Before I know it we're told to move in. Our point man swings round and disappears into the building, and it's on.

We thunder in like heroes, the first man advancing up the wall and clearing the area, me moving with him, the third man covering the room's next distant doorway, the fourth watching our back. The room is clear. As I end up closest to the next doorway I move up to clear it, smoothly curling my way around to watch for hostiles. There are no hostiles. There is, however, a live flashbang on the floor.

You've been flashed
Finally, I feel my gaming experience kick into gear - Call of Duty says run up and kick it away! Counter-Strike says look elsewhere before it goes off! I have a number of options! I'm still thinking about these options as the flashbang explodes in my face. By the time I can see again my team has moved on, all but leaving me behind.

For the next eight rooms it's all I can do to keep up, let alone recall in any detail what happened. I'm out of my mind pumped with adrenaline, there's smoke and the scuffling of boots everywhere, and since I'm now the tail I have to walk backwards the whole way, throwing the occasional quick glance over my shoulder to figure out whether I should speed up.

Then I start hearing shots. I can't let it make a difference. I know my role. I keep walking backwards, watching our back.
Something's wrong. My team have stopped - the point man's just come back through the doorway he disappeared into, seconds ago.

"There's someone in there," he says, his voice unsteady. He saw them and fell back. Our team exchange glances. That door is the only way into the room and we have to go through there. I can't get the rule we were told earlier out of my head. "We stop moving, we lose the game." Without a thought I slip up to the door and cannon into the room at a crouch, and I see the Tango and I've shot him before I even think to take aim.

"Tango down!" I half-yell, half-squeak. And then I'm not in the Killhouse anymore. I'm in an FPS. Instinct takes over and straight after shooting this guy I aim at the corner doorway where any good player would emerge from right now if he wanted to surprise us.

Right on cue, a man rounds the corner. I've already let off two rounds into his chest before I register that he's there, and I've already looked away and have my gun trained on another open doorway before he slumps down. "Tango down!" I repeat, my voice now steady, sure of itself. My team has fallen in behind me.

There are only two rooms left, and for the duration of them I feel weightless, invincible, and my gun slips from hand to hand like an extension of my body. I am Megaman. We clear the house and emerge into the sun, the air tingling on our sweaty faces as we tear off our masks.

Restart game
I'm so tired. But far more than that, I want to reset the building, randomise it, and go through again. This is the best videogame ever. The most intense, interesting and challenging game I've ever played. And while being in there felt incomparable to anything I've ever tried, at the same time I absolutely know it was multiplayer shooters that saved me.

Reflexes honed over years had taken over. Without games, I'd be dead. Well, maybe that's just a bit melodramatic. I'd probably be swearing like a Vice City character and nursing a bastard of a bruise, though.

Our 'Tangos' are filing out of the building now, pulling back their creepy gas masks to reveal grins as big as ours.

"You guys good to go again?" One of them beams. He gathers us round and hands us fresh clips. By the time I load mine, the exhaustion's gone from my mind and I'm listening to our new briefing, completely rapt.

"Right. Now, there's going to be a bomb in the building you have to disarm, and a hostage you'll have to find, not shoot, and escort to the exit."

He pauses for a second. I could swear he shoots me a quick glance. "And this time, we're not gonna take it easy on you." Oh crap.

OXM Staff