In-Game Carrying...The Lower Back Pain Is Real

Playing video games with friends is always fun, especially when it's co-op games where you're able to work as a team. Co-op or cooperative gameplay allows the same consoles to connect to each other over Wi-Fi through the same server. Once everyone is able to connect, that's where the fun begins. You get to name calling, friendly competitiveness to see who's the better player and even showing off. Sounds all fun and games, right? Nope! Not when most of your teammates are dying, and you're struggling to keep everyone on their feet or reviving them for that matter, while enemies are slowly or rapidly depleting (depending on what game you're playing) your HP.

You know what you call players who revive their teammates? Survivalists! Carriers! Medics! They carry the entire team to victory or at least try to, depending on how fast the revived teammate dies again. One of the many reasons I bring this up is because of my recent gameplay with my own friends on "Left 4 Dead 2" via Steam PC. There's a few videos of gameplay as proof available on my YouTube and Twitch account, but that's besides the point. (But I mean you can check it out here if you want:

> The video starts at 2:20 (at least it should, if not spare yourself and skip to 2:20), considering it is an hour long; I skipped it ahead to where the action realy begins. The upload to the gameplay took a good 2 minutes and a portion of that was spent talking about random topics.

**Note: a lot of profanity is used and justified**)

In this case, I usually carry my team in the campaign runs we do in "Left 4 Dead 2" because something always has to happen, whether it's lag, or a horde of zombies, or special infected zombies coming after your a**.

As a carrier, I choose not to use up my ammo or ammunition. Since the pistols in the game have unlimited ammo, I choose to use those instead of my primary weapon. The primary weapon is best used for the special infected, in this case. To put it into perspective, imagine a team of four, you being among the four and your friends as the other three. Not too far into the first part of the campaign, a horde of zombies already attack, special infected start spawning in the most random places and everyone's health is suddenly down to 75% or less; the worst part is that this is just on normal mode. Your health, however, is still a full bright green. Being the good Samaritan that you are, you go ahead of the group to clear the way. When things don't go as planned and your character gets jumped by a special infected zombie(s), your health suddenly drops from the high 90s to low 30s, maybe even less. There's no point in healing at this point, not by much anyway.

This goes for any game though, co-op or MMO (massively multiplayer online), not just "Left 4 Dead 2." It's just one of the many examples of the struggles carriers go through in a game, helping out teammates who go down after deciding to run off and go gun-ho into enemy territory. The term "carry" you can envision as literally carrying someone; all the weight drops down to your lower back, hence the term of lower back pains. The survivability rate drops, and the frustrations start settling in. It's awesome at first, because as the carrier of the group, you can hone your skills in order to have everyone's back but then it gets tedious when they now rely on you to pull their a**es out of the fire. So please, be kind to your carrying teammates. They don't have to save you, keep that in mind.