Sunday 18:49

I drop down into a hangar filled with Vandals, Walkers, Shanks, Servitors and a huge boss Captain. I chuck my Nova Bomb super at the boss, shedding some of his health. Kacy dies and respawns into the hangar just as Christian yells, “The walker on the left is dead. Just kill everything!!!” Then as the last of the spawning enemies is eliminated he screams, “Kill the boss, give him everything you’ve got. We can do this, come on, WE CAN DO THIS!!!”

Gaming runs deep in my family. My kids and grandkids are extremely proud that I am a gamer at the age of 67. What started out as a way to please and entertain them has turned into a personal passion. Rewarding in itself, gaming has become a platform, forum, meeting place to interact with my family, children, grandchildren and their friends, many of whom have become my friends.

Recently my sister, Kacy (58), and my daughter, Cara (49), have both been bitten by the gaming bug. We meet regularly on Xbox and play online games together. For us it is social, challenging, and fun even though we didn’t grow up playing video games. We’ve come late to gaming, learning to navigate in virtual 2- or 3-D environments using a dual-stick controller, suffering the embarrassment and frustration while loving the challenge. Repetition is the key; nothing takes the place of time and practice.

One of our favorite games is the looter-shooter Destiny. You shoot, punch, slash, and blast through our solar system, now filled with terraforming god-like beings and alien races fighting everything that moves in an effort to dominate the stars. The graphics are gorgeous and the environments are eerily real even in their bizarre, other-worldly representation.

To bring you to Sunday evening…Kacy, her son Christian, and I were nearing the completion of the Zero Hour mission in Destiny 2 after weeks of failed attempts. Zero Hour is arguably one of the most difficult challenges I have experienced in Destiny, and I have completed several raids. The mission consists of incredibly difficult fights through “rooms” filled with powerful enemies, insane jumping puzzles, maze-like courses through ventilation shafts and fans with spinning blades, a ridiculously daring plunge off the side of a building, dropping hundreds of feet, landing on a narrow antenna, and a final boss fight to beat all boss fights. And there is a 20 minute timer.

We had already attempted this mission 41 times up to this moment. What was difficult for Christian and his friend one year ago, we were finding nearly impossible as older gamers with slower reflexes, foggier memories and failing confidence…He completed it in 5 attempts. Yet here we were, banging away at the boss with seconds to spare.

On the 42nd attempt we completed the mission with 30 seconds left on the clock. Granted, Christian had run ahead, triggering three shortcuts, reaching the boss room 5 minutes before us and killing off a lot of the enemies.

But we did it!

It was an incredible feeling. Tears welled up in our eyes, we screamed, Kacy stomped her feet, all as Christian shouted, “You did it, ladies!” It felt like we had accomplished something genuinely epic.

So what did we achieve? Sure, we got a rare weapon. Satisfaction from having persisted in the face of what looked like insurmountable odds, check. But the greatest take away is the bond forged when you enter into another person’s passion, learn what you can about it, make a part of it your own, and share such amazing moments with multiple generations. Thanks to my nephew Christian and his relentless patience and kindness, my sister and I experienced something that very few people will ever get to do, beat the Zero Hour mission on Destiny 2. Gaming runs deep in my family.

@CalamityXTJane
~Christy

A Family Conquers Destiny 2's Zero Hour Together