"The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile."

- Plato, 428 BC - 348 BC

I've been trying to find the words to describe my feelings attached to this game and I've drafted this review a couple dozen times. Nothing quite hits the mark. But here goes....

Ace of Spades came out when I was a Sophomore in High School. Williamstown Northeast High. Northeastern was your typical school; you had the popular kids, the jocks, the geeks, so on and so forth. Ever since I was a kid I never really fit into any of the molds the cliques set for me. Wasn't coordinated enough for the Football team. Not smart enough for Olympiad. For the first year and a half of high school I was completely lost....

Then, in my Biology class, I became lab partners with a kid named Jared McDonovan. Jared was a nice kid, we always kept good rapport, though never having any close connection to one another. Jared was a graphic tee kinda kid. He had em all, the Captain America shield, Spider-Man's logo, Spongebob's square head, you name it. This particular day, Jared wore a shirt with a Sega Saturn on it. It just so happened that I was the only SEGA head in a sea of Nintendo Fanboys. I asked him about it, and it turns out I wasn't alone.

We bonded over that. Eventually the topic of PC games came into conversation. Not many of my classmates knew what steam was, but Jared did. We both loved playing Realm of the Mad God after school, and it just so happened we played on the same server frequently. We added each other on steam, and for a good while that was our jam. I lost the password to my old account, but trust me, if you saw it you would see probably a couple thousand hours 15 year old me dumped into that game.

Then one day, Jared told me he had gotten tired of Realm of the Mad God. Not knowing what else to play, I asked him if he had any other games he played. He told me about this new first person shooter that was released by a small indie game development company. He described the game as being the love child of a strictly platonic relationship between COD and Minecraft. I've always liked the idea of Minecraft, but I've always found it to be too boring. The game he was describing was Ace of Spades. I told Jared I was interested, but couldn't afford the 60 dollar price tag at the time. I picked up a couple odd jobs; mowing a couple lawns here and there, shoveling snow, raking leaves. It was only a matter of time before I clicked the purchase button.

The first couple of hours were the typical tutorial experience. Learning controls, learning maps, game techniques, you get the point. It wasn't until the third or fourth day of playing we discovered our natural talent for the FPS. On any given day, we would win around 490~500 games and lose 1~2 games (usually to hackers). We consistently were at the top of the scoreboard, climbing up the notorious competitive ladder each day after completing our homework for pre-algebra.

Speaking of school, our education sort of took the back burner at this point. We would usually play until 3-4 am each night, and typically went to school in a drowsy haze, daydreaming of when we'll press the launch button later that evening.

Luckily though, the hard work was paying off. We got contacted by some agents who had connections to MLG. Yeah... the big leagues.

"you got potential kid," I read while checking my email on hotmail, "we'd like to put forth an offer for you to join the professional Ace of Spades team based in Los Angeles, California."

It was an offer we simply couldn't refuse. Without telling our parents, we signed the contract. We packed our bags, and flew out to LA. Our small town in Arkansas couldn't begin to comprehend what we were getting ourselves into, but Jared and I had a gut feeling about this. We loved Ace of Spades. So we decided to drop out of high school and pursue our dream.

Jared and I come from very large families. The type to have around 30-35 siblings. For example, i'm 12th out of 31. So our parents honestly didn't notice our absence.

Getting acquainted with the professional gaming scene wasn't easy. Two kids navigating Los Angeles on our own was rough enough, but now we had agents, press, interviews, and talk show appearances. We always knew, however, how to ground ourselves. There was always a comfort that lived in the aceofspades.exe game file.

This particular year in the gaming world was the FPS World Championships. Once every 15 years. Ace of Spades just so happened to be the featured game. So Jared and I signed up with the rest of our teammates.

The tournament took place up in Hamburg, Germany. We flew out with our team, booked into the hotel, and anxiously waited for the first match. It was against the Canadian national team. It was close, but we took home the victory.

Then came the match against England. Then Brazil, Japan, Australia. We were rising up the ranks, and before we knew we were set for the grand finals. It was against Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland had a strikingly impressive AOS team. Rumor has it, the government in Northern Ireland raised taxes on the general population in order to afford more screen time for the players. They were stacked to say the least.

The day of the match came. Jared and I were terrified. But we knew one thing; we didn't come this far to lose. We couldn't help but remember the days of walking through the halls of Williamstown Northeast. Anticipating the final bell to ring so we could hop on the bus and head home to play AOS. So with that in the back of our minds, we put on our headsets and showed our game faces.

The first set, we narrowly lost to the opponents. They were good. Halfway through the second, one of our teammates suffered from a hand cramp and had to sit out. Luckily, we had subs, but it wasn't plan A. Despite the odds, we pulled through and won the second set.

Then, the tie breaker. We were exhausted, but we had to keep our eyes on the prize.

Unfortunately, I don't remember anything after that. It's all a blur. We ended up winning and confetti fell down on our side of the stage. The Referee came over and congratulated us with the 50 Million check. We were ecstatic. Finally, we had something to show that our hard work payed off.

Jared and I decided to return to our hometown with our cut of the check. Our parents, not even realizing we were gone, were thrilled to have such a surplus of income in such a short amount of time.

They were not thrilled, however, that we dropped out of school, but they had ten million reasons to forgive us for that decision.

I lost touch with Jared after the tournament. He decided to enroll in a private boarding school out in Oregon. I reenrolled back at Northeastern. I went off to college, and I'm sure he did too. I hope he's well. I'd love to catch up.

It's a shame that Ace of Spades no longer has running servers, but if there is one thing this adventure has taught me, is that one chapter may end, but that just means another is about to begin.

-Isaac Kleiner