Keep to the walls, when possible. Avoid open areas with many nooks and crannies and sniping points overlooking them. A major mistake many newbies make is wanting to go somewhere and taking the most direct route between those points, despite the architecture of the level. If you keep to a wall, you may be overlooked. Even better, if you take a route through building interiors to your goal, you are much more likely to go undetected.

If you want to chase down a fellow player and think you know where he is, take a zigzag or roundabout route! If you simply walk straight towards him, chances are that he can get you in a sniper sight or within his crosshairs and continually blast away at you. Why? He won’t have to move his onscreen targets to keep his aim on you. Again, this may be obvious, but it’s surprising how long it takes new players to realize it.

This tip segues into another important lesson. If you’re fighting another player who has a situational advantage (for example, if he’s firing down on you from a small window to open ground), there’s no need to duel to the death then and there. For one thing, the sound of gunfire often attracts other players, and when they arrive, you’ll be the only player out in the open! The PlanetQuake Bootcamp (http://www.planetquake.com/bootcamp/tactics/fundamental.shtm) also points out that firing explosive weapons all the time is dangerous to your health. This is especially true if you’re trying to lob a grenade through a small opening, and is another reason to quit if you’re not ahead.

Don’t turn around and run, though. This leaves you vulnerable to attacks from behind. Instead, back away, facing your opponent, and lay down covering fire until you can duck into a building or round a corner. Then either wait for your opponent to come find you, jump out, and rely on your sharpshooting skills, or sneak by on another route and ambush him from behind.

Using sound effects to locate other players in the level is vital to FPS success. This is far more than knowing that other players are nearby if you hear gunfire. In many games, elevators make noises, for example, and you can often hear footsteps a long way away. Although you may strain to hear them over sudden bursts of automatic weapons fire, if you want to become a committed fragger, use good stereo headphones or speakers to track rival players.

When fighting in an open arena, the art of the circle strafe is particularly vital. To perform this move, use both the keyboard and the mouse to circle another player while still facing him. This allows your guns to stay on target at all times and makes it more difficult for your opponent to lock on to you. Use the strafe button to step sideways while moving the mouse to aim in the opposite direction. That is, strafe left, and move the mouse right or vice versa.

If you can manage it, jumping while circle strafing tends to confuse other players even more. If you’re good, you can bunnyhop and circle strafe while dealing wholesale death. Planet Half-Life’s strategies page (http://www.planethalflife.com/cs/strategies/general.shtm) recommends circle strafing particularly when you’re extremely close to your opponent. He’ll have to be very accurate to hit you if you’re moving laterally away from him so quickly.

Many FPS titles offer grenades and grenade-like weapons. You can use these to your advantage in many ways. If you think you hear someone in a room or space ahead, toss a grenade around the corner and see what happens; many players will respond by firing blindly, figuring that you’re in the line of sight and vulnerable. If you find other players sniping or hiding in a hole, you can often force them out with judicious use of grenades. Sometimes this means he has to come past you to get out in the open again, at which point, he’s vulnerable.

Finally, because grenades take a few seconds to detonate, you can use a grenade on one side of a room and then sneak over to the opposite side. The rival player will hear the grenade go off and naturally go to investigate. You won’t be there; you may even be behind him, ready for the kill. Tactics are neat.

The Planet Battlefield Tips FAQ (http://www.planetbattlefield.com/intel/tips.html) has another sneaky tip along those lines. You can drop grenades directly on the ground by right-clicking the mouse in Battlefield 1942, so first, make yourself known to an enemy at medium distance by sticking your head around a corner. Drop a grenade subtly, then retreat, just in time for your opponent to run around the corner into the grenade blast.

If you’re playing a game where pickups respawn or regenerate at set times, learn their timings to become an expert player. For example, the best Quake players time their level sweeps perfectly to return to the area where the rocket launcher or the quad damage is and pick it up just as it regenerates. However, camping and waiting for the regeneration to occur is much less effective, because seasoned players will know where you are and why. The best practitioners run into the item’s room a few seconds before it regenerates, bombard the area with heavy gunfire so the others waiting for it back off, grab the pickup, and keep moving without pausing. The Quake Bootcamp FAQ also urges you never to leave a weapon behind. As long as the game allows you to pick up an item, do it, if only to stop someone else from taking it.

Moving on from this, learning the level perfectly is the main way to become a true expert. It seems intimidating because there are plenty of add-on levels for most FPS games, but those add-ons tend to use the same base levels (such as de_dust for Counter-Strike) for competitions and group play. Knowing every single possible hiding place and snipe point for these base levels gives you a massive advantage. It’s like playing sports on your home turf or fighting an assailant in your own house. You know where you keep your carving knives, and you’re not afraid to use them.

The Return To Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory reconnaissance page (http://planetwolfenstein.com/4newbies/recon.htm) devotes an entire article to this idea, advising the newbie to: