Call of Duty – The Cesspool of Gaming or Duty is Definitely the Right Word

I’m a very competitive person. I don’t think I’m at Michael Jordan levels of psychotic competitiveness, but I’m not that far off. Growing up, I remember playing solitaire, flipping over one card instead of three to raise my chances. I used to stack my roster in any sports video game so the opponents never had a prayer. I didn’t play things I wasn’t good at because I couldn’t handle being bad at something. It wasn’t that I couldn’t deal with losing. It’s just that I preferred winning and losing any sort of competition or game made me incredibly angry to the point that it ruined my day, if not the week.

Ok, maybe I couldn’t handle losing.

It was for this reason I rarely played video games on-line when the technology became commonplace. Most of the games I grew up on were single player games, like Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy. I also loved sports games, but I focused on playing franchise mode, where I could draft a dominant team, and then destroy the computer via cheap tactics and unfair trades. I never had the desire to play other people across the planet.

Part of the reason was I believed video games should be relaxing, and not stressful. Life isn’t easy. Throughout the day, there’s enough dumb things that happen that could make the Dali Llama rage uncontrollably.

 

Games were an escape from the terrors of every day life. I didn’t see the appeal of coming home from a busy, nightmarish day of work, and then losing on-line in Madden to some preteen by 800 points. It would have not ended well for me, and likely whoever I was living with at the time. No, I prefer the calm simplicity of beating up the old CPU. Take that Alexa! I also didn’t mind playing games against people in person, because rage against your friends for getting a blue shell on the last lap of Mario Kart is encouraged in society.  Plus calling your friend a shit head when they beat you makes everyone feel better.

I did dabble in competitive online play one time. It wasn’t for Smash, or Mario Kart, or any traditional sports game. It was for Mario Strikers Charged on the Wii

This game was great, and seems to be forgotten about. While it didn’t hold a candle to Nintendo’s best sport game – Mario Baseball (for Gamecube), Strikers was extremely fun. It was fast paced, arcade soccer, but had a bit of strategy in its implementation of items and team construction. You would pick on of 12 captains as seen above (albeit burry0, and then three of the minions. You could have toads, ghosts, turtles, and even the world’s best video game baseball player – the Hammer Brother. Eat your heart out Jim Dowd*¹. For some reason, the Goombas were not selectable. They were in baseball, even without hands, but not soccer. Odd. They seemed built for the sport. I mean, look at that surface for headers.

 

I was pretty good at this game. I felt so confident, I actually decided to play on-line. And you know what, at first, it was amazing. I was destroying people by five goals a match. Now, is it likely these opponents were under the age of 10? Yes, yes it was, but a win is a win. As I rose in the ranks, games became more difficult, but I would still win most of them. That was, until I got matched up with the good players.

Now, when you’re good at a video game, you can beat your friends, but it’s not as though you could play professionally. People who play on-line can. Some of the people who played this Mario sports game dissected the crap out of it. They knew every strength and exploit, and executed their plan flawlessly. I couldn’t even get a pass off a few of these guys, let alone compete. I’d lose 10-2, 11-1, or somewhere in that vicinity and just feel awful. I was fuming by the end of every session, and this game was on the Wii, meaning it had no mic. I didn’t even have to deal with shit talking and I was triggered. I would shut the game off in a fury, then play Mario baseball and put up 50 runs against the computer on hard.

I was really good at Mario Baseball FYI. Like, stupidly good. That’s not even a humble brag. It’s full, straight on brag. If there’s a Mario Baseball 3 on the switch, I’ll buy it and welcome any challengers. Throw down the gauntlet in the comments.

The point is, on-line gaming was dead to me then, until I started playing Call of Duty.

I never was much of a first person shooter player growing up either. I just didn’t like the genre. I always preferred sports games, fighting games, or a nice Nintendo offering. There were just more fun. Since I was an American born in the late 80s, I played a ton of Goldeneye in the N64 era. That game was a lot of fun**², but there was auto aim. It was difficult to be too bad at the game. Granted some people are significantly better than others, but Goldeneye is a complete different game to any of the new shooters now.

Shooters today require you to run with one joystick and aim with a second joystick***³. It makes the basics hard when you’re not use to it. I played some Halo in college and it was brutal. I couldn’t tell you how many times I thought I shot a guy 13 times, but still failed to kill him. Or how many times I’d blow myself up with a rocket launcher in embarrassing fashion. My main role when playing Halo was to be a meat shield for the actual skilled players. I excelled at catching bullets. Nobody rivaled my ability to die. I wore it as a badge of honor. The badge was bloody and full of bullet holes.
I didn’t intend to get back into playing shooting games after this but a few of the Merry Men love Call of Duty. I mean, it’s about all they do. In order to stay in touch with a few who live far away, I brought the game. I did it more for the social aspect – you can talk on the mic to your friends even if you aren’t playing the actual game. Yet I find myself playing once or twice a week with them for better or worse. It’s usually worse. I’m actually significantly worse at Call of Duty than I was at Halo. That’s not good for anyone.

I have no choice but to play these games on-line. No longer are video games operated on the Wii version of internet play – where everything was anonymous and no one is actually mean. Now a days, playing on-line is basically like a moving, competitive youtube comment list. It’s the lowest humanity has to offer. There’s versions of bleach less toxic to the body than online gaming. Fortunately, I’m here to focus on the positive.

If you haven’t played any on-line video games in a while, or if you don’t understand how a video game works, you’re in luck. I’ll be giving you a rundown on all the aspects of the game you need to know before playing. If this write up doesn’t make you run out and buy a copy, I don’t know what will. Seriously though, don’t buy it. You’ll be much happier. Go play Mario Odyssey. I haven’t played it, but it looks to be a true treat.

Mics

In order to communicate on-line, you will need a microphone. Fortunately, Sony provides a microphone with your controller, likely as a reward for putting yourself through hours of punishment. When you log into Call of Duty, you are placed in a lobby with hundreds of other players. And my god are you ears about to bleed.

The game does not filter anything unless you create a party outside of the main game. This means you will hear every conversation that is going on between 100 or so people. The voices of these players are all prepubescent. The fact that video games require ratings are a sick joke, because I feel like I’m the only person in the lobby whose balls have dropped. Each voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard, so imagine listening to that 100 times for 5 minutes while you try to join a game. If Dante’s Inferno is to be believed, this is the secret, hidden 8th level of hell, likely reserved for Peppa Pig’s creators, and whoever is responsible for the delay in Ducktales.

Playing in games is even worse. You will be isolated to the twelve players in the game, and they will unleash holy hell on anyone who isn’t very good. Unfortunately for me, I am the suckiest suck to ever suck. In a typical game, you’ll hear about everyone banging your mother. This is pretty much the most common phrase you’ll hear, but it’s not isolated. In one game, I was told I was gay, told in detail that I shoved various, mostly penis shaped objects, up or in my anal cavity and was called racist terms that don’t fit my heritage. Oh, and a lot of people claimed to sleep with me mom. Now, these 11 year old bastards probably don’t know how messed up what they say are, but this is the world we live in. People are frigging assholes. If there was ever a need to promote safe sex, a recording of one round of call of duty would leave to 100% condom use, and probably like 97% abstinence. You’re welcome Bible Belt.

Fortunately, the world has some good in it. If you create a chat party on Playstation, you can talk to your friends and mute EVERYONE else on the server. It’s amazing. Instead of having random people tell you to sit on a pineapple and clench, you can listen to your friends do it. It’s a great relief. Seriously though, do not play this game without your friends, or create a party of one and listen to music. You’ll feel much better about yourself.

Game modes

Call of Duty offers a wealth of game modes, including single player content if you’re into that. There’s a story mode and a zombie sub game that some people love. Personally, I’m only playing shooting games to talk smack with my friends. If you’re into that, notice this is the on-line game review, and I’m not going over it****⁴. We will focus on the multiplayer modes.

There are about ten different modes, including a hardcore mode where you kill people in one hit, and can murder teammates via friendly fire. I do not touch this mode because I would murder four teammates in the first eight seconds by mistake and be banned from the server. It would be great for my health, but I’m here to play games, not better myself.

Out of the nine remaining game modes, seven require teamwork to win and score points. Points are used to level up and unlock better guns. Are we planning on relying on others, even our friends, to work with us to achieve success? Hell no. The amount of backstabbing would be incalculable. This makes most of these game modes are completely unplayable. In fact, there’s only two game modes where you can rely on your own skills to score a decent amount of points, with one of these relying on douchebaggery, a Bloggin Hood specialty.

Team Deathmatch – This is a game that features a six on six fight. The first team that kills 75 guys wins. Obviously this means you can respawn when you die, similar to in Mario when you fall down a pit. This is great news for the sucky player as you can easily die 20 times in a 12 minute game.

This mode relies on camping. On-line players hate to have their stats tainted by laying the game in a fun matter. They will hide in certain parts of the map, or snipe from the highest point in the game and rack up hills. If you’re a mediocre player, and I’m probably being nice about your skills by saying mediocre, you’ll die a ton without seeing who killed you. It will teach you to make better decisions though. For example, you can remove the disk and play a fun game.

Kill Confirmed (AKA Dog Tags) – Now this is a mode for the true video game player. It’s the true test of skill. Points are awarded for each kill, BUT, the game score only increases when you pick up a dog tag. A tag is dropped by each player killed and can be grabbed by either the offensive team for a point, or the defending team for experience points. You do not need to kill a person to get a tag, and that’s huge for me.

Since the tags must be collected to win the game, sniping is reduced, though still prevalent. People who care about their stats too much will snipe for a good score, but not pick up any tags and help their team win. It’s like trying to rack up assists in a pick up basketball game but refusing to take open layups. It really doesn’t help. Most combat needs to be up close to kill the opponent and pick up the tags.

What I, an expert dog tag collector likes to do is barely shoot any bullets. I’ll run around picking up tags for both my own team and the opposition. This appears to help the team as a whole, but I’m selfishly trying to pad my stats. I’ll dive face first into bullets if it means I’ll pick up a tag in the process. Remember, death really doesn’t matter. As long as you pick up a few tags, you’ll be fine. In fact if you die and pick up your own tag, you receive more experience points than if you killed two guys. It’s more profitable to get killed. Finally, a mode for me to excel at!

Another effective strategy is let a better player try to take on 2 opponents, and get killed by the second. Then, you swoop in and land one bullet to cheese out a kill. Now, 3 delicious tags are available for the picking. When played right, you can get 200-300 points by not really participating in a dangerous fight. Plus, it doesn’t look scummy because you collected tags. Play Dog tags whenever you can for a truly enjoyable time

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Enjoyable for you. Your teammates will hate you, but they’ll be muted anywhere.

Weapons

While there’s likely 100 different guns in the game, there’s really only four classes of weapons we’ll go over briefly.

Machine Guns – These weapons come in three different classes but ultimately are the same thing. You’ll need to hit anywhere from 3-6 shots to register a kill, and this requires accuracy. Fortunately, you can hold the trigger button and blindly fire about 30 bullets before needing to reload. There’s a chance you’ll luck into kills from sheer volume. Whenever possible, pick the machine guns with the largest clip, to give yourself a fighting chance to overcome your poor accuracy.

Snipers – Snipers make up 50% of the on-line community and you’ll begin to hate these players personally. Snipers can shoot you instantly from anywhere on the map and you have no prayer to avoid the bullet. You’re only hope is the sniper has a bad shot. Unfortunately, the game is designed to give anyone uses a sniper a wide hit box, so even if the shot should miss, you get nailed. There’s no hope to beat a sniper other than your own team countering with a sniper. Sniping also comes out as fast if not faster than machine gun fire, and players can scope, fire and scope before you can hit the trigger button. No, these are fun.

Shotguns – The other 50% of online players are shotgun payers. Normally, these weapons require the shooter to be very close to have an effective shot. Not so in Call of Duty. Shotguns have more range than machine guns, but kill in one hit. You’re practically being sniped with a shotgun. Also, call of duty allows shotguns rounds to incinerate targets. That’s right – if you don’t die form a shotgun bast halfway across the map, you’ll be burnt to death. No, that’s fine. It’s not even frustrating at all. They should increase the range on these things so I’ll be even happier facing them.

Shovels/Knifes – Close range weapons that actually function as designed, these are one hit kills but you have to be super close to get the attack. In theory, anyone with a gun should be able to take down the melee user easily. Unfortunately, life isn’t fair. People using these weapons are masters of stealth, and when they aren’t, bullets somehow phase through them and you get your skull cracked via a shovel. It’s very embarrassing.

FYI, if you try and of the sniper, shotgun or shovel, you will not get any of these benefits and lose every battle. Do not expect to win or enjoy your time with any weapon.

Aiming

As eluded to before, I’m not very good at aiming. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. In fact, one of the levels has a barn. I tried to shoot at it once, missed 12 straight shots, and the barn then killed me with a shovel. It was traumatic.

In combat, you can hold down a button to bring up the sights. This should improve your accuracy, but often it makes you slower when you aim. You have to be able to move fast enough to get head shots in this mode, otherwise you’re just slowing yourself down to aim at feet. Remember, the head is more vital to a person than the foot, so while you’re attempting to shoot the enemy in the toe, he’ll decapitate you with a round to the skull. It’s a bad trade off.

The other aiming option is to fire without the sights, and hope that you’re close enough to the enemy to win. The basic aim works the same way, but with slightly less accuracy. The good news is that this is quicker. The bad news is that you can easily miss the person entirely and get killed. Truthfully the aims are about the same for me, so usually this is my choice.

Your guns can be boosted for extra accuracy, but it still fails to user error. You’re not getting goldeneye auto aim no matter how souped up your weapon is. If you’re missing the barn, no matter what attachments you add, you’re still going to be missing. Accept your two kills and ternty deaths and move on.

Rewards

Finally, the last big part of Call of Duty is rewards after the game. Your experience points will level you up, allow you to unlock new guns, grenades and perks for your character. Remember, as good as they things can be, it’s depending on your skill. My character having the best perks would only lead to a slightly less embarrassing death. However, this isn’t the part to get mad about.

The game also offers “loot crates”. These crates contain various items, including costumes, gun designs, and emotes. Emotes are taunts your characters can do when your team win a game and you finish with one of the top three scores. If you’re like me, this is as rare as hitting the lotto, so these things are worthless. You can’t see your character since it’s a first person shooter, so costumes are a waste of time. The only time you get to see your result of dress up is when you make the podium as we discussed, or while you await a game. The gun designs provide some boost to your experience, so they are clearly the only thing you want to receive, unless you’re good at the game, and if you are, screw you.

These crates are rewarded to you by either completing in game challenges, leveling up, random rewards and, my favorite, money. They expect people to pay hard earned money to play dress up with a character you barely see. In fact the dress up affects your opponents more. I’m not one to judge how people spend their money, but spending on these crates is worse than burning it. At least with burning it, you get some heat.

Of course, companies only do this if they are getting money from it, so the prepubescent children who curse you out while playing are also using their parent’s credit cards to buy boxes. Why are we letting kids play these games again? It just seems like a ridiculous concept. Shouldn’t they use that money to buy new games if anything? I guess unlocking a ascot is more important. Damn millennials.

Overall, first person shooting games are nightmare. You’ll be mocked by punk kids while you frustrating lose thousands of games and have no fun. Then, you’ll play again the next day because you are a creature of habit. I strongly recommend doing anything else other than getting involved in this negative cesspool. Why not take of a hobby? Maybe donate your time to a charity? Hell, why not sit around on your ass not doing anything? That’s a way more rewarding experience. But then again, so is bashing your head against the wall to forget your last Call of Duty Session.

Where’s my GameCube at? It’s time to launch some homers.

 

 

 

1. *Jim Dowd was the name EA sports used for Barry Bonds in their last Baseball game before losing the license. Since Barry Bonds wasn’t in the player’s union, mostly for being a giant, fat headed douche, they had to use a player holder character. This was similar to why Michael Jordan and Charley Barkley were rarely in video games in the 90s (They owned their own likeness). Dowd as a terror, just like Bonds, and they made him identical to the real player, except that he was white. That was always weird to me.
2. **The game was not fun when people picked a level other than the facility. What the hell is wrong with people picking other levels?
3. ***You should never say joystick in public. People will think you’re not talking about video games.
4. ****Yes, you could play zombies on-line with random people. Do you want to help the people making lewd references about your sexuality and your mother survive a zombie apocalypse, or are you going to shoot him in the leg and let the zombies have a brain buffet? We all know the answer. Shoot him in the leg and move on.