Ten Dollars for Equality

By spamfest | Published: July 28, 2009

As you may or may not have heard, Activision wants to price the next entry-level CoD at $60. Yes, fellow PC gamers, they want us to pay what consolers shell out without question for no reason other than the fact that they want us to. Naturally, it seems many are up in arms about this.

“What’s the big damn deal?” you ask. “It’s only $10 more for a game that’s guaranteed to be at least as good as CoD4.”

Yes, that is certainly one way of looking at it. However, consider this — at its core CoD4 is not nearly as good as most people think. Oh, sure, it’s good, and even I can recognize that, but it’s not good in the way that a cold beer after a long day at work is good. It’s not good like taking a girl out and getting your snog on afterward. Yes, CoD4 boasts a very enjoyable and well put together single-player experience and provides a multiplayer game that thousands upon thousands have spent many hours playing.

However, if you look past all the glitz and glamor it’s not hard to see a flawed inner core. The heart of CoD4 is a console game ported to PC. Anyone of decent skill will tell you game is not balanced for PC play, and this is mostly because the weapons and gameplay elements were designed and balanced in and around an environment in which sticky crosshairs and auto-aim play a huge role. The evidence is everywhere — the G3 and G36C are hardly competitors, the M16A4 is not overpowered as so many console enthusiasts have been whining for the past nearly two years, the shotguns fail to impress, the sniper rifles are only effective on a handful of maps (even then an assault rifle with Deep Impact will net you a better score 95% of the time), and most of the remaining weapons are useless fluff. True balance is something of which the PC version of CoD4 has little.

But we happily paid $50 for our beloved console port because, well, CoD used to be and was supposed to be a PC series. Little did we know we were buying into a sad realm in which PC gaming is no longer a factor in the development of cross-platform games. We are, rather unfortunately, a mere afterthought. Just follow the money — the real profit is in the consoles, so why pay us any mind at all?

It’s not just about balance, however. By now we’re all intimately familiar with those four extra maps we got in a map pack not too terribly long ago. What you may not know is that we almost never got them. That’s right — IW was perfectly okay with never releasing those maps for us PC gamers because they knew we wouldn’t pay for them. And why would we? True PC game developers have been releasing free content for their games for years and years. It was one of the bonuses of going the PC route that wasn’t afforded to consoles until Xbox Live and similar services showed up. Releasing free downloadable content is and always has been expected; why should we pay extra for a measly four maps? Especially when companies like Valve and Epic have made it a habit to release huge amounts of content for free simply to support the game and its players.

In contrast IW wasn’t too keen on letting us play these apparently awesome maps unless someone footed the bill. That task fell to NVIDIA, a company who proved that they were pretty damned awesome dudes when they “sponsored” the release of the map pack on PC. By “sponsored” I of course mean “paid for.” Yes, you have NVIDIA to thank for every sniper headshot you’ve pulled off on Creek and every spammed machine gun round that find its way into your chest through the worthless cover on Killhouse. This is why we received the map pack many months after the console players were already enjoying them — IW was going to keep the maps to themselves until NVIDIA showed up. Which brings us to my ultimate point…

If we’re going to be paying a console price for our PC (console) game, will we be treated as equals?

At $60 we are paying just as much as any console player, so I tend to believe we ought not be completely shunned this go ’round. Will IW put any effort whatsoever into properly balancing the next CoD for PC? When map packs and updates are released will we find them available right alongside their console counterparts? If not, why the fuck not? And why in hell should we pay IW extra money to get boned once again?

Because that is the will of corporate whores. I know in my heart that the PC version of the game will get no better treatment than CoD4 did. From a purely business perspective it’s a waste of time and money — the game sold millions as it was even if its multiplayer was extremely iffy on the balance. Most players are fucking terrible at the game anyway; balance isn’t something 90% of the players will ever inherently understand or notice. I mean, there are still a ton of people whining about Juggernaut simply because they cannot understand gameplay balance. Additionally, of all those fucking terrible players, very few of them would ever pay extra money for a map pack. It’s easy to justify such a purchase on a console due a lack of piracy and the pseudo transparency of buying things with “points.” But a map pack isn’t something anyone on a PC will pay for. Ever. As a result, IW has no reason to release the maps to us without some random third party “sponsoring” their release to get their name out there.

It’s a win for both IW and whomever decides to pony up the cash. But it’s always us lowly PC gamers suffering in the end.

There’s another consequence of this extra $10 — if the game is anywhere near as successful as CoD4 at this price, you can rest assured that all future PC games for any publisher will sport a $60 price tag as well. PC gaming is already plagued with DRM and steadily shorter, more dumbed down, and increasingly forgettable games. The last thing we need is to pay extra for such mediocrity.

Posted in Gaming, News | 2 Comments

Bored and Whatnot

By spamfest | Published: May 13, 2009

Oh. That’s right. I have a website or something. Okay, I’m lying. I didn’t forget about it, but there have been a couple things getting in the way of updates.

First, I moved circa mid-April. I went from a house in the woods to the lower floor of a duplex in the middle of the city. Well, not the middle — I’m not downtown but in a bustling commercial area filled with bars, restaurants, and white people. So, I was preoccupied with the move for awhile. For instance, before I’d even gotten all my stuff set up there were 4/20 things to take care of in which I ended up in someone’s apartment with two girls and a guy I’d just met. And I went to a bikini contest last week and cheered loudly (drunkenly) for nearly-naked babes and their wonderful booties — it’s not even summer! Oh, city life. You’re crazy sometimes.

But other than that, what’s been the problem? Well, CoD4 itself. Specifically, I’ve grown tired of the pub scene, and since I don’t have any desire to take it up competitively, that doesn’t leave me with many options. Not that I consider TWL or any ladder that advocates the usage of scrub mode competitive, but still. Someone does want to partner up with me for the Million Man LAN, so I suppose we’ll see what happens. The last LAN I went to I played UT2003 with a few friends if that’s any indication as to how much I don’t LAN. It just never seems like it’s worth the trouble. And with this sort of well-known LAN, I’m not guaranteed to bring home any prizes. Locally I’d probably dominate but this is different, obviously. But I guess you can get drunk and say stupid things that don’t get you laid to pretty girls anywhere, so it’d be worth the trip.

But onto CoD4! Its pub scene has become draining. It’s rare to see a good player (or even one I’d call decent) on one of the very few normal-mode servers anymore. Unless something goes terribly wrong (it happens), I generally steamroll the entire server — I played two games today and my scores were 60-8 and 83-11. While it is moderately entertaining to keep count of how many bad players I cause to rage-quit the server in any given game, it’s frustrating at the same time when I remember back to when this game had seemingly thousands of server choices.

The other day I ended up getting banned from one of the few decent servers left in this unappealing scrub-mode-laden landscape. The reason? I was doing too well. Usually when I rail on some server people just leave or call me a hacker, but in this case one of the negative-ratio neckbeards playing had admin access, so he kicked and banned me and a couple other people for either destroying everyone or having an annoying play style involving C4 and spamming LMGs through walls. Dumb. If you’re wondering, the server was called something along the lines of “A FRAGGN GOOD TIME.” The admins are easy to spot — they wear ROW| tags and they’re bad at the game.

In the end, the game is losing its appeal because I can be assured of a few things damn near every time I play.

  • There won’t be many servers to play on (normal mode, 20 or less players).
  • People will leave while I’m there. Maybe I’ll get in two decently populated games.
  • I’ll probably be called a hacker.

So, like I said via text chat after the 83-11 game I mentioned above, “God, I need to find a new game. Nothing left in this one but terribads.” That is the crossroads I’m currently situated in. I need a new game to get pulled into. I have a few options, but unfortunately it takes a certain something for a game to grab my attention enough for me to play it for more than a week (or a month if it’s decent). That’s why I’ve been playing CoD4 for as long as I have — nothing has grabbed me since.

My options are limited but good, I think. I recently started playing Chrono Trigger (old school, bitches!) and I bought Left 4 Dead a few weeks ago, so that’s something. However, I haven’t played L4D a single time since it arrived. Perhaps the thought of having to actually talk to and work with other Internet people is turning me off to it; I’m used to silently lone-wolfing it and doing better than everyone. Then there’s TF2. I played it for a month a long time ago and then promptly lost any and all interest in it for some reason. It’s been updated a ton since then and is probably quite different, so I should give that one another shot.

Then there are RL™ games like D&D and Magic that I could pick up. My boss is a huge nerd (with a hot wife), so he’s into this sort of stuff and wants to be a dungeon master. I’ve never played these types of games, mainly because when I was exposed to them in middle/high school it was always a bunch of fat fuglies playing them, and I didn’t want to be like them. Now that I have proof that one can play these and still bang hotties, I’m more open to the idea.

Posted in Fail, Gaming, News, Rants | 1 Comment

Ignoring Necessary Changes: Good for Business

By spamfest | Published: March 31, 2009

If you’ve been following stuff, you’ll already know that the next game in the CoD series is slated to come out November 11th. They’re calling it “Modern Warfare 2″ — apparently dropping the “Call of Duty” bit entirely — in order to distance themselves away from Treyarch and their inability to make a decent game that’s tainting the series’ name. Regardless, I’ll probably end up calling it CoD6 because that’s what I’ve been doing thus far. But then again “MW2″ does leave fewer things to type, so I might switch over on a laziness basis.

The announcement of a new game has drawn up a lot of thoughts about things I don’t like about CoD4 or elements that I feel could easily be better if Infinity Ward would put even the tiniest bit of effort into making sure bugs and balance are dealt with properly. The game is full of good ideas, but I don’t think they ever got around to fully fleshing them out. There are plenty of things that if adjusted just a tad could have a big positive effect on the game, yet CoD4 has generally always proven to be fun regardless. Thus, it makes me wonder just how good the next one could be if they approach it thinking that CoD4 could be better — not that it was perfectly fine because of its popularity (see: Halo).

I have a bit of a propensity for lists (and wordiness), so I’m about to write one about several items I think need serious reconsideration for the next CoD. I realize that the odds of Infinity Ward doing any of these are pretty slim as what they provided in CoD4 was “good enough” to net millions of sales across all platforms. Because of the following issues I have, I wouldn’t call CoD4 “great” — it has too much that could change for the better for this to be true. I’d like to see the next CoD be a great (multiplayer) game by including the following:

Better and bigger maps. It’s painfully obvious that CoD4’s maps were built with a maximum of 16 players in mind (i.e. the maximum number that can play together via the consoles). The maps are simply too small and in many cases too linear. Since the PC version can theoretically run four times that many players, it’s extremely common for pubs to be far too overcrowded. About 20 players maximum is all these maps can handle even somewhat gracefully (they’re usually best with about 12), yet many servers run upward of 32 slots. This is ridiculous and in no way how the game was intended to be played. Matches with this many players devolve immediately into spawn camping festivals of failure and grenade spam. We need more f**king space to move around (at least on PC).

Better weapon balance. Ignore the nuances between the weapons themselves for a minute (though there are tons of problems there) and consider the macro differences between the weapon types. What’s the point of using a shotgun when you can go with a much more versatile submachine gun? Why go for a machine gun and take the movement penalty and the long sight and reload times when an assault rifle is more than sufficient and much easier to handle? Why pick up a sniper rifle when they’re far too picky, boast the lowest effective damage per second ratings, and are easily countered by just about anything given their slowness, requirement for precision, and the small maps? And let’s not forget that no weapon has a range limit; they can all instantly shoot an “infinite” distance. So many of the guns gimp you needlessly!

These are somewhat large existential problems that Infinity Ward has probably never considered; their goal was likely to hit some imaginary quota of guns that would keep the average player satisfied for awhile and leave it at that. But to everyone else all we’re left with is a handful of weapons that don’t suck in comparison to others because they actually offer something uniquely useful to the player. This keeps the overall experience from being as varied as it should be, not only in that you use the same few weapons all the time, but also that you get killed by those same few most of the time. For those who know better, the game is basically AK-47 vs. AK-74u vs. Desert Eagle with the M40A3 thrown in from time to time. Not cool, man. Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s tone down that grenade chucking distance, eh?

Better uniforms. Though I’m used to it by now, it’s still fairly annoying how well the Marines blend in on most maps compared to the dark “OMG, here I am!” uniforms of the OpFor. It’s honestly not fair at all when the ability to visually acquire a camping enemy player is determined simply by whether or not he was lucky enough to land on the Marine side. The SAS and Spetsnaz are pretty even, I guess, though the SAS has the advantage on darker maps, and it’s always annoying how ghillie suits are handed out at random on grassy maps. Either make everyone blend in or stick out to the same degree; it’s not that difficult. I’d prefer the “sticking out” option, of course, because I’m a run-and-gunner who despises campers who can’t do anything else. If anything CoD certainly doesn’t need more talentless campers; it’s got plenty already.

Better spawn system. You know, the dynamic spawn system was a good idea. The theory behind it is mainly to keep people from randomly spawning behind enemy lines fully armed. It does this successfully for the most part, but it’s certainly not perfect, and what sometimes keeps teams on the opposite sides of the maps often sticks them right next to one another. The end result, thanks in part to the small maps, is rampant spawn camping, and if you overcrowd such small maps, it’s almost guaranteed to “break” the spawn system and cause one team to get spawn camped indefinitely.

But why does spawn camping happen at all, especially with lower player counts? Well, it’s mostly a problem with bad players. You see, bad players don’t move. They spawn, they park their asses in a corner in or very near their spawn point, and they wait for someone to waltz into their sights. This wouldn’t be a problem except that CoD4’s spawn system judges team spawn points based on the “safest” player on your team — the one furthest away from an enemy and/or least likely to get shot by one in the next few moments. A lone worthless camper can literally have 100% control over your team’s spawn because he is “safe,” and this is where the problem arises. If your team gets surrounded and the bad players camp in your crappy now-surrounded spawn instead of trying to get out, you will all keep spawning there. Brilliant, eh?

Better air support system. I don’t feel like harping on this issue anymore, but I will say that it’s patently retarded how Infinity Ward handled this. Bonuses for players doing better never goes well in terms of gameplay. It’s called a positive feedback loop and only serves to let the good players dominate when they would usually just win. Why make it unnecessarily difficult for the players who are already losing? This only makes comebacks fucking impossible and it ruins the experience for everyone on the wrong end of the assault. There are many ways the developers could fix this, but at the very least, don’t let kills the player doesn’t even earn himself count as if he did. That is, air strikes and chopper kills should count solely as points as opposed to actual kills. The player didn’t do anything; don’t give him credit. And certainly don’t give him more air support when the air support did all the work!

A real hardcore mode. Currently, CoD4’s two modes are misnamed — while one should be called normal mode, the other is better suited as “I suck and need it to be easier to kill people” mode. If they want to keep such a low-health mode, that’s fine, but they should name it honestly. “Sudden death by random camper I didn’t see” mode would also fit. What I’d like to see is a mode that is actually hardcore — by definition it’d be one that is either more difficult than normal mode or more pure (or both). What I’m picturing is something along the lines of no HUD, no perks, no air support, and normal health (maybe slightly adjusted for Stopping Power-esque damage). This would make hardcore mode exemplify the very essence of the core gameplay without all the frills and silliness, and that would kick ass.

Better first/third-person syncing. I don’t know about you guys, but I am severely tired of being killed by people’s foreheads. By that I mean when the enemy can see and aim at me perfectly but all I can see of him is the top third of his head. I can’t even see his gun — it’s shooting into a wall from my perspective! — yet he can kill me just fine. It’s a simple issue, really — in first person you’re “taller” than you are in third person. That is, the player models do not accurately match up to the size and perspective of everyone’s first-person view. Not only is this super annoying but it adds more benefit to camping since my target (his camping forehead) is much smaller than his (my entire body), and given that CoD was never meant to be a camper game, it fucks up the gameplay to a noticeable degree. Could we at least see the dude’s entire head or something? Even though in reality we’d be able to see a good portion of his head, shoulders, gun, and possibly some upper torso. Sheesh. Everyone gives praises to Infinity Ward for their overall abilities but they sure do miss a lot of the “small” things.

Posted in Gaming, Multiplayer, Rants | 1 Comment

An Online Social Experiment

By spamfest | Published: March 22, 2009

I’ve been getting accused of hacking a lot recently. It’s not that I’ve gotten any better over the past few months — at least not that I’m aware. What’s more apparent is that the average skill level of the players on pubs has dropped as the game has aged. Whatever it is the decent/good players are doing now (if they’re still playing), it’s certainly not pubbing non-S&D servers.

Oddly enough, even though “hardcore” mode was always filled with lesser skilled players, it seems such servers have taken the biggest hit in the skill department. Since there are far too many “hardcore” servers and not enough normal ones, I end up playing them a lot even though I’m not enthused by the idea. More often than not, things go crazy and people get angry with me.

Here’s an example of the kind of crap I’ve been pulling off recently.

This was way too easy, and that's frightening.

I got an idea the other day, and even though it was only a few days ago, I don’t remember exactly where it came from. Maybe my aliases like ihateyou, We Are All Dead, and — dare I say — poopknuckle were too “aggressive” and that somehow made it easier for people to bitch, whine, and accuse. I’d been getting accused so much that I decided to try a little experiment.

If I alias as a girl, will people stop accusing me?

Will I cease to be called a “faggot” or “hacker” or “hacker faggot” eighteen times per match? Will the experience, in general, be nicer even though I’m still destroying everyone and pissing them off just as I would with any other alias?

Picking from a random list of suggestions from FuLLBLeeD and modifying it slightly, I decided my alias would be punkrockgrl (and later added another “r” to round it out to punkrockgrrl). After all, emo/punk/scene girls are often hot as fuck for reasons I don’t understand. Surely it’d make things go over more smoothly with all the lonely virgins I’d be beating in an online video game, right?

I don’t have a definitive answer yet, but my presence has definitely been an annoyance to people not on my team.

Obviously I'm far more punkr. Outscored the other team on my own. Campers: Failing horribly since always. Thank FSM the air support system is so broken in this game.

Results thus far have been mixed. Some people have been more sociable. I’ve had dudes saying “lol” and “son of a…” when I pulled off something impressive/annoying rather than go straight to the accusations or calling luck/spam/lag. I’ve had guys ask me questions whereas normally they wouldn’t. One even asked what kind of music I listened to. I told him rap, of course. Things started out nicely; I thought my experiment was going to be a resounding success in the realm of showing just how pathetic and predictable most gamers are.

But I’d been playing in normal mode. Normal mode tends to be where more normal people reside. You’d never believe it offhand, but in general it’s the bad players who are the fat asses, the losers, the fuglies, the virgins, etc. The good ones are quite often normal-looking, non-virgin dudes with at least some sort of social life. This has been my experience with FPS games at least. It makes it all the sweeter when one of the losers tells a good player to “get a life” because it’s more likely that he already does more away from his computer than the loser. Projection, man. It’s brutal.

Anyway, once I made my way down to “hardcore” mode the shit started to hit the fan. As my kill-death ratios started hitting 5:1, 7:1, and 9:1 — a feat much easier to accomplish in “hardcore” mode — people started getting ruthless. What started out as a slightly more calm and peaceful endeavor ended up as a noob crusade against me.

When I started one round I had eight people from the previous round spectating me. Eight! I know bad players are often insecure about their badness, but god damn! Naturally, spectating didn’t help convince some of them. Like I said in the last post, once a dumbass is convinced you’re cheating, nothing’s going to sway his opinion. He’ll look for any little thing that he can attribute to hacks and will do so with fervor. He’ll force the smallest, most inconsequential thing to be proof of foul play in his mind even if it’s entirely irrelevant or guided by chance.

As for my general findings, I’m not sure the frequency of accusations has moved at all. I’m still getting accused, but there does seem to be a bit of a change. People are either less committed to their allegations — “Are you hacking?” or “Nice prefiring.” — or more scathing and dedicated to their pointless cause — “Stop hacking, you fucking nigger.” I guess the thought of there being a girl on the other end either makes people less or more douche-like than normal depending on how socially inept they are.

Overall, I was quickly labeled a “bitch” and told to go “suck a fat cock.” Sometimes it got more personal as some guy would call me a slut and tell me to suck his cock. It was entertaining to say the least. Whereas with a guy-like alias people tend to stick with generic name calling, they seemed to get a little more creative and serious whilst I was a girl. I guess we can chalk that one up to misogyny.

I mean, if girls don’t like you in RL™, it’s pretty easy to rail on them online and try to get your ego back. Then again, when a girl’s going 9:1 on your ass, I’m not sure recovery is even possible. Most of them just rage quit, and I laugh all the way to the bank where I exchange their testicles for cash money.

I have to wonder, though. What is it with white people and their obsession with the word “cock?” “Dick” is so much nicer, in my opinion. “Cock” has a porn-like ring to it — it sounds forced and fake.

Posted in Gaming, Lulz, Multiplayer | 1 Comment

Don’t let noobs admin your server.

By spamfest | Published: March 20, 2009

I just got vote-kicked from a CoD4 server because one terrible player decided I was hacking. He went on a crusade of accusations, brought in some of his butt-buddy clan members, and eventually, after about fifteen failed votes, got me kicked.

I’ve mentioned this kind of thing before, and it will probably always ring true. The clueless players of the world make up the vast majority, and if they’re convinced you’re cheating, you’re cheating. The conundrum is that they’re simply too bad at the game to ever understand that you’re not cheating. It’s simply beyond their comprehension. In response to their complete lack of talent, the only thing they can do is lash out with false accusations.

Generally, this is fine. Let the noobs vent; if you don’t they’ll probably end up too frustrated and will stop playing the game entirely, and that’s not good for the overall community. The only time whining, accusatory, talentless dorks affect anything at all is in one case…

…when the power to vote is left enabled on the server.

This is stupid, and no server admin should ever, ever let this happen. Sure, it might be useful from time to time to remove asshats, but more often than not it’s going to be used to ill effect. Legit players will be kicked, stupid maps will be voted in when half the players are having fun currently, and you can be quite assured that votes will pop up several times in every ten minute span. It’s going to be abused far more than it will be legitimately useful.

This happened to be the case tonight. So, while I quite obviously don’t hack, I was accused many times over (by the same guy), and that eventually led to my kicking. The funny thing is that the kill cam was disabled, so the idiot who did all the accusing literally had no way of knowing how I was playing because he refused to spectate me. I’d like to think that if it’d been enabled that he’d see the error of his ways, but who am I kidding? A bad player will always accuse a good player regardless of evidence that contradicts his accusation. Ego makes people retarded.

The subconscious thought process is something along these lines: I’m bad but I don’t want to admit to myself that I’m bad. Therefore, this guy who is a lot better than me is obviously cheating. This way I don’t have to take responsibility for my own lack of talent and ambition. Naturally, this is stupid, and if you’ve ever seriously accused anyone of hacking when it wasn’t blatantly obvious just because he was beating you, you are stupid.

Nothing I said in response to his claims made any difference. Never mind that I was barely going 2:1 for all the spam; I was much better than the loser who called me out and his 0.3/1 ratio. When I mentioned that I wasn’t even doing that well, he said I was merely controlling my deaths — that I was letting myself be killed at strategic times so my score wouldn’t look hacker-like.

My only response to that was (and still is), “What the fuck?” Do people actually do this? Doesn’t that completely contradict the point of hacking in the first place? If I were to hack I’d do it to piss everyone off and go 200 – 10, not to barely string together a 2:1 on Killhouse. What the hell would be the point?

Of course, I’m sure my responses to him didn’t help my case. Here’s an example of one of our exchanges prior to about the eighth time he tried to get me kicked.

  • “Come on, guys. Kick this hacker fuck.”
  • “Dude, I’ve been playing [this game] for a year. You just suck, bro.”
  • “I’ve been playing [games] for years.”
  • “Badly.”
  • “So I think I know a hacker when I see one.”
  • “Obviously you don’t. Obviously you’re just a delusional fat loser who lives with his mom.”

Lucky for you guys, I have found this guy on the Internet. It’s not really him but this guy is exactly the kind of idiot I’m talking about. He’s bad at the game, whiny, accusatory, and a self-admitted 30-year-old virgin. Seriously, look at him delude himself. Psychological projection much? These are the types of guys who accuse good players of cheating all the time. It’s mostly because their lives suck and they can’t take the mental stress of also sucking at video games, the only things that haven’t rejected them.

Sigh. Gaming would be so much more enjoyable if noobs would just shut the hell up. Take your beating and go cry to yourself afterward.

Posted in Fail, Gaming, Lulz, Multiplayer | Leave a comment

The Hardcore Fallacy

By spamfest | Published: March 14, 2009

If you’ve been around CoD4 long enough, odds are you’ve noticed the trend in public server setups. While there used to be a healthy balance between normal mode and so-called “hardcore” mode, at some point the scales became annoyingly tipped toward the latter.

It’s now somewhat difficult to find a decent normal-mode server without mods and the player limit set low enough that the game doesn’t devolve into this pointless… spamfest. A spamfest where skill is mostly made null and void and camping/playing a zone is the only thing you can do lest you die by a grenade to the groin for the fourteenth time in the past five minutes. That player limit is roughly 20 — any more and the game ceases to be a battle of talent and turns into Halo.

…Where was I? Oh. “Hardcore” mode. This might just qualify for misnomer of the year. There is, quite literally, nothing hardcore about “hardcore” mode. It’s merely a different way of approaching the same basic game, and while the changes are small — no radar, no HUD, 30 health — the overall effect on the gameplay is quite large.

I’m really bad with being terse, so I’ll summarize things first with a list in attempts to keep those with attention span problems around. Longer-winded explanations follow.

Ways “hardcore” mode makes CoD4 easier.

  1. Explosives are overpowered with huge killing radii.
  2. Health is so low any gun can kill with one bullet.
  3. Many weapons become needlessly obsolete.
  4. You can run the ideal perk setup every time without penalty.
  5. Aim isn’t required to do well.
  6. Camping is much more effective.

1) In normal mode all explosives have both a kill and non-kill radius that varies depending on the type. For instance, the noob tube has the smallest kill radius because it’s the easiest to use by way of its explosions being unavoidable. “Hardcore” mode does away with this non-kill radius balance because all explosives kill within it anyway, so the tube becomes quite overpowered. All explosives now gain a huge kill radius, making grenade spamming that much more effective, especially since there’s no icon to let you know one is nearby.

2) Every single gun in CoD4 has the ability to kill with a single bullet in “hardcore” mode, a feat that is supposed to be reserved for highly specialized weapons like shotguns and sniper rifles. The range for one-bullet kills varies, of course, but some of them will always be a one-bullet kill. I don’t know about you, but rapid-fire instagib isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I bought this game. “Hardcore” mode even makes shot location more useless than it is already — within a gun’s one-bullet kill range, a shot to the foot is equally as deadly as one to the forehead.

3) This is related to the last point. A gun’s power is almost entirely obsolete in “hardcore” mode. Why use a sniper rifle when a Desert Eagle is just as deadly from the same distance? You can completely avoid all difficult-to-use weapons and their annoyingly high recoil and stick with all the easy weapons that are suddenly overpowered — M4, P90, M16A4, etc.

4) In normal mode you’re given a choice — do you run Stopping Power for the brute force or do you try something else? By going with another setup, you willingly make your gun less powerful in the hope that you’ll make it up elsewhere. Same goes for using a silencer — is it worth it to take the range hit and thus make most of you kills take an extra bullet? None of this matters in “hardcore” mode. The notion of “power” is completely irrelevant, so you’re free to use the best perk and weapon setup in every situation. A silenced gun, Bomb Squad, UAV Jammer, and Dead Silence. No one will ever hear you and you’ll never get a face full of claymore. Use the M16A4, G3, or M14 and you’ll also have a silent one-bullet-kill weapon with unlimited range. There is absolutely no penalty to this setup in “hardcore” mode. In normal mode your weapon would be considerably less powerful, but since power is no longer an issue, you get to play the ninja without any repercussions whatsoever.

5) Aim is nearly a foreign concept in many firefights due to the ease of downing an enemy. Inaccurately sweeping your sights over a target while holding the fire button nearly always results in a kill. In effect, “hardcore” mode is no longer about out-playing or out-aiming the other guy. In most circumstances it’s merely a matter of who was more prepared to see an enemy in that instant. If you shoot first, odds are you’re golden.

6) Without a radar to betray your position, and with the ridiculously effective perk setup above, the effectiveness of camping skyrockets. Camping can be tactically useful, but most people overuse it because they can’t do anything else. “Hardcore” mode tells them this is okay because they don’t have to do anything else — just sit there are spray your one-shot kill bullets. No aim or skill required. Just wait for some poor sap to make the grave mistake of moving and he’s all yours.

In the end, it’s obvious to see why “hardcore” mode is so popular. By requiring less talent to do decently and feel useful to the team, the community’s bad players, newbies, and old people naturally gravitate toward it. It is, in fact, the only way they can hope to keep up. The end result is that “hardcore” mode is generally paced a lot slower because most everyone is either camping to pick people off or moving cautiously worried about the fact that they die with a single bullet.

This is fine in theory, but in the end it’s nothing more than an annoyance to people like me who regularly lay waste to public servers but have no desire whatsoever to do the clan/competitive thing. Whenever I can’t find a decent normal-mode pub, I’m forced to hop into some “hardcore” ultra-ninja bullshit mode and go 5:1. I can only hope that Infinity Ward has half a clue about gameplay balance for the next CoD and can create a hardcore mode that is actually hardcore, but I’m definitely not holding my breath.

After all, with today’s gamers, a game that requires individual talent is a dead game.

Posted in Fail, Gaming, Multiplayer | 2 Comments

You’re Not Helping

By spamfest | Published: February 20, 2009

You know what I’m tired of? Seeing my teammates snipe in CoD4’s “hardcore” mode. Every time I see someone on my team doing it I feel like I should rip on them via text chat, but then I realize I’d have a pointless argument to push myself through, so I never do it. No one ever listens anyway.

CoD4’s sniper rifles are rather pointless in normal mode given that the game’s maps aren’t very well-suited for them. In nine cases out of ten, it’s smarter and will serve you better to go with an assault rifle or submachine gun. Throw in “hardcore” mode and the snipers become patently useless because their ability to pull off one-shot kills is no longer unique. There are, in fact, only two reasons to use a sniper rifle — range and one-shot kills. Most of the maps take care of the first point, and “hardcore” mode voids the second.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of guns other than the sniper rifles that do one-bullet kills in “hardcore” mode… without Stopping Power… no matter how far away the target is. And bold items can do it silenced too.

  • M16A4
  • AK-47
  • G3
  • M14
  • MP44
  • M249
  • RPD
  • M60E4
  • Desert Eagle

So, all of these guns are effectively sniper rifles in their own right in “hardcore” mode. Sure, they don’t zoom like a sniper, but that’s ultimately unnecessary when the maps aren’t big enough for it to matter. These guns can do one-shot kills at any range, a few of them silently, and they’ll do it quicker and easier, yet people still insist on using sniper rifles? What sense does that make?

I don’t think I understand it, but I must try! As far as I can see there are only two reasons for such seemingly pointless undertakings:

  1. You’re too dumb and/or ignorant to understand the numbers behind the guns, their damage, and enemy health.
  2. You’re being a pretentious twat and trying to show how “pro” you are by sniping. On Backlot. In TDM.

That’s really pro of you. Excuse me if I don’t quite see why your -2 net score should be considered pro vs. my +50 just because you used a sniper rifle. Cut it out already — you’re not helping your team out at all. If you feel the need to snipe in “hardcore” mode, just fake it with the G3 like everyone else with half a brain. Though as far as I’m concerned the M16A4 is clearly the best all-around weapon choice given its three-shot burst, but most people are fairly clueless.

Yes, I know sniper rifles can be used well in the proper hands even on CoD4’s tiny maps. However, most people are not anywhere near possessing those “proper hands,” and that’s the problem. Most people are useless to their team when wielding a sniper rifle. Throw “hardcore” mode into the mix and they’re even worse.

Dear You,

You suck with a sniper rifle. Quit it.

Sincerely,
Your Teammates

Posted in Gaming, Multiplayer | 3 Comments

An Exercise in Spawn Rape

By spamfest | Published: February 10, 2009

It’s been awhile, I know.

Let me apologize for this semi-great span of silence and offer a bit of an explanation. You see, when you meet a little hottie (literally; she’s 4′11″), talk to her, hang out with her, get drunk with her, and, um, do things with her, suddenly playing video games doesn’t seem so cool. And writing about them? Pfft! Talk about a one-way ticket to the bottom of my to-do list.

However, I realize that may be a bit of a cop-out, because, well, nothing on this site has been gaming-related since the first of the year. Whoops — my bad. I kind of fail at having a website, I guess. Still, the motivation disappeared, as it always seems to, and every time I got an urge to write for the site, I caved and did nothing related to it as usual.

So, let’s talk about CoD4 for a bit. That one’s the only game I’m playing at the moment (still), though I’ve gone from playing nearly every night to playing it whenever I feel like wasting some time. I still destroy everyone on most public servers, but the difference now is I don’t really care. And I’m serious when I say “destroy” — a 2:1 kill-death ratio feels bad to me now. And if I die more than about 15 times I get kind of pissed off. Heh. Yet I rarely say anything at all while I’m playing and instead sit back and laugh at all the idiocy. I don’t even bother saying “gg” anymore because I simply don’t care.

One topic I enjoy particularly is that of spawn rape/killing. Specifically, I like it when people whine about it as if it’s not a big part of the game or a legitimate tactic. To the whiners it’s never the game’s fault that spawn rape is occurring — the other players are just choosing to be dicks. Unfortunately for the whiners, this isn’t true at all. CoD4 is simply not designed that well.

There are a few issues at play here that cause gametypes like TDM to be nothing more than back-and-forth spawn killing.

  • The spawn system sucks.
  • The air support system sucks.
  • The maps are generally too small. And they probably suck too.
  • Oh, and there’s so much ammo going around that you never have to back off. Which sucks, of course!

Putting these things together means that CoD4 is very streaky. Those who are doing well generally continue to do well, often throughout the entire duration of the match. The game doesn’t do a whole lot to quell it or reverse the momentum, so things usually wind down to the team in the lead doing a lot of spawn killing to the poor saps who are losing.

All the same, whining about spawn killing is pointless, because when you do get out and get the tables turned, you’ll be doing the exact same thing to them. That’s all TDM is. And not only that, but in CoD4 (and similar games), you freaking spawn fully armed! If you want to see the true meaning of spawn rape, try playing a real FPS game that requires a little talent to be decent at like UT or Quake. Not only is the momentum of the winning player(s) there, but when you die you spawn practically empty-handed.

Still, I ought to give some quick but sage advice on how to stop spawn rape from happening to you and your teammates. Carry it with you into the next Infinity Ward CoD game because odds are you’ll have to deal with the same stupid design choices.

  1. Don’t camp in your spawn. All you’re going to do is keep your team spawning in the same shit location. Move your arse; otherwise it’s entirely your fault your team is getting fucked.
  2. When being spawn killed, the goal is merely to get out, not to murder the entire enemy team on the way out. Don’t go after the enemies; just try to find an out. Kill them only when they’re in the way.
  3. Smoke, stun, and frag grenades are a great help to giving you that out. Spam them if need be. The idea is either to conceal your dash to safety or to keep the enemies at bay long enough to escape.
  4. Don’t try to be sneaky. Just haul ass. Use cover intelligently. Spray-and-pray to get people to back off. Get from wherever you are to anywhere that’s not so shitty, and do it as quickly as possible.

These might not work all the time and under all circumstances — for instance, overcrowded servers offer worse gameplay and are even more spawn-rape friendly — but in general you should do alright without having to be some über player who headshots every spawn camper as he exits the area.

If things are going to hell, feel free to simply disconnect and find a new server. As I said above, CoD4 doesn’t do a whole lot to help prevent spawn rape (aside from giving you all the tools and weapons you need at spawn), so it’s entirely possible that under the constant barrage of air strikes and choppers that you simply can’t do anything about it. Luckily, the game is still popular enough that you’ll never have trouble finding another place to play. Dip out and find an ongoing game that’s more fun. Games are supposed to be fun, remember?

No one ever said you had to stick around and see a terrible match through to its end. And in a pub environment, that’s actually kind of stupid.

Posted in Gaming, Multiplayer | 3 Comments

The Cleavage Conundrum

By spamfest | Published: January 22, 2009

A week or two ago I became aware of a sinister plot against me. Actually, it was originally for me, but I was never aware of it, so it wound up being against me after all. “Details?” you say? Why, of course!

Back at school I had this friend. We’ll call her Mia. Mia had a roommate her freshman year (my sophomore year) whom we’ll call Molly. I, of course, noticed immediately that Molly was very cute, but like most other cute/hot girls, I just as quickly stuck her up on the “you can’t have that” shelf. Holes in your self-confidence will do that to you.

And it made sense — Molly had a boyfriend from back home at the time. There was nothing I could do. Fast-forward to my junior year I’m becoming aware of Mia and Molly’s increased presence in my room. They never seemed to stick around, but they drop by for a bit on a frequent basis. Often they show up twice in a given day — once before going to do a thing and then once after. Sometimes they are quite drunk. Sometimes I instead find myself over in the their room watching movies.

More often than not I just happened to notice Molly liked to wear low-cut tops. Very low-cut. All the time it seemed. It was rare that I wasn’t greeted by gratuitous cleavage — enough to faceplant in — whenever she came around. There was one instance in particular where she wasn’t quite sober and I practically got a front-row seat to Boobtown as her shirt hung carelessly and loosely in all the right places.

This was all fine and dandy except that, well, she was off-limits. Cute, probably too cute for me, unavailable, and perpetually off with Mia to do things that didn’t involve me. She and Mia also hung out with this tall guy all the time; if anything I figured Molly would’ve liked him. Not only that but we didn’t talk that much; for the most part Molly was simply a friend of a friend. One who happened to enjoy showing off a large percentage of her breasts to strangers.

That’s just the thing, however. Not even two weeks ago I was told by Mia, in discussing how oblivious I am to things, that there was a very specific reason I was privy to Molly’s curves back then — she had been interested in me. She didn’t actually like showing herself off to strangers. I mean, she did, of course, because all girls do, but apparently the cleavage I saw frequently was specially tailored for me. Additionally, by the time the boobs were coming out around me she was boyfriendless.

I, of course, was oblivious to this because that’s how I am. And why wouldn’t I have been? Molly and I didn’t really talk, so we never hung out in any capacity, and, since my room always seemed to be an intermediary stop between other more important activities, I figured Mia was merely dragging Molly into my presence while she said hi. The two of them were frat party frequenters too, so surely the boobage was intended for someone else. It only made sense that this be case. To me, at least.

Upon hearing this claim of interest back then, I didn’t find myself getting happy at the thought. Rather, I became somewhat agitated over the ordeal. Why hadn’t Mia let me know this back then when it would have been very useful information? Even the slightest, most noncommittal hint — “I think Molly might kind of like you a little. Maybe.” — would have sufficed. As vague as that is it would have clued me in to pay a little more attention to Molly and the things she did. But the boobs should have been enough, right? Why would I need another hint when there is so much excess skin involved, right? Wrong!

On its own cleavage is never enough.

And that, my friends, is the ultimate issue. Girls love displaying their cleavage if they’ve got some display. It’s a normal, casual, everyday occurrence. And guys, growing up in a never-ending sea of half-covered breasts, learn early on not to give it too much mind. Look at them, sure, but don’t look at them. They’re there, acknowledge them, but don’t pay them much mind unless you want to get labeled a pervert.

And so I’m posed with a quandary. How the hell could Molly expect me to notice her supposed interest by merely adjusting herself for extra boobage before she saw me? It strikes me as illogical. Unless you’re doing something directly for or to a guy, no amount of cleavage says “I want you.” Flirting, for instance, is a very good way accentuate cleavage’s message. Without something extra involved, even the greatest of cleavage is most likely to say, “Hi. I have great breasts. Don’t you wish you could squeeze them? Too bad!” Because that’s pretty much what cleavage means to a guy when it’s on a random girl. Without proper accentuation, there is a fairly large jump in logic:

  1. Cleavage.
  2. ???
  3. Making out, dry humping, and sex.

There must be a second step if the goal is to show you’re interested, dammit! And there wasn’t one with Molly! No flirting, no hanging out, no sexy eyes. Nothing. There simply has to be more than me going, “God damn, woman!” in my head whenever you come into my room with half your boobs showing. Especially when you feel unavailable and you’re about to head off to a party and rub your junk all other some other guy’s junk. Do you know how hot it would have been if she’d looked at me and then adjusted herself and looked back? That’s an effective second step! As is dragging me off to your little party and rubbing your junk on my junk.

Alas, I was never able to bridge the logical gap, so I never knew Molly was interested in me back then. And why would I? Guys are usually fairly logical about things even when there are boobs involved. I know it’s hard to believe, but even when faced with such seemingly unsurpassable obstacles, the logical wiring of our brains is still present. Thus, I never did anything with Molly even though the potential was there for greatness.

Sigh.

Posted in Fail, Lulz, Rants | 2 Comments

Pimping the Amazon for free.

By spamfest | Published: January 11, 2009

Because that’s how I roll, yo.

Amazon kicks a relatively large amount of ass. Most of the nontrivial stuff I buy comes from them. Online shopping is supremely convenient for me: No lines, no dumb people, no whining kids, no traffic, no wasting gas, no putting myself in a dangerous situation just to buy things (automobile accidents kill millions every year), etc. So I have to wait a few days to get my stuff — I’m perfectly okay with that given all the pros.

Recently I’ve been thinking about getting Amazon Prime. The premise is simple — you pay $79 per year in order to get free two-day shipping on every order. Every single one. And if you want to get your stuff in one day instead of two, you pay a mere $4 extra. For someone like me who (still) buys CDs and often only one or two at a time, this could potentially save me a lot of money. And then I also get them in my hands in two days instead of six. In either case Amazon is much more convenient; Best Buy and Circuit City have failed to have what I was looking for so many times it’s beyond laughable.

Another reason I like Amazon is because they have tons of third-party merchants selling through them, and more often than not the prices are lower. I recently bought my mom the entire DVD set of Le Femme Nikita because it’s one of her favorite shows of forever apparently. The list price is a whopping $410, and even though Amazon only wants $277 for it, that’s still a steep price. Through a third-party merchant I was able to get the set for a mere $110 — brand new too. That’s kind of ridiculously awesome!

When I went to check out Amazon told me “You Save: $299.” I laughed out loud.

Prime, however, doesn’t work for third-party merchants, so even if you’ve paid the $79, the option to use Prime isn’t there. Thus, Prime is not very useful on its own or for dedicated third-party users. It’s only when you’re a frequent Amazon shopper does it stand out. I wasn’t aware of just how much until I gave it a little thought.

Here’s an example. Below are four CDs I want (I’m on an emo-ish, post-hardcore kick right now, though the past few I’ve bought have fallen into the melodic black and technical death metal catagories). In the second column is the Amazon price and in the third you’ll find a third-party merchant price plus $5.19 for expedited shipping via USPS. I could go non-expedited for $2.98, but then I’m only guaranteed to get my wares within two weeks, so it’s hardly worth not paying the extra $2.21.

Album Amazon Merchant
Don’t You Fake It $10.99 $5.89 + $5.19 = $11.08
If These Streets Could Talk $13.98 $10.18 + $5.19 = $15.37
Between the Heart and the Synapse $13.98 $10.27 + $5.19 = $15.46
The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi $14.98 $9.00 + $5.19 = $14.19

In total I’m looking at $53.93 from Amazon Prime and $56.10 from third-party merchants. Notice how the base third-party prices are very good on their own, but when you throw in shipping for every single item, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea. That’s $20.76 in shipping costs alone — so much shipping, in fact, that the end total turns out to be higher. And then we don’t get the convenience of two-day shipping.

Amazon Prime is definitely a good idea if you frequently buy small items online, especially when you can pool together and have multiple people buying through one account for all the benefits. The $79 fee will pay for itself in no time at all, and after that it should save you quite a bit. The above example probably isn’t the best to demonstrate this, mainly because CDs are almost guaranteed to cost much less via the merchants, but it’s relevant so I went with it anyway.

Update! I found out today that Amazon allows you to add up to four “family members” to a Prime account. The idea, of course, is that people within a family/household can share the benefits without having to buy via a single person, but since there aren’t any substantial checks on person-to-person relationships, you can essentially tell Amazon your buddy is actually your “unmarried partner” or child. A child with his own credit card and address. All they ask for verification is to know each others’ birthdays. Pretty damned awesome if you ask me.

Posted in Win | 1 Comment