Thinking About: Modern Warfare 2

This is something I’m doing a lot at the moment. In all honestly I think that I’m, at least temporarily, addicted to this game. Oddly though, First Person Shooters (FPS) aren’t really my thing. I much prefer Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games. However, since playing Modern Warfare 2 everything else seems kind of…. bland. Of course the game is designed to be addictive – giving out rewards on a regular basis along with sounds and visual images to reinforce the buzz of doing well. It’s all very Pavlovian – as the game designers are more than aware.

Starting out on the game is tough, especially as I used to die with monotonous regularity. But gradually I got better and my kill-death ratio (KDR) is creeping up to 1 which is fairly impressive from where I’m sitting considering most of the people I’m fighting against are less than half my age with reaction speeds like lightening and years more experience with this kind of game than me. Where I think I do OK is tactics. Some of the people I play against – and kill – are just not very bright and even I find them very easy to kill. Yup, they’re that stupid. Of course in real life (IRL) I wouldn’t last more than a few minutes in a combat situation so the on-line version is pretty accurate in that sense!

Modern Warfare 2 is unusual (from my perspective) in the sense that I’m more than happy going on-line on my own against real opponents. This is something I hardly ever did with other FPS games. I just didn’t enjoy it. With MW2 I feel different. Although part of a Clan/group I don’t feel the need of that particular security blanket in order to don my virtual body armour, lock and load my M-16 and spawn in harms way. I’m usually confident enough – even when I get a run of bad matches (like most of this weekend just gone) – to go into combat and, hopefully, kick some ass. Of course some of the guys laugh at me for several reasons. One of which is that I’m actually not that good even when I’m doing well. Several of the Clan are 5-10 times better than I am. Another reason they laugh is because of my combat ‘style’ (for want of a better word). I’m not one who runs around either stabbing or shooting people. I’m not up to that sort of thing. I tend to run from cover to cover, pause, and move on (hopefully) killing anyone I come across or who comes across me. Inevitably I’ve been called a ‘camper’ on more than one occasion – though I prefer the term ‘ambusher’ myself. I don’t always use that tactic though it does have a place in my repertoire. One thing that several of us are good at – and have recently been complemented on – is our teams intolerance of enemy call-ins. These are basically kill-streak rewards which often include attack helicopters and Harriers. Often three of the Clan carry stinger missiles which are specially designed to deal with this sort of thing. If all of us are in-game, if it flies – it dies.

Of course with any game there are problems and frustrations. The call-ins mentioned above are excessive and can easily ruin a match. The method of finding and joining a game is flaky at best. Because there are no dedicated servers (on the PC version at least) there is no way to detect and prevent cheats from prospering and the game seems sometimes oblivious to game destroying lag. But, when it does work as advertised, it’s very, very good. The graphics are superb, the game play heart-racing and the buzz from a good game is intoxicating. So far I’ve invested about 60 hours game time and have just reached level 54. I’m going for level 70 (the last level) by Easter which will be quite a challenge as the gaps between levels keeps increasing. After I get there I’m hoping that my addiction will start to fade and I can move onto other things. I certainly hope so. Anyway, I have some more XP to get so I need to get on-line and start killing people. Oh, and if anyone is wondering about the picture – it’s from my game profile. Scary aren’t I?