Apologies And Head Shots

I've been stressed. Stressed to the teeth! A combination of degree commitments and those of the money earning kind, left me feeling exhausted and run down. As a result I got sick. Very sick! So sick that walking up and down the stairs hurt a lot. As a result of both a heavy work load and feeling really under the weather I haven't been able to play game for a while, let alone write about them. So lets get it out of the way, apologies for the lack of posting and apologies for any future interruptions to an otherwise regular service.

Now onto more fun things. I've been increasing my online presence on Xbox Live through Call of Duty 4, a game I hadn't played for quite some time, and was I ever amazed. The game still looks amazing, despite being over a year old, and there's still a huge online community. Most importantly, the game plays smoother than most recently released titles. It took me all of 5 minutes to remember all the controls and my old strategies and probably 5 more before I started to adapt to the those who have obviously not put the game down since it came out, and changed how I played. All those old hiding spots had changed, people had begun using the maps in different ways. Did that challenge ever make the game fun. I've been enjoying this game to the exclusion of a big stack of games I've yet to play.

So what's left to, well, loathe? Well, I still hate (as with every game online) the fact that headsets exist and that people insist on using them. Oh yes, and the fact that they're either 12 or sound like they have about two brain cells. Why some silly Muppet insisted on telling everyone on the map where they were is completely beyond me. Not that I took advantage and killed him off a few times to make a point. Oh, and on behalf of everyone who plays online, whistling a merry tune down the mike is not acceptable. Please either stop or promise to never reproduce. Beyond that my only other personal grievance is with the snipers. Boy do I ever hate snipers. I really appreciate the skill in what you do, and to those who do it well and remember to move and not just camp, it's so sweet when I get the rare opportunity to stab you from behind. But it is so aggravating to be killed from miles away by an unknown killer. Keep it up, but don't be a sleazy camper, because girls wont sleep with you if you do. And they know, they can tell!

So the game is still great, and although I'm only at rank 23 at type of posting, I'm still hitting the top three in Free-For-All on a pretty regular basis. If you play feel free to add me, my gamer tag is BlueTagBukowski, and if you hadn't noticed yet, I now have my gamer card posted in the right hand column of the blog.

Hope to see you online.

A Rekindled Love Affair

After the lovely rebooting of my online presence on Xbox Live, via the gift of a Gold account, I've been getting back to grips with Call of Duty 4. I was actually quite amazed. The game is over a year old, and still looks gorgeous and still plays like it was made by the gods. It didn't take me more than a few minutes to reacquaint myself with the controls, remember my old tactics, and start to get my stats up.

Sure, the game isn't perfect, you still get the annoying children play online with their dammed microphones on so you have to hear them say "head shot" whenever they achieve said shot. But then again, when you can almost see the tears welling in their eyes as you continually track them down and kill them with immaculate aim and sneaky knife's to the back, you begin to calm down a bit. I'm talking about in the game by the way.

But after a while playing my favourite reason to own an Xbox Live Gold account (and it does annoy me that you must), a horrible thought hit. Infinity Ward are working on Call of Duty (6) Modern Warfare 2. Surely this means that when this inevitable pillar of gaming goodness arrives, the majority of Call of Duty 4 gamers, myself included, will jump ship and start playing with the new kid in town. But what will happen to your old stats? Now, I'm not doing desperately well with mine in comparison to others who didn't have a Call of Duty hiatus due to the restrictive price of Xbox Live Gold, but I would hate for all that work to be left behind.

So here's what I'm saying. Think of it as my final thoughts of the day.

Infinity Ward, if you're reading this. Please let us bring our old dusty Call of Duty 4 stats across with us, when we join you and the new messiah, Call of Duty 6. If you could make new perks and weapons available so that there's still something to work towards, that would be great. We hang our heads before you, and plea with you to grant us this merciful request... Amen!