Call of the Mild

Miss me?

Somehow, I missed my weekly obligation. Kind of like church. Though I have been missing THAT weekly obligation since I was, I dunno, 22 or something. Well, to be honest, I haven't really been MISSING it all that much. I prefer worshiping the bone-crunching hits of the NFL every Sunday.

But that is neither here and, coincidentally, neither there.

Speaking of the NFL, did anybody actually play Madden 2012 this year? I did not. My gaming was a bit limited because of budgetary reasons. I had to pick and choose what I devoted my X-Box time to. In fact, so tight was my wallet, that I played Borderlands for the first time THIS YEAR, since it was twenty bucks. Great game. But back to Madden.

I skipped it. Why? Because Madden 2011 sucked balls. In my humble opinion. Madden 2011 offered little, if anything, over its predecessor, and so when it came time to move on to 2012, that memory, along with a CLEVELAND BROWN on the cover of the box, left me flat.

Something else really took the wind from my sails when it came to game sequels in 2011. Wanna know what it was?





Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

I wasn't going to be buying the game new, because of the aforementioned budget, but I was lucky enough to receive this gift for Christmas. Thankfully, I received it shortly after I got The Twins back, so I popped it into Old Faithful and started playing.

Needless to say, the campaign was over in almost a nanosecond. Even my wife, who almost never pays attention to anything related to my gaming, when she saw me playing something, asked 'Is that the game my Mom gave you?' and I said 'No, I finished that one already.' To which she replied, with a voice rising in pitch with each syllable, 'AlrEADY?!?'

Yeah...the Single Player campaign was probably the shortest of the three games. And the most uninspiring. Not to mention the fact that there was very little in the way of variety WHATSOEVER. And by that I mean especially when it came to some vehicular mayhem thrown in for good measure.

I was so disappointed in it I have been re-playing MW2 and Black Ops...now THOSE two are good COD games.

Now you might be saying...'Lilly! The Multi-Player! The Multi-Player! What about the GODDAMN Multi-Player!!!'

Well, let's talk about the Multi-Player.

To be frank, I suck at Multi-Player as a general rule. BUT...with a little practice, I can improve. Black Ops at least had a practice arena, where I could learn some maps while facing off against AI and gain some experience. MW3 does not have that.

I showed Jen a little experiment. She watched me play about five minutes of the regular game on a decent difficult level. I did pretty well. I then went to Multi-Player, to a Deathmatch or whatever Call of Duty calls their Free-For-All, Ever-Man-For-Himself, Kill-Or-Be-Killed game. I said 'Watch this.'

It looked as if I was moving in slow motion and everyone else had taken some kind of enhanced drug. Or that they were shot at a slow frame rate and being played back at normal speed. I would come around a corner and as I was raising my weapon to fire it would be at about nipple level and I would have a face full of bullets and be landing on the ground, dead.

By the end of the round, I had I think 1 kill, achieved only because I Hail Mary'd a frag grenade as I was dying into a crowd, and 2 assists, probably from the same blast, and I think 14 deaths or some other appalling number.

I never went back for more.

Now maybe, MAYBE, there is more content, more cool content, to be had online...but the only way to find out? You have to join the Call of Duty: Elite. And guess what? That now requires that you pay a SUBSCRIPTION FEE.

Wanna know my response to that?

FUCK YOU, CALL OF DUTY.

There is no way in Hell I will be paying a monthy fee to join a club to play video games online. I already pay for an X-Box Live membership. I pay for the games. I pay for the Internet service.

I already have had issues with all the DLC (That's 'Downloadable Content' to you people who don't play games) they have for games that is not included in the game you buy that you really need to pay for later in order to get full enjoyment from the game. I already had a problem with some of the 'Activation Codes' that are starting to creep up in some games, that only work ONE TIME.

But subscriptions for a fucking Membership to a SPECIFIC GAME GROUP so I can download content for a game, especially when I can't even SEE the content beforehand?

NO. WAY. IN. HELL.

If 343 does this to Halo Waypoint by the time Halo 4 comes out, they can count me out ENTIRELY for that game.

Hell, you'll have finally made my wife a fan.

OUT.