Pay to Play Call of Duty? GTFO!

If you’ve got nine minutes and eight seconds to spare, watch this video:

If you haven’t the time, allow me to run down the important bits.

– some Head Douche at Infinity Ward Activision thinks that Call of Duty fans are just itching to get hold of a paid subscriber based Call of Duty title……. Oookay, I’m not sure which fans he’s spoken to. But it’s usually not a good idea to believe the people in the boardroom who are paid to nod in agreement at everything you say: “Right guys, what do you think of this… what about if we charged a monthly subscription for Call of Duty?”
“Wow boss, that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard!”

I know most of you regular readers here are also Call of Duty players of various longevity, so how about you tell me how good an idea it is:

– Microsoft Post-Natal (Knect) and Sony Move are a feeble attempt at snaffling some of Nintendo’s glory and basically suck to everyone but the most casual of gamers.

– Playstation+ is a pointless waste of money. Although the idea that it’ll die is probably incorrect. It’s more likely the first step to charging for the service completely in the same way as XBL. I reckon once they hit about 30% uptake the subscriber only switch will be announced.

I must start wearing my tinfoil hat more often. It’s as if Thingy-ma-bob in the video has been looking directly inside my head. Damn you alpha waves *shakes fist in general direction of the intertubes*.

Peas and loaves

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Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Blah blah blah Me me me

A while ago I recorded some gameplay of Call of Duty ‘Classic’ the console port of the original Call of Duty PC game from 2003. I am very familiar with the original version as I wasted whiled away many an hour playing it both campaign and online multiplayer. I was never the best player, but I was pretty good all things considered. So I was actually looking forward to giving it a go on the PS3 (I got it as a free download when I bought the ‘Hardened’ copy of Modern Warfare 2).

The first thing that I noticed when I loaded it up was how ugly it is. It wasn’t at the time. When it came out it was amazing in terms of graphics and gameplay, but even Bridget Bardot didn’t age too well. However, the biggest let down was the controls. The guys who ported it tried to shoehorn all the original PC keyboard controls on to the controller. A valiant attempt, but one that makes the game really difficult on the console. FPS games on the consoles now pretty much have the control system sorted – minimal, intuitive controls – so considering that most people would not have played the original PC port I don’t understand why they attempted to make it a complete facsimile. On top of that is the difference between mouse/keyboard ‘twitch’ and controller nubbin control which makes the game quite awkward.

And then there is the AI….. oh AI, how many ways do I wish your pixels were deleted? I’d forgotten how bad the AI was back then. ‘Quick we’re under fire – stand in the middle of the street!’ Or – ‘You have to escort and protect me which means that I take no responsibility for my personal safety…’ AArrrgh!

So I had intended on doing a “Let’s Play” effort on Call of Duty Classic as I have some prior experience of it – but that’s never going to happen now. So I decided to use the footage to essentially introduce myself to the people who’ve subbed to my channel and give a small background on my gaming history.

I don’t like talking about myself. I’ve never been the type of person to blow my own trumpet or do stuff in order to get on a table and yell “Hey! Look how goddamned freaking awesome I am!” so I think that in relation to the other commentaries I’ve done this one is probably the weakest. But, it kills two birds with one stone.

So here you go:

Peas and loaves.

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Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Call of Duty: Black Ops

(apologies for the annotations – Machinima are “subliminally” plugging Alan Wake)

Last night Mike asked me if I’d be getting the new Call of Duty game when it comes out. At the moment, I’m falling on the “No” side of the decision fence. Not because I have anything against Treyarch, or Activision, nor do I have a problem with the Call of Duty series. It’s because I don’t like trees.

I don’t have some pathological hatred of them. It’s not like I go to the park and scream abuse at them. I just mean in games I don’t like trees. It all stems back to Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. There was a level on there, in the snow, with snipers and you had to get through this forest without getting killed. It sucked. You’d be getting sniped and be thinking “if I haven’t got a clue where you are, how the bloody hell can you see me!?”.

Then there was the Ghost Recon series, and notably the Island Thunder expansion pack. On that game the AI was programmed in such a way that they would always get you with a headshot if you didn’t kill them quick enough (they disguised this with erratic firing first). So when you’re stumbling through the jungle and they catch a glimpse of you, if you haven’t seen them, you’re toast – and forget about hiding because if they lose sight of you, then they would chuck grenades directly where you were cowering.

Now we have BFBC2 – damn those trees! How many times have you been killed by someone, and the after kill cam shows you them sitting in a tree like a massive homicidal squirrel? And it’s not just wookies either, I see engineers and medics hiding in the bushes (not assault goes as much though).

So the idea of a game based around a war that was fought pretty much exclusively in a jungle environment makes me think two things: “Charlie…… in the trees” and “The horror…”

But I’m reserving judgement a little bit after seeing the trailer. It looks like Agent Orange has been doing some work already so maybe there won’t be as much foliage fear as I suspected.

Peas and loaves.

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Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

CoD Snore… ZZzzzzz

Hey! Let’s all play Call of Duty 4! It’s soooooo awesome, it’s the most perfect game ever made…..

No it’s not, and no it wasn’t. When I was playing up until my 360 RROD’d (Red Ring of Death) the majority of people who played it and also posted on forums/YouTube spent their time complaining about pretty much everything – sort of like it is with Modern Warfare 2 now. Everything was given the suffix -noob. Juggernoob, martyrnoob, M16noob……okay the last one doesn’t really fit, but that’s how it was. Whatever weapon/perk you chose there was someone waiting to call you a “[insert whatever here]-noob”.

People complained that the game was “broken”……

Any of this sound familiar?

So now if you go on YouTube you find the very same people who spent the last days of CoD4 complaining about it now putting up video after video of…..CoD4. They’re all gushing about how great it is, and how crappy MW2 is.

Personally, I find it boring. Every video is the same. There is no variation in CoD4 – it is Ogga Ug Banga Whack Whack. All the weapons were equalised, all the killstreaks are the same…BOOOOOOOORING!

The most amusing “I love Cod4” video I’ve seen so far was when the commentator was lamenting about how powerful the assault rifles in MW2 are. How they are all you see in MW2 whereas in CoD4 you can use an assault rifle, an smg or a shotgun and do equally well with any of them……. Ogga….. Ug….. Banga….. Whack….. Whack……

In MW2 I use a variety of different weapons, but let’s be honest here: an assault rifle SHOULD be more powerful than an smg and have more range than both an smg or a shotgun. The clue is in the name.

CoD4 is the epitomy of nerfdom. If you’re thinking of complaining about something being overpowered, or unbalanced in any game STOP! Think……do you want to be playing a game that presents a challenge, or do you want to be playing Ogga Ug….. I mean CoD4? Before you put your indignant fingers to keyboard why not just trade in your obviously broken and unbalanced game and pick up a copy of CoD4?

It’s the perfect game apparently….

And while I’m posting about being bored by some people’s YouTube videos, here are a couple of other things that make me stop watching a video:

• Sniper rifle – especially if it is 1337 n05c0p3Zzzzz
• UMP45 – an ACTUAL overpowered gun that -surprise, surprise- no one complains about because it’s what all the cool kids use……
• complaining….. just plain old bitching about everything. If you don’t like a game – don’t play it. Problem solved.

And that concludes my rant.

Peas and loaves.

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Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

The Skinny on Crash – FPS Kyle (MW2 Stimulus Pack)

Following on from this post regarding FPS Kyle’s video introduction to Overgrown is his walkthrough of Crash.

Again, this is footage from Call of Duty 4 and not the Stimulus Pack release:

Check out the gold AK-47!

Crash for me was always a do well, or do really badly map. I’d tend to hover around the garage area at the top of the map, or down by the C-Flag area (I think it was C – the building he goes into at the beginning of the video) – never by the crash site, that was suicide!

Peas and loaves

Find me on PSN – EvadLive

Weekly-ish Update #3

Thursday Thursday Thursday – it’s Weekly-ish Update Day! This is the Reader’s Digest version of what’s gone on in the past week. This is aimed at new visitors to the blog who may not know what’s going on and as a recap not only for you subscribers, but for me as well. It’s nice to get everything in one place and give any little updates that would be missed on the original post.

Cheating
It’s been an interesting week for the subject of cheating. Premier Call of Duty site codnation.net launched it’s own Boosting/Modded Lobbies section. I initially thought that it was to flag said goings on, but alas it was actually to promote the practice. That made me decide to leave their site and the story is told in the Boosters, Boosting and general disappointment post. I haven’t viewed any of the responses to my Goodbye post on codnation.net, but when I checked the site earlier the Boosting/Modded Lobbies was no longer visible to me. The section is still accessible though so I don’t know what’s going on there.

On the same theme – Wings of Redemption has caused more controversy. This time by allegedly touting the services of a prestige hacker……for a price. The Who is Wings of Redemption post has been updated with that information and given a bit of an overhaul to make it easier to read.

Last on the cheating bus is the announcement from FourZeroTwo on Twitter that they are patching the super fast lobbies. I don’t actually know what these are as it appears they are an Xbox phenomenon, but I do know someone who finds themselves in them all the time…

Links, Link Throughs and The Geoff Effect
As I’ve said before it’s a bit of a surprise to me that people not only read this blog, but come back for more. And it’s great! So thanks everyone who has subscribed and those regular visitors and posters. I would like to make special mention to Geoff (sasbenjr) who has harnessed the power of YouTube and sent an ungodly amount of people this way…..twice

Link throughs from Geoff = many peeps

I was happy getting visitor numbers that barely made double digits so seeing this many visits is mind blowing.
Thanks Geoff, and to everyone else who has linked here – the offer still stands regarding graphics for regular contributors (Geoff, Paul, Donncha etc). I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read and contribute here so please don’t get offended if I haven’t mentioned you by name.

There are a couple of new blogs in the blogroll on the right (and there are also a couple more blogs that I’m subscribed to but haven’t yet added) that you might like to have a look at.

Big post, Little post?
As I have a tendency to post a load of entries within a short amount of time I was concerned that some of you might not appreciate your inbox being flooded with yet another entry from me. So I put it to the polls and so far it’s overwhelmingly (statistically speaking) in favour of the ad hoc posting as opposed to one massive post per day – and only one Spartacus…..

General Gaming
This was the week that wasn’t. I played more Mario Kart on the Wii than Modern Warfare2, plus I was a bit under the weather with the same thing that everyone else seems to have at the moment – basically a cold. Mario Kart Wii still disappoints me, but it’s not as bad as I initially felt. And now that I’ve gone back to a proper FAL loadout MW2 is no longer the mass of donkey balls it was while using the Acog Scope.

I’ve also been watching quite a few BFBC2 videos and so that may on the cards at some point…..

The Hauppage Fund

Minor set back. Normal service will resume shortly…..

YouTube
SneakyMode has joined OnlyUseMeBlade and taken a leave of absence from video making. It’s a shame as he was working on a nice interface and then all of a sudden…..gone. Oh, well, good luck to him.

Meanwhile, my channel (MrCheapkills) is bumbling along as usual. Three to Watch is up to Week 5 – and continues to have a positive response. However, I think I’m going to have to diversify a bit and include at the very least BFBC2 vids.

MW2 Stimulus Pack
Xbox beta testers (hehehe)…. only five days to go! PS3 and PC – end of April apparently. I think we’ll see a resurgence of interest in MW2 from this – despite the grumblings that people have about the price. Personally, I’m looking forward to it and will be raiding the penny jar for this DLC. More info here.

Search Terms
Unfortunately I can’t better “phalanges of pterodactyl” in the search terms used to find this blog. For most of the week the search terms have been pretty constant with the top 5 being:
#5 heartbeat sensor noob
#4 modern warfare 2 vs bad company 2
#3 sasbenjr
#2 wings of redemption
#1 mw2 stimulus map pack

That is pretty much it for this week. There are a couple of other posts that have been made on various things. I hope this has found you well, and hasn’t taken up too much time to read. As ever, thanks for taking the time to read my posts and sharing your thoughts with me and the other readers.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Slice the Terminal Pie with sasbenjr

Geoff (sasbenjr – more click throughs than Wings of Redemption or Hutch yesterday!) has two videos up about tactics in Terminal. Specifically staying inside around the metal detector and shop side. It’s not actually two different videos, it’s the same video, but one is a dual commentary with WoodysGamertag

In Modern Warfare 2 there are a couple of maps that I seem to have particular difficulty with: Favela, Skidrow, Wasteland and…Terminal. I don’t know if it’s because I avoid my team mates most of the time, but where ever I go someone has me in their sights or they magically appear behind me. And frustratingly, if I decide I’m going to hold down an area, the other team decide they are going to stay at the other side of the map! So it was nice to see Geoff’s new video and get three commentaries for the price of one.

It was also nice to see inside ‘Burger Town’ or whatever it’s called as I have never actually been in there – that section of the map is like a massive bullet magnet as it’s at the end of not one, but two major corridors. Which is why I tend to avoid it. Maybe I’ll be a bit more adventurous on there now – but it is officially the weekend which means that my K/D is about to go through the floor…..

In the meantime, if you don’t know who sasbenjr or WoodysGamertag are, click on their links and check out their channels – show them some love. For those who don’t like to click on links “I ain’t clicking on no steenking link amigo!” here are the two Terminal videos. If you like them, be sure to rate them if you have a YouTube account.

Geoff’s vid:

And Woody with Geoff:

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

The Killstreak Kurse & The Vincible Commando

The Killstreak Kurse

I’ve discovered that how well I do in game is directly related to what killstreak rewards I have equipped. In case you’re new to Modern Warfare 2 killstreak rewards are unlockable additions to your armoury for use against the enemy. In order to access them you first need to get a certain number of kills without dying. The lowest standard amount of kills required being three, and the most being 25.

I am under no illusions – so far I have never had the nuke equipped. Unless I get into a lobby where every other player decides to go and make a cup of tea and a sandwich at the same time I’m unlikely to ever get a 25 kill streak. But here’s the thing. I know I can get a five kill streak. Not every game, and not every time but it is a possibility for me. So for a while I was running 5-7-9 (Predator Missile, Harrier Strike, Pave Low) but I was getting five kills so rarely that the set up wasn’t benefiting me, nor my team. So I switched to 3-4-5 (UAV, Counter UAV, Predator). When I get a streak going there I make it up to six or seven kills….. but as soon as I try the higher streaks again I catch the dead.

This is obviously because of some sort of Killstreak Kurse that has befallen me – so beware everyone, there is bad JuJu afoot!

The Vincible Commando
shadylikeatree recently reported that the Commando invicibility has been removed and last night I discovered that he’s right. It only seems to be affecting me though – killed mid lunge as I went for a cheap kill. But I still have trouble stopping those commandoing me. I think it’s just that I’m rubbish though.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Quick Scoping and Cold Blooded Pro

Okay, I’m a little bit obsessed by quick scoping in Modern Warfare 2 right now. But putting all the issues about how much skill is involved aside I have a question for quick scopers – does Cold Blooded Pro cause a problem for you?

The reason for the question is that I know that with Cold Blooded Pro, not only does your name not show up to the enemy, but it also stops the crosshairs from going red and negates the aim assist. From what I can see from the many discussions on quick scoping, a major part of it is having the aim assist snap on to your target – especially when “drag scoping”. Logically if someone is using Cold Blooded Pro then this would make it more challenging for a quick scoper to get the kill as the ‘snap’ would not happen.

Obviously those who are actually skilled rather than those who possess skillz will have no problem countering this. But I’d really like to have some feedback on the Cold Blooded Pro perk and if it affects the ability to quick scope. I’d also be interested in doing some tests in MW2 on the PS3 if anyone is interested.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Is the Heartbeat Sensor for Noobs

One good thing about this WordPress blog system is the stats. It shows me the search terms that people use to get here. Mostly it’s the same thing over and over, but occasionally there’s a term that is related to something I’ve posted, but is not explicitly answered.

The search term “is a heartbeat sensor for noons” was there today (and I take it that ‘noons’ is a typo for ‘noobs’). I thought it was a very good question since the Heartbeat Sensor, like every other attachment and perk, attracts the suffix -noob when it is used in game. Ironically the person who is killed is the one yelling “noob!” which doesn’t really make sense as the person who caught the dead is the ‘noobish’ one for getting killed – not the person who racked up the kill or kills…..

So, the HeartBeat Sensor. It’s not an attachment that I use as I find that I get tunnel vision with it. Staring at the Aliens-esque blips moving on the screen I tend to get killed from behind. But that’s not to say that it is useless or noobish. You just have to learn how to use if effectively. So here is my quick list for effective Heartbeat Sensor use:

• 1 – The HBS is an aid, just like the UAV. But you cannot fully rely on it. As such, it is important not to become fixated by it.
• 2 – Remember that the HBS refreshes about once a second. This means that moving enemies are potentially at least one second closer than it is showing – even more for Marathon/Lightweight enemies.
• 3 – The HBS will not show up people using the Ninja Perk – but does show up Cold Blooded users who will be invisible to UAV. This is probably the number one reason why you should not become reliant on it. While you’re scoping out the area and not picking anything up, I (because I tend to use Ninja a lot) could be coming directly towards you. And while you’re looking at the HBS I could already have spotted you….
• 4 – It’s usefulness is reduced when in buildings with multiple floors as it only shows you the relative distance away and not whether they are on the same level or not.
• 5 – Avoid camping with it. And by camping I mean proper camping. i.e. sitting in the corner of a room with your gun trained at the door. Not because camping is wrong, but because you’ll get killed very easily through camping. Claim an area and patrol it while maintaining a strategic presence with the aid of the HBS.

It’s important when using the HBS to pre-empt the incoming enemy rather than allowing them to come directly to your position. The HBS gives you their relative position so you should move to a point where you have the best chance of winning the engagement by launching a surprise attack.

Here’s a video from Wings of Redemption where he uses the Heart Beat Sensor in conjunction with the Scrambler perk to lure enemies to his position so he can kill them. For most 1337 players the HBS and Scrambler perks are considered worthless, but here they are used to great effect:

But to answer the original question: Is the Heartbeat Sensor for noobs? No it’s not. It’s not any more noobish than any other attachment. Although you’ll always have the complainers who consider any perk/attachment combo that they are not currently using to be noobish. So you know what? Sod them, use what you like. If someone calls you a noob, load up One Man Army, Danger Close and the Pro-Pipe and noob them to death! You’ve bought the game for your enjoyment, not to adhere to another person’s crazed concept of how the game should be played.

You can find more information on the Heart Beat Sensor at the Call of Duty Wiki

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE