Call of Duty and Gaming Links, 15 January 2010

YouTuber jwr89's lucky claymore shot!

    Tonight is Modern Warfare 2 night! I've been whoring One Man Army lately. (No, not for tubing.) I've basically got things laid out with the SCAR-H as the primary on all my classes. One has the grenade launcher; one with thermal scope (for maps like Wasteland), one with silencer, and one with the RDS. I'm going to sit down and figure out which ones to ditch so I have a better variety of match options. I already have a seldom-used SMG class that I might sacrifice, as well.
    As is a venerable Joker tradition, any time I've had to go on the run, I've gotten fragged. I'm in a quandary whether to just accept that my 48 year-old reflexes aren't going to get any better or to resign myself to incessant ass-pounding to get better at the game. At this point, I'm inclined to the former. My twitch play days are behind me. (Unless, of course, I hit lotto and suddenly have all the time in the world to just play on the Xbox... :D)
    Teamwork is the thing. I'm not some uber-player, but I can co-operate, communicate, and support my team-mates. I try to do nothing stupid that would hurt the team's chances of winning. Sure, personal stats are important, but the thing is helping the team win. I hate when I have a really good game and still lose the match. 
    I'm wondering whether I should just quit hardcore, too. I don't think I've ever seen a hardcore Modern Warfare 2 (or CoD4, for that matter) video. Thinking on it now, I don't think the uber-players who post their vids would do as well on hardcore. I constantly see the YouTube guys shooting straight at their team-mates to get the enemy behind them, throwing frags, or tubing blindly at a mass of both friendly and enemy players. You just can't do that on hardcore. You'll be punishment-killed and sent to the long-respawn timeout jail in a jiffy. Killstreak items have less of an impact in hardcore for one major reason: You can kill your team-mates accidentally with them. On the rare occasions I get the AC-130, it's less about raining death down on the enemy, than avoiding atomizing my team-mates.

    I'm not saying hardcore is better, it's just different. I like the uncrowded HUD of hardcore. (Though, I think Infinity Ward should have the compass on the hardcore HUD to facilitate communication and teamwork; I tweeted JD_2020, the Treyarch CoD: WaW community guy, about this, FWIW.) The non-hardcore game puts a premium on aiming, since the health is so much higher (100 vs. 40 pts.). I like that I can kill in one shot from an SMG. My aim sucks, so I tend to pray and spray, and that doesn't work as well on non-hardcore. But, then, non-hardcore players never have to worry about accidentally massacring their team, either.
    On to the links:

• Yesterday's blog brain cramp echoed on GamerCrave. Yikes!
• YouTube: jwr89's Modern Warfare 2 Top Kills of the Week, Week 2. And, as linked in today's pick: Super-lucky thru-the-wall claymore shot!
  
• Call of Duty DLC was PSN's biggest seller.
  
• Modern Warfare 2 PC patched through Steam.
• South African console gaming league supports MW2 for online tourneys.
• Peter Jackson hooked on Modern Warfare 2.
• Merch: Xbox 360 storage locker. (Or, as the Joystiq article puts it, a convenient carry case for thieves.)
  

    More Gaming Links:

• GiantBomb Army of Two: The 40th Day quick look video. GameSpot video review.
  
• IGN Top Halo kills of the week. Meanwhile, Co-Optimus has an article I missed on the Halo: Reach class system, etc. I'd love for this game to be faster (a sprint button would be nice), with more weapon damage, especially the human weapons. The suppressed SMG from Halo 3: ODST sucked.
  
• Electronic Arts has been making a lot of buzz with news about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and the Medal of Honor series reboot. It's also been plagued with financial issues, as seen in previous blog links. This Slashdot story links to a bizpunk op-ed which takes EA to task for its allegedly self-incurred woes.
• No dev console in PC version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It's an anti-hacking measure; since prior games have been console-only, they haven't had console functions (typically the tildis ~ on PCs), either.
• Valve looking for user-created items in Team Fortress 2.
  
• Nintendo has its brief Wiiversal of Fortune: Mario outsells Modern Warfare 2 in December (PS3 and Xbox versions, combined).
• Shooter fans, we're a decided minority. Check out the NPD list of 2009's top console and PC titles, courtesy of Edge Online. There are only 3 shooters on the console top 10, and 2 of them are Modern Warfare 2.
• Bayonetta 1Up community accolades. She's still teh hot with those glasses and that little beauty mark. GamaSutra Op-Ed: The Cultural Clash of Bayonetta. Still, she's teh hot. :D
  
• First Person Tetris. Reportedly, Robert Bowling's latest addiction.
  

    Non-Gaming Links:

• Slashdot roundup: Robotics professor fears rise of military robots. More disturbingly: Obama appointee Sunstein favors infiltrating online groups. Like those that don't agree with his political opinions. Douchebag.
• Nintendo douchebag Reggie Fils-Aimé on why Wii owners won't care that they can't stream Netflix HD on their Wii.
  

PS.