Call of Duty and Gaming Links, 16 January 2010

Pretty much sums up my CoD4 experiences...

    We took some lumps playing Modern Warfare 2 last night. I wound up changing all my classes to the SCAR-H. I laid them out like this: 1) SCAR-H, OMA, and Extended Mags (probably ditching this class, as it actually didn't see much use); 2) SCAR-H, OMA, and thermal sight; 3) SCAR-H, OMA, silencer (this was the most frequently used class for me last night); 4) SCAR-H, OMA, and ACOG; and 5) SCAR-H, Scavenger Pro, silencer and Stinger. I turned out to be really, really glad I got a launcher class. I managed to shoot down three aircraft during the course of the night's matches. For killstreak items, I ran with a 3/5/7 combo of UAV, Predator, and Attack Helicopter. Yeah, I like the care package, and sometimes you get something nice. But you have to pull a lot of exposure to retrieve it, the enemy can grab it, and sometimes you get crap like extra ammo or a counter-UAV. I'm finding it better to grab some cover and squeeze out the extra two kills to get the Predator. Sometimes I luck out with a double-kill and go right for the Attack Heli, which, of course, seems to get the most kills for other players. :)

    Matt64 and I ironically had our best games in the same match, the second of the night on Favela. I think everyone on our team had a blazing game, 'cuz we won 7800/2800. Matt64 went 15/1/6 and I went 11/2. I lucked out on a Blindfire achievement and got The Show, Supernatural, and Decimator accolades. Yeah, I know, not that impressive, but it was pretty awesome for a decidedly mediocre player like myself. Unfortunately, it was on this match, too, that I got a couple of accidental "no tag" teamkills, starting an annoying run of accidental TKs. I popped a team-mate in the head as he came up the stairs on the right side of the SAS spawn. There was no tag, just a dark outline, and I had just popped an enemy in the bucket in the exact same spot. My marathon run of bad luck and no skill culminated in a double-team kill with the Predator where I accidentally vaporized Reibo and Matt64 on a match on Underpass later. (Again, just vague dark outlines, no tags. Everyone on the enemy team, pretty much, was running Cold Blooded.) As I wrote in yesterday's blog, I got punishment-killed and sent to long respawn jail.
    There were a few general annoyances along the way, too. On two games, we were cursed with a pre-pubescent Timmy. I swear, he sounded like he was 5 frackin' years old. I might have been too harsh with him when he asked what he should cover and I told him his mouth... But his voice was so supremely annoying that I muted him even tho he was on my team. After two games, he quit, but he was immediately replaced by... another bat-sonar-pitched Timmy! Yikes. Another awkward moment was when one of my team-mates started talking smack to the enemy team in the lobby. We had beaten them on Favela 5500/4500, and one of my younger mates (mid-20ish and female!) made a comment about ass-kicking. Well, of course, they then beat us on Terminal, rocket-sniping us out of our usual covered positions. Our final tally for the night was 13 wins, 9 losses, 1 draw.

    On to the links:

• YouTube: Modern Warfare PC multi-attachment and perks glitch. Not seen in the wild on IWnet yet, AFAIK. 2Old2Play's Rudman99's YouTube channel.
  
• ProductReviews: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Name a better game. Uh, Team Fortress Classic, the Half-life mod Front Line Force, Unreal Tournament, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. All had better basic multiplayer...
• Un-fracking-believable: MW2 up for Writers Guild of America award. WTF? I liked the individual missions in the game a lot (except for the traditional Call of Duty cheapness of bullets flying in from every corner of the map). But the single player campaign story line was ludicrous to the point of breaking my suspension of disbelief. During the Wolverines! missions, I remember thinking this was the first time in my life I'd said "Cool!" and "Bullshit!" about the exact same thing. Seriously, Red Dawn, which was mined for story ideas, was fundamentally more believable than Modern Warfare 2.
• IGN MW2 achievements guide with video walkthroughs for all SpecOps missions. 
• IGN Daily Fix for Friday, 15 January 2010, with the luscious Jessica Chobot.
  
• 1Up video blog by Tina "Teanah" Sanchez: One of a kind MW2 sculpture.
  
• Infographic: Avatar vs. MW2, Billion Dollar Movie vs. Billion Dollar Game. Yeah, but I enjoyed Avatar for 2.5 hrs; I've "enjoyed" MW2 literally for days.
  

    More Gaming Links:

• Electronic Arts to limit Battlefield: Bad Company 2 dedicated servers. If you want to run a dedicated server, you'll have to rent it from an EA-sanctioned list of providers.
  
• BeforeIt'sNews: Halo: Reach details. I missed this info when it first came out 4 days ago... Appy-polly-lodges to all.
• Mass Effect 2 Sci vs. Fi vid on GameTrailers.
• Aliens vs. Predator kill moves vid on GameTrailers. Also as reported on Blues News yesterday, the original Aliens vs. Predator FPS title from 2000, now appropriately retitled Aliens vs. Predator Classic 2000, is available on Steam for 5 bux. I never played the original, so I might actually pick that up, especially since a free multiplayer patch is going to be kludged up.
• Ubisoft CEO explains what went wrong with Avatar the game.
  
• Star Trek Online MMO subscription for life: $40 US.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic confirmed for 2011 release.
• GamesRadar: Games that are doomed to die in 2010.
• IGN: Ultimate Games-to-film Guide.
  
• Humor: What if game achievements existed in real life?
  

    Non-Gaming Links:

• Caveat emptor: As reported in Slashdot and anyone who has ever paid $40 for a $3 HCMI cable can attest, sometimes a high-class brand label can be meaningless. Lexicon and THX have a lot of explaining on how the $500 guts of an Oppo Blu-Ray player was put in a Lexicon case and sold as THX-certified at $3500.
  

PS.