Many of you out there have been asking my why I chose to not play Call of Duty or Halo during the Extra Life event. Others continue to send me invites in constant amounts when I sign onto my 360, only to send me a nasty message when I ignore them and sign into Rock Band 2 instead of putting in Call of Duty.
Well trust me, there is a very good reason that I’ve been staying away from First Person Shooters, and after a short romp in the World at War beta last night, my resolution is firm. For the time being, in this holiday season, I am done with competitive online first person shooters. Take the jump to find out just why.
I’ve never been particularly fond of the First-Person Shooter genre, whether my past skills in CoD4 point to that or not. I’ve always been an RPG or Platformer guy, but since the FPS became popular, I felt I had to get onto the bandwagon, and so I did.
Here’s the stitch: In the ratio of fun to frustration I have in online shooters, frustration wins out every time. I’m not saying I don’t have any fun at all, our gamernights are always a blast. But in an actual competitive match, the mixture of griefers, lag, and being “out of my game” just leads to an overall poor experience.
The main reason I’ve come to this conclusion, though, is the fact that I simply don’t want to devote the time to these games to get in practice and become good enough to compete. In order to stay competitive and at the top of your game, you’re required to dump an insane amount of time into it and log in pretty much every day. With games like Fable II coming out today and Rock Band still whooping me on expert, I simply feel like I could spend that time doing more enjoyable activities.
Take that as you will. I’m sure I’m going to get plenty of nasty comments for basically whining about getting my butt kicked. But after playing games for 24 hours straight and not touching a single online shooter, I feel this is the right call.
Popularity: 1% [?]
hey, good on you.
So, um, I guess that makes… me… the new resident killer for SG! Cool!
Its your choice anyway.
I prefer Third Person^^ like Ghost Recon.
Im still playin GRAW 1 every day.
But If u dont play CoD 4, u could give me ur copy or ?? =)
So you’re playing Rock Band 2?
My Gamertag’s on the SG NA Night list, so if you ever wanna play with me and Edthefreak, send an inv.
wait, leon just gave me an idea! If you don’t wanna play Halo 3 anymore, you could give your copy to Doc. He told me he wanted one the other day. So, you know, if you’re not using it or anything…
I completely agree with you. Those are a lot of the same reasons I don’t play FPS games.
1. Quit Console Gaming
2. Get Team Fortress 2 for PC
3.????
4.Profit!
The “Lag Advantage” is really starting to drive me crazy too.
How was playing Rock Band 2 with MartinBlank2007’s son yesterday?
That kid can shred – and he’s my God Son
I was lucky to get addicted to fps early when I had no responsibilities since I can compete in these matches now with having to try. I do agree with you that the competitive does get a little frustrating. I miss splitscreen when I laughed and played instead of listening to the screamers.
I’m right there with you, I love Rhythm games, platformers, hack-n-slashes, and RPGs way too much to throw all my time into FPSes. Considering the fact that (portal aside) there have been no new game mechanics introduced since goldeneye…. I’m going to give the FPS genre a healthy break as well.
I’m suprised to have so much support. I wrote this to basically vent and was expecting a backlash
I should never underestimate the community.
@Lucifers Jello: I agree 100% with that. Back when it was just me and 3 buddies playing Goldeneye or Halo it was a blast. Now it just feels like a sport, and people treat it as such.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to just casually play FPS games now and days, between those who just outright dominate for whatever reason, be it skill or tons of practice, and those who get upset that you aren’t one who dominates and they’re on your team.
I agree with your assessment that the atmosphere in multiplayer for FPS games has become akin to that of playing a sport and frankly, I don’t see myself sticking around much longer either. Even Halo 3 has lost it’s appeal to me, since if you stop playing for any significant stretch of time, you basically regress to the playing level you started with.
Who has time to devote to one game when so much new and interesting stuff is coming out?
fable 2 ftw
Animath, we got Wrath of the Lich King in only 3 weeks!!! So you should change this to “I declare my independence from all video games not World of Warcraft.” That will keep ya busy for a year.
The way I see it, I have fun, but I suck. And that’s really only for online competitive ones like TF2 etc. I like shooters, like Drake’s Fortune and Mercenaries 2, but that’s because only a single element is shooting, your skill at it won’t make or break the game.
I still want your CoD 4 disc by the way.
=)