What I'm not Playing

There are a lot of cool multiplayer shooters out there but it was Call of Duty 4 that got me addicted.  I have played most of them, but I can tell you why I'm not playing other games now other than MW2, COD4 and World at War.

Halo 3

I was totally into Halo from Sept 25 07 through middle of 08.  Problem is that, as awesome as the multiplayer is, I reached a stand still in my leveling.  It seems like if you lose 2 games to right opponents on a bad day, then the game punishes you by making you win 5 matches to allow you to get 1 XP to rank up.  I got very frustrated with that.  COD4 was very different. It's primarily a pavlovian thing.  Pretty much every thing you do in COD you get XP for it. So COD won the battle for my time.  Also, Halo 3 feels so much slower paced that COD.  Even when Halo ODST came out and firefight mode, as fun as it was, it did not have any match-making so you had to get a group of friends together to play it.  If any one dropped, game over. That happened one too many times to me right when we were hitting high wave counts. Then I sold it.

Left4Dead

This game is really fun and it's easy to jump in and out of a game, but I have to say that the HalfLife 2 engine coupled with dark "flashlight" levels made me motion sick every time i played.  Not only that but it was frustrating playing through the 3 levels leading up to the "finale level" only to have the cheating AI thrash you at the final 2 minutes of the level keeping you from getting on that chopper or boat or humv, etc.  I tried the L4D2 demo, and it seems smoother and brighter so I might try that during the holidays.

Gears of War 2

I have one thing to say, roll... shotgun...roll...go from cover to cover.  This game is all over the place and really becomes a test of you can do this the fastest.  Yes there's skill in it, but it didn't feel like the shooter I wanted to play.  The first to do what Halo 3 ODST tried with Firefight mode, Horde mode was fun.

Battlefield Bad Company/Battlefield 1943

Gotta tell you I really gave this one a shot. It is very fun, but the maps are so large that even if you end up spawning with your squad, you'd still have a long run to the objective.  It was so much like COD, that I wondered why not just play COD4. So too much running, vehicles are overpowered, especially helicopters (which I could never really figure out how to control them).

Unreal Tournament 3 - too fast, too many bots, no reward system

Vegas2 - cool, but no one is playing it anymore and I think the personalization of your character took you out of the game a bit.

Operation Flashpoint - too serious and realistic

So that's it, that's why I'm so A.D.D. about COD.  Hey that's a cool phrase, gotta remember that.

HeresC