For those of us that live on the arse end of the World, populated mostly by greenie tourists and penguins most online games are a constant lesson in patience and frustration, while attempting to deduce where Target A will be in the half second between firing your gun (C) and the key press registering in America (USA).
One series has always been the pony residing in a barn full of horse manure (shit) and that is the Call Of Duty series or COD (like the fish).
Where locating a Halo game with a ping under half an hour may take something approaching two days, COD has always offered the kind of reliable quick action in the style of a Manchester street nightwalker, provided you forked out for the extras from the pimp, I mean ISP.
While COD4 can suffer from lag to a greater degree than the previous games in the series, playing a game hosted in Australia does allow Americans the kind of lagged to death experience in pain, disappointment and shame normally reserved for us antipodeans (wiki it).
While clearing up the whole ranked gaming experience from COD3 into a nice well-organised leveling system COD4 does have one primary weakness. The requirement to use the Xbox Dashboard to mute players.
Given that 90% of the American gaming public are aged 12 this does make it terribly frustrating given that all the 12 year old American boys seem to sound just like 12 year old girls.
As you progress through the game you acquire new weapons and perks which allow you to develop new and interesting methods of annihilation on the "noobs".
Until level 55.5 when you access Prestige mode, Here you get to trade in all of your hard-earned weapons for a shiny medal and the chance to start off again as a Private with a big "Kill me quick" sign painted on your arse.
The range of different game play options makes for a bit of entertainment until you discover that the half a dozen maps really become no fun when playing against the afforementioned 12 year old American Boys who have figure out how to climb onto the supposed inaccessible roof of building A while throwing random grenades at point B to kill you C while the rest of us were out having sex with girls.
This is amplified by the balance issues where some weapons provide ridiculous accuracy and damage while things like the 50 cal sniper rifle often fail to provide the instant kill you'd expect from a 120g projectile traveling at Mach 3. (E = MV2)
All in all COD is a good effort and it's nice to see a solid shooter without fighting off waves of Nazis and an honourable mention for the Poms (British) who fought Hitler for 2 years before the Yanks even got in on the act. A mute button would be nice though, preferably bound to the left trigger...
One series has always been the pony residing in a barn full of horse manure (shit) and that is the Call Of Duty series or COD (like the fish).
Where locating a Halo game with a ping under half an hour may take something approaching two days, COD has always offered the kind of reliable quick action in the style of a Manchester street nightwalker, provided you forked out for the extras from the pimp, I mean ISP.
While COD4 can suffer from lag to a greater degree than the previous games in the series, playing a game hosted in Australia does allow Americans the kind of lagged to death experience in pain, disappointment and shame normally reserved for us antipodeans (wiki it).
While clearing up the whole ranked gaming experience from COD3 into a nice well-organised leveling system COD4 does have one primary weakness. The requirement to use the Xbox Dashboard to mute players.
Given that 90% of the American gaming public are aged 12 this does make it terribly frustrating given that all the 12 year old American boys seem to sound just like 12 year old girls.
As you progress through the game you acquire new weapons and perks which allow you to develop new and interesting methods of annihilation on the "noobs".
Until level 55.5 when you access Prestige mode, Here you get to trade in all of your hard-earned weapons for a shiny medal and the chance to start off again as a Private with a big "Kill me quick" sign painted on your arse.
The range of different game play options makes for a bit of entertainment until you discover that the half a dozen maps really become no fun when playing against the afforementioned 12 year old American Boys who have figure out how to climb onto the supposed inaccessible roof of building A while throwing random grenades at point B to kill you C while the rest of us were out having sex with girls.
This is amplified by the balance issues where some weapons provide ridiculous accuracy and damage while things like the 50 cal sniper rifle often fail to provide the instant kill you'd expect from a 120g projectile traveling at Mach 3. (E = MV2)
All in all COD is a good effort and it's nice to see a solid shooter without fighting off waves of Nazis and an honourable mention for the Poms (British) who fought Hitler for 2 years before the Yanks even got in on the act. A mute button would be nice though, preferably bound to the left trigger...
