Medal of Dishonor

Due to the military outcry (read:mostly NOT veterans) EA decided to change the name of the terrorist faction in Medal of Honor. Apparently the military officials decided not to let the game be sold on base due to it’s insensitivity to those who have fought in the war, and the families of those that have died.

Sadly for EA the exclusion of the playable Taliban in multiplayer still wasn’t enough for the Army to remove the ban. Apparently the inclusion of ANY type of terrorist faction was just too much. Unless you are Modern Warfare apparently.

My take on all of this? It’s asinine. I was in the military and I’ve known people, friends, who never came back from the war. You know what? I’m insulted that the Army high command thinks so little of it’s troops that they don’t believe that they can make their own informed purchase decision.

I have never been to any base where the command forced me to buy and play a video game that I didn’t want to play. If someone finds it offensive, fine, don’t buy it. They sell booze on base and that is offensive to some, doesn’t mean you should take away that choice for others. Even if they CAN get it off base.

The worst part of it all for me though is that this shows how little the military cares about it’s veterans. What about the families of those that died during World War 1 (I meant 2)? How many games have been sold on base about that? How about Vietnam? Both Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops are going to be set there and I haven’t seen anything about their being banned. What about the single player? What about Russian American’s in the Army? They sold Modern Warfare, with the No Russian level on base.

I’m not asking for the banning of more video games. I’m saying that if you are going to ban one game because it is related to war then you better ban them all. Especially those games that seem to imply that all Italian Americans living in Brooklyn are plumbers of questionable practice.

In short: If you don’t know enough about what you are banning, don’t ban it until you do. Most veterans I have talked to have zero problem with the game. Those that do have a problem are smart enough to just not buy it. As a veteran myself I’m disgusted by the lack of intelligence and thought put into the Army giving it’s soldiers the finger.

Modern Warfare 2: Fail Server

I am officially done playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as of last night. It started out like any other, I made level 50 and was just having fun getting achievements and enjoying the fact that I was improving in the game after a very long time playing it.

Then I noticed that I was suddenly level 70 and had all of the achievements. Did I just enter into a state of perfect gaming and WTFPWN everyone until it happened without me even noticing? No. What happened was that apparently one of the servers I was on was a hack server, and it boosted me up like that. The only hack server I knew I was on told me as I loaded in, and I loaded back out immediately, so I don’t think it was that one.

Anyway, since you can’t really put in a ticket, and this seems to be a huge problem, the only way to fix it is to delete my character data from steam and start over at level 1, without access to any of the guns or abilities I had unlocked over the months of playing.

In short, some terrible person effectively ended my enjoyment of the game, all thanks to Modern Warfare 2 not using any dedicated servers. Instead it picks a person to host the server out of everyone in the match, and if that person is running hacks, then everyone who joined (without knowing mind you) gets screwed.

Maybe I’ll finally get Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

PC is better for FPS

According to a story at Kotaku more people are playing the PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2 than are playing the XBox 360 and PS3 versions combined. COMBINED. That’s amazing when you consider the majority of Modern Warfare 2 players are on consoles.

It is NOT amazing when you consider the fact that first person shooters simply control better on the PC. This isn’t a jab at consoles here, it’s simply the truth. There are more buttons and in general better controls for PC FPSs than for their console counter parts. Games are “toned down” to get in line with console standards now days, which is a real shame.

Sure it’s cheaper to get a console than to buy a state of the art gaming PC, but not nearly as satisfying. There is just something about being able to better control games that rely on precise controls that makes the PC just better. Apparently the players of Bad Company 2 agree.

Bad Company 2 players better than Modern Warfare 2 players? You better believe it.