1P Start

Hello again, people. The first entry in this three-part series, where I took a good long look at some of the people who are ruining Halo 3, was a smashing success (and a good source of shits and giggles on my end). This second entry expands on that, looking at online gaming as a whole, pointing the finger of judgment at those who do all in their power to ruin the game for everyone else.

So sit back, get comfortable, and get your insults ready. If this is anything like last time, a whole lot of you are about to get really, really pissed.

Racism

Before I get to the goofing around, let’s get one thing straight: There is no place for racism in gaming, period. There is absolutely no excuse or justification for using racial, sexist or homophobic slurs during a video game. We’re all on to have fun, and what color/creed/sex you are shouldn’t matter for a damn. If you are one of these people who use this kind of language, you need to look inside yourself and confront your own demons.

Children (again)

I know I mentioned this on the last Comprehensive List, but it’s worthy of a second mention. If you’re under the age of 17 and playing M rated games, guess what: You’re part of the problem. First of all, as I pointed out before if you’re under the age of reason (which, to me, is between 15-17) and your parents aren’t at least supervising what games you’re playing, they have failed you. The ratings system is in place for a reason, and if your nitwit of a soccer mom can’t figure it out for herself what that giant M is, well… sorry, bucko. Your mom reeks of fail.

Secondly, I usually don’t come across any self-respecting, matured thirteen year-olds on Xbox LIVE. I don’t know what it is about online gaming, but I’ve been able to divide the three major online services into the following categories:

Xbox LIVE: Whiny, annoying pre-teens who have yet to experience the touch of a woman.
PlayStation Network: Drunken frat boys so incredibly out of it that they can barely find their own God damn feet.
PC: Pompous thirty-somethings who have this high-and-mighty attitude because they use Ubuntu after reading The Complete Idiots Guide to Linux.

Since I play most of my online gaming on Xbox LIVE, kids take the number one spot.

Now, kiddies, before you get on here and start screaming and crying and throwing a fit because I give you a hard time, do remember one thing: You have no rights. Not until you’re eighteen. So suck it up, shut up and play some more Beautiful Katamari with the rest of the children.

Microphone Abusers

Let’s get something straight right now: The microphone is a tool, designed for you to talk between friends and teammates to further coordinate your gameplan and lead you to victory. It is not a device of torture to inflict on the entire channel while you live out your wannabe rapper fantasies. I think I can speak for the entire internet when I say that no one wants to hear you stutter through a nasaly rendition of “Bitches Ain’t Shit”.

The microphone abuse doesn’t end with idiots who sing, mind you. More often than not you’re going to find yourself getting into a game, and you’re going to have someone who does a whole lot of what I call “retardo speech”. Basically, “retardo speech” is any time you hear a guy get on a microphone, and proceed to clear his throat, whistle, sing, shout incoherantly, or hold a conversation with a third-person on his side of the microphone. I once was playing a game of Saints Row with a guy who was talking with his wife about the neighbor’s dog for twenty minutes. It’s just rude.

I know you think that voice masking option makes you sound like Darth Vader, but in all actuality it just makes you sound like an asthmatic Barry White. I’m happy to see that most people have come to realize this fact, but there are still a few of you who think its cool. You’re probably the same people who still wear Member’s Only jackets.

Something else: If you have surround sound, please… turn that shit down.

Finally, I leave you ALL with this: If you’re on LIVE, or PSN, or on the PC, and we tell you to turn your mic down… TURN YOUR MIC DOWN! It’s not a helpful suggestion, dude — it means you’re too damn loud! Same with if you’re too quiet, and we tell you to turn your mic up so we can hear you. We’re not doing it to fuck with you, dude. We’re doing it so we can hear where the Counter-Terrorists are!

“It’s a tactic!”

Yeah, you guys. I saw this a lot in the previous list. It seems to be the default response when someone calls you out as a punk in a particular game. “It’s a tactic!” I hear you cry as you clutch onto your rockets as you would a teddy bear. More often than not, when the legitimacy of a “tactic” is questioned, these people will usually question your skill and tell you that you need to improve… and ask about your aching vagina.

It’s an interesting argument to put forth, considering that once you reach a certain skill level (using Halo 3 as an example, since it’s almost ALL I play anymore) your “tactics” seem to vanish, leaving competent and skilled players to Grenade/Stick/Bash each other into eternity.

Now, now. Don’t get your panties in a twist and start thinking that I’m trying to tell you how to play. No one is saying you can’t use only rockets, or swords, or hammers, or BFGs, etc.. All I’m saying is that you’re a bitch if you do, and when you DO get fragged (and you will), you are 72% more likely to get teabagged and embarrassed in front of your family, friends and co-workers, according to statistical figures I’ve just made up. So go ahead and use your one-shot-drop weapons. Maybe after the twelveth time you’ve shot someone at point-blank range, thus killing you as well as he, you may realize that it is you who “r teh suxx0rz”.

“That Guy”

We all have come across “that guy”. You know “that guy”. He’s the guy who knows every nook, every cranny, every hiding spot, every spawn location, every weapon location on every map, and no matter how hard you try, he just kicks your ass. He is the New England Patriots of online gaming. He is so good, so meticulous and precise in his dealing of death that he takes away all of the fun of playing the damn thing in the first place!

I hate “that guy” for the same reason that Red Sox fans hate the Yankees. It’s just no fun playing against “that guy”. While I admire that he is indeed so skilled, I just… hate him. Anyone who can bounce a grenade around a corner and stick me in the face with it has spent too much time playing said game. Go outside. Build a model. Watch a movie. Read a book. Listen to music. Exercise. Something! Just put the damn controller DOWN for an hour!

Shit Talkers

Not all of you, don’t get nervous. Just those of you who can’t back it up, which tends to be most of you. Having to listen to you talk mad amounts of shit before a game is bad enough, but after I’ve thoroughly owned your face with my shotgun enough times to unlock an achievement, you lose any right to talk shit. Period. So after the game is over, and you come in dead last, you going “Yeah, bitch! I showed you!” just makes you out to look like a dingle douche.

Yes, “dingle douche”.

Now while this is a big problem in Halo 3, just as it was in Halo 2 and other games like Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, Quake 4, etc., the all-time winner for post-defeat shit talk is easily SOCOM II. “Bitch you ain’t no MVP. You a bitch and I’m gon’ own your noob ass next game!” …this was said to me after a game on the map “Frostfire” by some illiterate fifteen year-old after I had amassed 23 kills. Next game he quit after we SEALs took a 5-0 round lead. To that kid… I imagine you would be about 17 or 18 now. Probably playing Rainbow Six: Vegas or GRAW 2… shall we ever meet again in the virtual field of battle, know this: I’m going to have sex with your entire face. With my M4A1.

Again.

Team Killers

Team Killers are the scum of the galaxy. More so than the Hutts, or the Orion Pirates. Now, not everyone who has killed a teammate is a Team Killer. If you accidentally blew up somebody because you threw a grenade and they got caught in it, fine. It happens to everyone.

Team Killers are those who purposefully hunt down and erradicate their own teammates. This problem has become so popular that there are even internet communities devoted to the gathering and sharing of stories between renouned Team Killers. However, most TKers are just immature sons of bitches who has a grudge against someone else on their team. I was once killed in a Capture the Flag game simply because I had the flag. There was a TKer camping next to where we had to bring the flag, and when we got close he would get us in the face with a shotgun, and return the flag for his own point.

However the most common type of TKer is simply the guy who does it for shits and giggles. An immature little prick who doesn’t get the attention he desires in the public eye so he has to resort to shooting teammates in the back of the head so someone will pay attention to his meaningless and miserable existance. Ironically in most games they get booted, thus cutting off the attention they so seek. These ones, more than the point whores, are the ones who should be taken out back and flogged with extension cords.

Grease Monkeys

Any online game with vehicles has Grease Monkeys. Basically, your typical grease monkey is the guy who thinks he’s slick, so he hops into a vehicle and tries to mow down the competition. Now, it’s one thing to do this in a team game — when you have two teams of players going at it, vehicles are fair game for both sides. This only becomes a problem during free for all matches, and that one lowly son of a bitch who jumps into a vehicle and starts at it with people.

Now, I’ve noticed that you tend to see this either at the beginning of a match or at the end of a match, when someone who lacks any real accuracy is trying to build up an early lead, or trying to get mass amounts of kills in the two-minute window in a last gasp to somehow mane up the fifteen-point deficit that they’ve dug themselves into. The problem with this is that, if the aforementioned rocket whores from the first list don’t get you first, you’re only going to get two or three kills before you’re dispatched — probably by the leader.

Here’s a bit of advice for you guys: Give up. If you’re down 21-4 when you hear the one minute warning, just put the controller down, walk into the kitchen, grab yourself a cola and some Doritos, and get ready for the next game. No matter how many times you miss running me over with that damn Ghost/Humvee/whatnot, you’re still not going to win. So lose with some dignity.

Glitchers/Hackers

You are probably asking why this is so far down on the list, and to that I can only rationalize it by saying that in this day and age of gaming, it’s usually pretty damn hard to exploit a glitch. I know that most glitches that people talk about exploiting require you to jump through so many hoops that you just plain lose interest. In fact, the only game that I can remember from the past few years that truly had a glitch exploitation problem was SOCOM.

If you never played SOCOM, let me explain: On certain maps (usually outdoor maps) if you ran into a corner just right, you could run inside the wall, picking people off from inside the wall while they would shoot blindly into rock, or metal, or whatever. This is a problem in and of itself, but what made this nearly unbearable to SOCOM players was that, when you didn’t have that douche glitching on you, SOCOM turned out to be a really good, really fun game. You glitchers actively participated in the destruction of that game’s online community, and for that I wish only death and illness on your pets.

As for you hacker-types; you little bastards who develop those oh, so cute Auto Target hacks for Counter-Strike… you’re right up there with people who still buy Mega Man games as the worst breed of gamer. You are actively participating in the tainting of the game experience so you can look badass in front of your equally pathetic friends. This particular brand of douche baggery isn’t even worthy of any more of my time, so we move on to our last group…

Ninja Warriors

You didn’t think I would go through this whole list and not make one final Halo 3 mention, did you? Now, I know that the Hayabusa armor is nifty. It was a cool little hidden secret for a little while, but now its just… well, annoying. It’s not cool anymore. At first it was cool, interesting and new. Now it just means you watched a video walkthrough on YouTube.

If you have the Katana, signifying that you’ve achieved all 1000 points, then I’m impresed. As for the rest of you? It’s just not impressing anybody, and you’re not unique by wearing it. It’s like you people who wear all black armor because you think it makes you look cool — it doesn’t. It just makes you look like everybody else.

Next time, in the third and final list, I’m going to be taking a good, long look at groups of people who are ruining the entire gaming industry. Everyone from the aforementioned Mega Man fans, to people who scream about originality in games as they buy yet another FPS, to GameStop. See y’all then.