Gamer-at-Arms – The Lost and Damned

Say what you will about Call of Duty, you’ve got to admit that series is damn popular and for a pretty good reason. It’s combination of fast-paced gameplay, moreish multiplayer and seemingly limitless customisation options in terms of perks and weapons captured the hearts of many. It’s little wonder Modern Warfare 2 made it into the record books when it broke the record for the highest first days sales ‒ a record that was subsequently broken by Black Ops and then again by Modern Warfare 3. I don’t know what you make of that statement, but to me it says there’s a hell of a lot of people playing Call of Duty, and potentially not much else.

While I can’t currently say I’ve played Modern Warfare 3 at all, I too played a metric tonne of Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2. The latter once topped my ‘most hours played’ statistics on Raptr, and the former currently holds that spot despite my own best efforts to dethrone it with each new game I buy. It’s tantamount to just how enjoyable Black Ops was when you can burn 250 hours on it in what feels like no time at all. It’s also indicative of just how little I got round to playing other games while I was playing it ‒ a problem that seems to have simply migrated to Battlefield 3.  Considering the sales these games racked up as well, I think it’s a serious likelihood that the majority of gamers may be in a similar position.

I’m going to focus on multiplayer here; you’ll no doubt go out of your way to complete a single player campaign in any game you buy but perhaps you don’t give the multiplayer as much attention as it deserves. Perhaps you don’t pay it any attention at all, in favour of other multiplayer games you already know you love, or that plenty of your friends play on a regular basis. Does it not bother you that half of a game sits on your shelf completely untouched?

It sure frustrates the fuck out of me; at the very least that’s because I had a tendency to do it too, but no more. A couple of weeks before Mass Effect 3 came out, another third person squad-based shooter set in a sci-fi universe was released: its name was Binary Domain. A combination of being cheap as chips (£25!) and having an interesting trust-based squad mechanic made it a day one purchase for me ‒the magnificent and charming French robot called Cain only sweetened the deal.

About a week ago, I found myself in a position where I didn’t think I’d have the time to continue on with one of Binary Domain‘s lengthy single player missions but I still had some time to kill. I was originally going to wait until I’d finished the campaign until I gave the multiplayer a blast, but I thought “ah, what the heck” and promptly jumped right in. Alas it wasn’t the commonwealth pool of multiplayer shenanigans I’d expected; hell, I couldn’t find a single match. Not one. Zero. Nothing. Dead. Luckily when I tried again a few days later I found a match ‒ shame it was populated entirely with players who had reached the level cap. Goes without saying that I got fucking hammered, but c’est la vie.

This sort of situation in general could easily be avoided however, if only more people played more games. Gears of War 3, Ghostbusters, Dead Space 2, Space Marine; all of these games have fantastic multiplayer components, yet through no fault of their own people just aren’t putting as many hours into them as is deserved. Next time you buy a game and it has multiplayer, why not give it a go? I mean, you’ve already bought it ‒ what have you got to lose? There’s more to multiplayer than just Call of Duty, after all.