I guess I’m officially old. When the sequel to Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare video game launched yesterday I was super excited. I took yesterday off in order to play online as late as I wanted to Tuesday and Wednesday.

I played the original Modern Warfare a ton online, mostly “free-for-all,” which pits players against each other. There were other game modes that were team-based, but I preferred the lone wolf style of FFA. I didn’t like my playing skill to handicap an otherwise good team, and I didn’t want to feel like lesser-skilled teammates were pulling me down.

After struggling with my Verizon FiOS-supplied router for over an hour, I finally got connected to Xbox Live!. After a short game patch I was in the multi-player lobby. I joined a game of other new players, and was ready to relive all of the fun I had playing COD4.

I spawned, took two steps, and was killed. I respawned, ran about ten yards, and was killed again. And so on. And so on.

Now, when you play a game like this online there is an adjustment period where you learn the maps, and the mechanics, and what not. But something felt different. It turned out that the “difference” was an increase in weapon damage and game tempo that I disliked. I sold my copy of MW2 after five hours of gameplay.

Here’s what went wrong.
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Hopefully by the time you read this, Amazon.com will have delivered my copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360. This is the first game I’ve purchased on launch day in recent memory. I think Everquest was the last game I bought at launch, which would have been in 1999.

Modern Warfare 2 is a first person shooter. There are many game modes, the vast majority of which are only available online versus other human players. The single player (offline) game mode seems to be expanded from the original. The trailer below is from the single player campaign.

Playing online is a quasi-role playing game experience; you start at level one with your choice of three “classes” that have different weapons packages. As you level up by killing opponents and helping team mates, you can select different equipment and customize your gear. While I am unsure of the details for MW2, the game will operate in roughly the same manner.

I played the first Modern Warfare, COD4, to the point that I canceled my subscription to GameFly, the Netflix-like video game rental service. In preparation for the game’s release, I’m taking tomorrow off at work. I haven’t decided if I want to finish up the single player campaign first, or jump right into multi-player. There will definitely be an advantage for starting the online component early. Learning the key points around the map is one of the most important parts of the game.

I already have my article typed up for tomorrow and it’s set to auto-post, so if I don’t come up for air for 48 hours you’ll know where I’ll be.

Call of Duty 4 is my favorite Xbox 360 game of all time, and I am anxiously awaiting the launch of Modern Warfare 2 in November. Infinity Ward, makers of the Call of Duty “even” numbered franchises, released this trailer of the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3. Watch it and then come back.

Okay, a few thoughts:

1. The title of the trailer mentions the AC-130 gunship … but there was only a few seconds of footage of the new unlockable kill streak reward. What gives? What happens to you when you activate the AC-130 mode? Do you stand still with a lightbulb over your head, like in COD4 when calling down an airstrike? This shit’s important!
2. The game looks much better than COD4, which I thought looked pretty good when I first bought it. The biggest thing that stood out in my mind was the greenhouse scene in the trailer; the detail and lighting is a lot more vivid than the original Modern Warfare.
3. The weapons look great, does anyone know what the rifle with the radar readout on the left side is supposed to be?
4. I like that the overall team score in the lower left hand corner now has a very simple “WINNING” or “LOSING” status. It would be even better if you could customize the user interface. I don’t really care about the score, I just care about winning or losing. If I could get rid of the score altogether I’d do that in a hot second.
5. I don’t like that there are a ton of status messages that appear right in the center of the screen. Yeah, it’s cool to see that you just stopped DonkeyRapingShitEater from an 11-kill killstreak, but do I really need that flashed up in big letters in the center of my HUD?

   

6. Is it November yet? This might be the first game I’ve ever pre-ordered and scheduled a day off for.

It is safe to say I grew up with video game consoles. My father bought us a Sears-branded Atari 2600 in 1980, and I have been hurling cartridges and optical discs in anger ever since. I’ve also watched the technology progress. I remember when it was a big deal that the Playstation 2 had an optional network adapter; now every modern console has some way to connect to a home network. Due to my economic situation, I now have four consoles instead of just one or two. How is one supposed to connect all those devices to the network, especially when most homes don’t have a CAT-5 jack in the family room?

I normally diss on Best Buy and other big-box stores and order directly from NewEgg. However, Best Buy’s Dynex-brand 5-port switch is an excellent value, especially for hooking multiple consoles up to one network uplink. Yes, the Dynex isn’t going to perform as well as a better brand, but with only one console running at a time, who cares if the switch’s routing capabilities are top-notch?
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I was very excited when the original Rock Band came out for the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, I was unlucky enough to get TWO sets of faulty drums. I wound up returning Rock Band for a refund.

Fast forward a year. Rock Band 2 is due for release, and features some improvements to the game and the hardware. I love rhythm games like Donkey Konga and Taiko Drum Master, and couldn’t resist giving Rock Band 2 a try.
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Left4Dead is a co-operative, multi-player shooting game set in a zombie apocalypse. It will be available for Windows and the Xbox360 on November 18, 2008. I have anxiously watched the game’s progress. My love for the zombie genre is well documented, and the concept of blasting the undead with three of my friends seems too good to be true.

Thanks to a tip from Ars Technica member and Gibberish reader Agreschn, I was able to get early access to the game’s demo. I debated playing the game after getting my access key for two days. I was disappointed by the 360′s zombie breakout hit Dead Rising, and the fear of disliking Left4Dead was almost greater than my interest in playing the demo ahead of everyone else.

I also had two competing objectives when I played the demo: I wanted to write as much as possible about the game, but I didn’t want to spoil the experience. Some demos are just a tutorial, some are a random chapter of the game, or is a special-made level. Left4Dead starts you off at the beginning of the storyline: you are one of four humans trying to escape a city overrun by zombies. A helicopter passes by, loudspeakers blaring the location of an evacuation point. I played the first level a few times and the second level once. My initial observations may change once I play the full game, but here they are so far.
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I saw this on TeamXbox today. A new iteration of Call of Duty, a first person shooter video game franchise, is due out later this year. This particular version of the game is set in World War II.

Question: Given the glut of WWII-themed games, how do you keep the excitement level high?

Answer: Zombies.

Bonus points: Nazi zombies.
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You can create a gamer profile on the Xbox 360. This profile allows you to keep track of your friends, game achievements, etc. Since I have two Xbox 360s in the house, I had to come up with an easy way to move my gaming profile from one console to the other. Microsoft sells memory cards in various sizes to do this, and to also save games. Since both of my 360s have hard drives, I could get away with the smallest card available, which is 64MB. I didn’t want to pay retail for it (about $30) so I went to eBay.

I bought a new 64MB unit from a longtime eBay seller. The listing stressed the unit was new several times in the ad. I wound up buying it for $14 shipped. I was slightly surprised when the memory unit arrived a few days later. It wasn’t in retail packaging, and had an inventory sticker on the plastic case. I immediately thought the unit was refurbished.
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After considerately committing suicide a week before the warranty expired, Microsoft sent me a new (at least to me), Xbox 360 Elite as a replacement. The total turnaround time was a week, partially because UPS took a few extra days trying to deliver my busted console to Microsoft’s repair center in Texas.

My replacement unit was built in June of 2008, which I am pretty sure is still a Falcon motherboard. The Falcon is the second-generation motherboard for the 360 Elite. It features smaller chipsets that may increase reliability by reducing heat within the console. Looks like I missed the Jasper revision by a few months, but my 360 Core replacement will probably shit itself in time to pick up either a Jasper or even Opus revision.

Here’s to another year of gaming!

My birthday present to myself last year was an Xbox 360 Elite. I wanted a 360 for awhile, especially after Catan and Carcassonne were announced for Xbox Live!, but I had heard a lot about reliability issues. After almost a year of trouble-free service, my 360 started crashing on Thursday.
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