I like to think that I’ve been playing PC games for a long time. I’m still quite young, sure, but even so I’ve been around. A couple of years after I learned to read using a video game (Reader Rabbit 2!), I played my first FPS with Wolfenstein 3D. Following quickly after that was the classic Star Wars: Dark Forces, and I’ve been playing video games, mostly shooters, ever since.

I mention this because, despite what any teammates unlucky enough to have me say, I am no noob. I want that made pretty clear. I’m not new to the shooter genre.

So imagine my surprise when I load my first game of Modern Warfare and completely lose my mind. Without doubt, Call of Duty 4 is the most chaotic war simulation I have ever played. I might have heeded the warnings of another writer on this site, but surely such words as “You will die, and you will die immediately, and you die not knowing why” were for mere other people. You know, the mere mortals.

Sure, it might have been a mistake on my part to go for a 50-person team deathmatch COD4 Server as my first game. But hey, I told myself in a fit of self-delusion, go big or go home! Right? Sure.

Compounding this probably poor choice was the server’s selection of map. Given that I was already in way over my head, the choosing of Shipment as my first map is clearly evidence of some higher power screwing with me. For the unaware, Shipment is the dockyard-style map in which players battle in an area approximately the size of a matchbox. There’s no hiding, and the whole map is meant to encourage run-and-gun.

I was installed, updated and patched. I had my custom class armed with the trusty M16 and was about to enter a slugfest with 50 people slugging it out over real estate that could fit in my backyard. And I had no idea what was about to happen. The map loads. I’m autoassigned, select my class, and the round begins.

Fear. Pain. Horror. I’m cut down so often and from so many angles that I begin to get a mild form of vertigo. My world seems to have become one giant grenade. After dying four times, I decide to just start pulling my trigger randomly. I die several more times. Somehow, probably through sheer pity, the CoD system awards me enough experience to earn a promotion. I must have bumped someone into the path of a grenade, Inspector Clouseau style, because I certainly don’t remember shooting anyone.

There’s a gap in my memory about here, but the experience is vaguely shrapnel-shaped.

Soon after, the game ended. My right index finger twitched listlessly. Holy crap. Somehow I had gained a level and even killed a few enemies. And I was DEFINITELY going to find a nice 20-man game and hunker down for a while. As least until my ears quit ringing.

Tags: COD4 basics, COD4 Servers, First COD4 game

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfware News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.