It’s been four months since Activision unleashed their unholy experiment in server-less shooting, and the results are in:  Modern Warfare 2 is a catalog of disaster. A collection of horrific mistakes inflicted on more players than there are people in Switzerland - although the Swiss don’t get pissed off with connection issues and emigrate to Bad Compania.  It’s earned Activision sales in excess of three billion dollars, i.e. more than the GDP of Greenland, so the important question is why don’t they give a rat’s ass about players?

He’s looking for a Mod to do something about the Javelin Guy.

The answer’s simple: players are expensive, annoying, and probably don’t exist as a word in Activision HQ because “sales” sounds so much nicer.  Which is why Activision have been on a quest to get rid of the troublesome things since acquiring Infinity Ward, the goose that laid the golden egg which revolutionized a stale shooter market.  First they pulled Call of Duty from the goose, painted Treyarch the same color and shouted “Make something just as good while doing exactly what we say!”

Then they went back to Modern Warfare but stripped out the most important multiplayer bit - online shooting without server control is like driving without gearbox control - and as soon as it became one of the bestselling games of all time anyway, they very publicly fired the people responsible.  Over the resulting hullabaloo they’re insisting that there will be another CoD next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and then for bonus points they erected a vast neon sign above their headquarters reading “CALL OF DUTY IS JUST A BRAND WE CAN STICK ON A BOX TO SELL WHATEVER WE LIKE.”  Effectively.

So what can we expect in the conversion of Modern Warfare servers from “Amazing shooter” to “Activision’s Q3 budget Report Powerpoint Item #2″?  Well you can permanently forget that server business for a start.  Activision’s accountants cunningly calculated that developing both a PC and XBox 360 version of a game is twice is expensive, and all beancounters know nothing more expensive can ever be good in any way.

So they chose to make the XBox 360 version for both systems.  Because why on Earth would you improve both with the option of private servers, where players can control their games, set up specific matches, or hang out with their friends?  That’s practically cyber-communism!  Private servers and modifications only leads to terrible things like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress (and TF2), insane alternate playmodes like prop hunt or highlander, none of which provide money for Activision.  Just stupid non-accountable things like “happy customers”.  If Activision want good alternate games, they’ll buy the companies making them, sack key staff, and then sell you the results as DLC and you’ll like it.

Because the scruffy “paying players” no longer have any real control of any kind, this turns every server into a wild west frontier town where civilians have their arms tied behind their backs and the nearest Sheriff lives in Antarctica.  The combination of random match-ups, code more hideously flawed than the elephant man, and the fact that the average online person is an asshole - the entire reason we build private servers and friends lists - turned Modern Warfare 2 into a “What magic powers do you want douchebags to destroy you with today?” competition.  Infinite ammo?  Suicide bombing?  The Flash charging around with a knife?  Whatever it is, you’d better enjoy it until the patch is carved from stone and everyone complaining about it is banned!

Oh, and if they happened to make a game where the knife outperforms an assault rifle?  Pay $59.99 for the sequel and hope they fixed it, because they aren’t going to do a damn thing!  They’ve announced plans for a CoD game every year without exception - why would they fix a game six months after release?  That might mean you keep playing it!

Who do you think they are, Valve?

Infinity Ward may have turned their back on the PC, half-baking an XBox adaptation which doesn’t even trust you to turn on your own game server, but Modern Warfare 1 is alive and well. Better than ever, in fact, as a whole host of players realise that if they’re ever going to get more Modern Warfare server content they’ll have to make it themselves. So they did. For free. You’re welcome.

Here we see four upgrades for your Modern Warfare server which won’t require XBox Live, won’t cripple your controls, and don’t treat you like a child who isn’t trusted with the console commands.

1. Galactic Warfare

This Star Wars style add-on is the most exciting Modern Warfare project to date and only possible with modding. Because it requires dedicated work, a real love of both subjects, and if anyone official tried to make money from it the resulting Lucasfilm lawsuit would make a Tactical Nuke look like a healthkit.

German modding group Black Monkeys have done a stellar job: to watch the trailer is to feel a deep longing for the public beta (coming soon). It isn’t the perfect Stormtrooper vs Rebel skins, or how perfectly the Iraqistan dust technologies of Modern Warfare match Mos Eisley, or even the sheer nerd joy of a Star Wars game that won’t suck: it’s the sounds. They’ve recoded all the weapons with authentic Star Wars sounds and visible blasters, and that alone makes this the most perfect mod. But be warned: the psychological shock of seeing a Stormtrooper actually hit someone while firing is pretty severe.

2. Frontlines

The Hajas M0D1F1C4T10N5 group can be forgiven their outrageously 7334 name by dint of pure awesome. They’re a perfect example of how internet rage should be applied: instead of whining about Modern Warfare 2 and playing it anyway like everyone else…

This is why no-one listens to gamer complaints

…they’ve already built their own sequel. And since Infinity Ward aren’t interested, they’re going to keep expanding on it. The Frontlines mod is everything the official sequel isn’t. It doesn’t slap your hands away from the server controls like a naughty child, it offers complete control of your own game server (and really shouldn’t be something extra in any game.) Twenty eight new game modes, optional medic and help systems, and even a full-blown War mode - where an evening of clan battles can be turned into one huge conflict to provide a real motivation for everyone involved to see it through.

3. Zombies

You knew it had to happen. It’s impossible for anything to exist online without zombies getting involved eventually. At least EHD’s Zombie Mod allows you to simulate an outbreak where the survivors aren’t idiots who insist on returning for pets, refusing to believe in zombies, and the unforgivable careless of not being fully trained SAS operatives with full air support. Taking it turn about as the unarmed undead or armed anti-undead (aka alive) players you gain a true appreciation of team work. And which end of an MP5 is the wrong one.

4. Stargate

In proof that almost anything that can exist eventually will if we only keep the internet on long enough, you can equip your COD4 server with a Stargate. Replicator Warfare is an ambitious total conversion aiming to bring multiple locations and weapons from the series into the well-established Modern Warfare server community. Since SG-1 was one of the only sci-fi series to actually feature real soldiers using guns it’s a good match, but you shouldn’t hold your breath for the mod: there’s been no news for over half a year, usually an indicator that the initial excitement has fizzled out. But that excitement did give us one awesome map!

Stargate Command! A fun location to add to your map rotation, and an objective which makes defending nuke silos look like slapping terrorists’ hands away from the cookie jar.

Let’s be honest:  first person shooters live on PC.  They might survive as crippled console versions, thumbsticks turning at the same speed and accuracy as the average wheelchair, hooked up to auto-aiming life support to stave off Terminal Lack Of Mouse, but it’s only on real computers that the ability to aim actually means something.

Second honesty: single player is practice.  That’s all.  It might be the most cinematic practice you’ve ever seen, with incredible set pieces and innovative action scenes allowing to you to indulge in every Hollywood fantasy, but as long as the enemies are AI it’s just a glorified Tutorial.  You played through Modern Warfare for the fun, World at War for access to the Zombie servers, but it’s all sort of pointless unless you’re plugging people so that victory means “You’re better than someone”, not “The computer was programmed to let you have that.”  That’s what game servers are for, and that’s why we’re looking at the most popular multiplayer FPSs:

1.  Counter-Strike

If this is news then please, stop wasting time here and get your ass onto a Counter-Strike server right now.  Right now there are more people playing CS than there are holding hands, which might sound like it says something scary about society until you realise romance never killed any terrorists.  Various versions take up the first, second and seventh positions on the most-played list - and that’s not just shooters, that’s in terms of every game Valve has (to say nothing of the thousands of pirate players out there).  Counter-Strike: Source is now outperforming 1.6 servers (despite the complaints of purists), and even the relatively unpopular Condition Zero servers are stuffed with several thousand players at all times.  Or to put it another way: statistically speaking, Counter Strike is more popular than Shakespeare.

2.  Call of Duty 4

Things can get a little hectic

Modern Warfare servers continue to crush even their own sequel, with World at War servers lagging behind because of “Less impressive weapons”, “Not being made by Infinity Ward” and the all-important “Being yet another World War II game even though the reason we were excited before was because Modern Warfare didn’t do that” factor.  Cod4 is the top FPS on X-fire’s total playtime charts ranking only behind World of Warcraft overall - and ranking below WoW in playtime is like ranking below the universe in size.

3.  Team Fortress 2

It’s all about class balance

Valve’s magnum opus of online play, and proof that a decade of development time pays off.  Team Fortress 2 servers rank second only to Counter-Strike on Valve’s charts, and even outperforms Football Manager 2009, the biggest non-shooting-people-in-the-face title on their service.  For some reason.  The constant addition of new maps, fixes and unlocks keeps the population pumped up, although it’s still a factor of four behind even the closest Counter-Strike game.  But then, many religions have less devout followings than CS.

4.  Left 4 Dead

This game is fun

Multiplying the number of players by the average game bodycount, L4D servers shoot through three million zombie corpses an hour.  It seems those protesting the sequel were an extremely vocal minority, with most players far too busy “actually playing the game” and “enjoying themselves” to waste much time on such silliness.  It also means that at this very second there are at least four kilo-Louii running around with machine guns.

5.  Day of Defeat

There’s a slight learning curve

Ruggedly hanging in at number five are the Day of Defeat servers (both Source and old-school) - guilty of being set in the same time period as 90% of all known games, but at least with the excuse of coming from a time before the problem wasn’t quite so bad.  It also shares the status of being a Half Life modification, meaning that the altered adventures of Gordon Freeman literally have the entire FPS table surrounded.

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

Game servers sometimes shove you into impossible situations and rate you on your reaction.  Unlike Star Trek, cheating isn’t an admirable response - you’ll either be banned or, worse, NOT be banned and become one of those people who enjoys running around while their computer plays the game for them.  Making this one of the few situations were being caught and punished, or even being killed by a freak lightning strike, is preferable to getting away with it.

But how do you know when you’re in an impossible situation?  What signs warn you that it’s time to switch servers?

Team Fortress 2:  Doctor Doctor

This team could be made invulnerable to damage and still lose.

The worst waste of time in the world is waiting while you’re “Sending Client Info”, only to find a four-sniper team when you connect.  You’d be better off trying to teach a gorilla the trombone, which at least that has potential for the funniest YouTube and the funeral stories ever, depending on the patience of your gorilla.

Logging on to a TF2 server and becoming whatever your team needs is a great way to play, but Medicking a Scout-Sniper-Spy side is just getting in Darwin’s way.  Anyone who prefers a second spy to a medic are better off dead, and when your defenders have more snipers than engies?  They wouldn’t recognise co-operation if Sesame Street hired the A-Team to beat them up.

Correct response: Hit that “Disconnect” option like you found it stealing your wallet and go find an un-idiotic server.

Call of Duty 4:  Crates of Death

Call of Duty server doom-identification is extremely easy: do you see a collection of crates?

Shipment is the antithesis of everything Modern Warfare servers are about, as well as being an excellent commentary on the horrors of war (because even when you win, you lose).  Those who score on Shipment have a tendency to make with the Martyr and fling Frag x 3 as soon as they spawn - in other words, they’re the scum of the server.  You could do the same thing, just like you could win a street fight against a drug addict by losing your job and getting tough by living under bridges and picking fights with hobos for a while.  It’s not worth it!

Correct response: Bring out whatever weapon you haven’t achievement-ed yet and just let rip.  There are no tactics, teamwork or anything resembling justice on this map - you’ll die utterly and only because someone else knows how to work the grenade key - but it’s an excellent reaction test and pretty much free target practice.

Counter-Strike:  Clan-tastic

There are few things more fatal than arriving on a clan-stacked Counter-Strike server, and none the average person can get at.  You’d have to juggle sharks inside an active volcano to die even nearly as fast.  Some clans have been playing since 1.0, and if they decide to be unsporting about it there’s literally nothing you can do - you can’t even take yourself out, because even when you’re actually holding a machine gun and grenades they can still come and kill you quicker and more efficiently than you could do it yourself.

Correct response: While “one brave soul taking on impossible odds” is usually the entire point of a shooter, this is the time to disconnect and find another CS server.  If they’ve decided to open their clan server to the public just to shred all who come in, that’s their problem - real pros engage in clan matches against other pros, or randomly assign themselves mixed teams to practice against each other.  Those who stack a full clan against random pubbies are like pro wrestlers proving they can beat up everyone at a playground - they’re right but they’re tragic.

Video games have come a long way in forty years - the average controller has more buttons than the first computers, and the internet connects you to so many people Nintendo are terrified to let you do anything but press “A”.  But what does the future hold for those of us who live in online game servers?  What do we want from future technology?

1.  A wargame where jumping like a tazed rabbit doesn’t confer a tactical advantage

The Call of Duty series creates an incredibly realistic environment, equips you with authentic weapons, has graphics so advanced that ghillie suits work, and then prances all over that with players leaping like turbo-boosted kangaroos.  The only way a marine could jump that high in full kit is by standing on a claymore, and in real life, a terrorist whose panic reaction to an MP5 is jumping?  He’ll be that soldier’s “funniest confirmed kill I ever had”.

On CoD4 servers you can be killed by expert players who bounce and crouch like fast-forwarded gymnasts.  An amphetamined-Mario couldn’t keep up with them.  You’re pouring machine gun fire right into them, and when they land behind your corpse after a triple inversion somersault you expect them to score 6.0 for Grace, 5.9 Agility, and 0.0 in Realities of War.  Halo servers technically suffer this problem even worse, with ten-tonne armored space marines leaping like they have trampoline-simulators in their futuristic space boots, but the great thing about cyborg soldiers fighting a race of space-mushrooms is that it never claimed to be realistic.

2.  Mice which administer electrical shocks to people who miss five times in a row but still play Sniper

If you’re into First Person Shooters, you’re either excited about the Modern Warfare 2 trailers or you just lied about the first part of that sentence. Shame on you. Modern Warfare 2 is the latest in the incredibly popular Call of Duty series, even though it claims nothing to do with Call of Duty at all.

It’s the embodiment of the CoD4/World at War split. The fact is that Infinity Ward owns Call of Duty - never mind paperwork, or licenses, or any silly matters of “legal possession.” Anyone on any CoD4 server, ever, will tell you that their super-tight shooter made the series theirs forever. The fact that Treyarch made another game after that (a rather fine World War II shooter in its own right) really doesn’t really enter in. Though there are thousands on World at War servers who’d disagree.

What do the trailers tell us? As multi-players, not a whole lot. There are a whole bunch of single-player factors like the return of Soap, the shadow of Zakhaev, civilians, snowmobiles, and various other things about as likely to affect online play as a lead-lined box in a Farady cage. What we want to know is: what can we expect on the next generation of Modern Warfare servers?

For one thing: brilliance. The developers have stated that they’re thinking of multiplayer this time - which implies they created the single sharpest multiplayer shooter in existence by accident last time, some sort of hilarious software-coding slapstick with people flailing at keyboards and hitboxes without really trying. More than that, they created the world’s first MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter). You’ve already got levels and unlocked abilities, persistent between different “quests” (different modes and opponents on different CoD4 servers) - the only things you’d need to add to create a full MMO are the crappy bits: walking from mission to mission, talking to people to buy stuff, shooting hundreds of things that aren’t other people to level up.

There are a few elements from the trailer which could be multiplayable. The first are the riot-shields, deployed (to virtually no effect) in a crowded battle. Any counter-strike server veterans will tell you that the riot shield is slightly less use than just gluing yourself to a wall, without the increased stability. We can hope that Infinity Ward will balance it a bit better. The clear panelling is a definite step forward, meaning you no longer sacrifice both your gun AND your eyes for the ability to crouch until you’re shot in the side anyway, but since it usually means “Give up your primary weapon” it’s unlikely to be a popular option.

The key to whether this is a new game or just a level pack will be in the integration of modern elements. If it hadn’t been half as good as it was, CoD4 would have scored enormously simply for not being set in World War Can-We-Go-Home-Now-II, but it’s true success was the application of intelligence and airstrikes (which were so good they were brought into CoD5 servers despite not being physically possible in the setting).

It’s hard to imagine what else they could add, but that’s why they develop the games and we play them. The trailer does refer to aiming Hellstrike missiles, a possible upgrade to the Airstrike option, but giving it a different name won’t change the effect it has on the game. What we do know for sure is come November, we’ll be running Modern Warfare 2 servers and vigorously testing them.

Achievements, the greatest gaming breakthrough of the generation. Back in the 8-bit days, no-one was paid to say things like “Shooting monkeys in Monkey Shooter II is fun, but it would be EVEN BETTER if there was a little ‘ding’ noise for shooting monkeys!” Truly, we have progressed as a species.  In some direction.

Achievements are all-dominating ambition overrides - players will abandon their teams, jobs and families to color in those bewitching boxes, and a single malicious Valve update could kill 20% of all gamers:

Some real achievements are even worse:


1. Does It Hurt When I Do This?

Complaining about free TF2 server updates is like complaining about free money. Then again, if that money turns your team-mates into idiots you might have a point, and that’s exactly what happened with the Medic Update. Valve’s explanation for the abomination-selection of achievements was that they were “experimenting”, see what could work.

But this wasn’t “Let’s try mixing these chemicals” experimenting, this was “Let’s implant the brain of a serial killer in this gorilla and give it nuclear weapons for hands” experimenting. There was no possible way this could work - you’re setting the class who shouldn’t be fighting in the first place, using the worst weapon in the game, against the hardest to hit target on a Team Fortress 2 server. A target who can easily run right through twenty stupid syringes and bat the doctor into two-dimensionality.

de_dust and de_dust2.  Without question the most popular maps of all time, of all kind, anywhere.  Fewer people know their own homes as intimately as many do these middle-east-istan villages.  Oh, sure, they know how to get to the bathroom from the kitchen - but do they know all the blind corners?  Do they know how long it takes to run from one to the other, in microseconds, and the optimum point to toss a flashbang on the way?


Over one hundred and fifty thousand players log onto Counter Strike servers every day, and most of them are playing something dusty.  Five percent of ALL gamers at any given time are rushing A or defending the middle section.  For many, if you aren’t playing dust you aren’t playing Counter-Strike, viewing other locations like cs_italy and de_nuke the same way you’d view someone putting ketchup in their coffee.

De_Dust2 on a COD4 Server?

But the opposite is no longer true: playing de_dust2 doesn’t mean you must be playing Counter-Strike.  Dedicated modders have come up with a dust map for Call of Duty 4 servers, and it’s a work to bring joy to the heart of the most jaded gamer.  You might know those archways like the back of your hand, but you’ve never seen that hand in such gloriously high resolution and with such modern graphical effects.

Of course, logging on to a Modern Warfare server running mp_dust2_classic is a completely different game.  It’s like meeting an old friend who’s changed since you last met, possibly by exchanging brains with an adrenaline junkie mercenary.  While it is possible to run dust-new-and-improved in Search and Destroy, effectively recreating the old days, you’re bound to come across it in Team Deathmatch.  Or, heaven help you, free-for-all.  And it’s brilliantly, utterly, incredibly insane.

The keys to CS strategy are simultaneous spawning and one-life per round.  Both teams start together, fan out, there’s some second-guessing and reaction regarding where the terrorists are going, then there’s the clash and mop up.  Add people constantly reappearing all around the place and the almost utter lack of cover across most of the map becomes a big deal.

The underpass (aka the counter-terrorist spawn) goes from being “highly dodgy” to “instant death”.  In a round with multiple martyrs and frag grenades flung left right and center, that low down pit is death in architectural form.  Even if you survive explosive destruction, as you come through there’ll be someone outside with better elevation.  And a gun.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. For about seven seconds until respawn.

You know your customized sniper class?  Well you can forget it.  While the all-dominating AWP might straddle the lands of dust like an eagle-eyed god, there simply aren’t any places for a CoD sniper to perch without being murdered.  The only remotely reasonable place is the blind-alley ramp facing Bomb Site A, but while there’s a little bit of grass along that no-mans-land of a wide alley now you’ll still stick out like the Elephant Man’s sore thumb.

It’s completely different, and after almost a decade that’s no bad thing.  It’s fun, which is kind of the point.  And it’s very nice to play a version of dust where an overpowered pistol isn’t king.

Call of Duty 5: World at War servers are here, boldly extending the series after Modern Warfare by, um, bringing it right back to World War II.  The conflict we were all so excited about CoD4 finally leaving behind.  But despite this massive dose of anti-originality (seriously, guys, we’ve been shooting Nazis since Wolfenstein) it turns out the game is enormous fun.  And you’ve never shot Nazis in a resolutions quite this high before, and the new graphics are seriously beautiful - although they lead to some odd effects.

Yeah, fighting FOR this flag feels a little weird.

It turns out that warfare actually hasn’t changed that much in seventy years - or at least it hasn’t according to developers Treyarch, who were smart enough to look at CoD4 servers and say “Let’s keep the best bits of that even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense.”  So what similarities are there between the World and Modern Wars?

1.  War is brutal

One thing that doesn’t change is the instant noob-blender that is Call of Duty combat, requiring a reaction speed slightly faster than lightning on steroids and the ability to be shot four hundred times without losing your temper.  On a CoD5 server you have two possible states:
1.  In cover
2.  Dead
Dashing from building to wall in the shortest possible time is a key skill you’ll learn, along with a newly installed sense of agoraphobia - because to stand out in the open, even for a second, is to die.

But you get a taste of brutality before you even log on - as in the prequel, the “Set up a new Cod:WaW server” screen defaults to “Free-for-All”, the instant-death mode where it’s everyone against everyone.  WWII may be famous for unholy levels of slaughter, but even they didn’t have entire armies deciding “Let’s just kill the people on our own side while we’re at it.”

2.  Air Intel Is King

One of the revolutionary aspects of CoD4 was the all-importance of intel.  Those two little words, “UAV airborne”, meant more to a team than all the machine-guns in the world, and it’s travelled back in time to the front in the form of “Recon.”  Despite the fact that it’s utterly impossible.  Back then aerial intelligence meant knowing “they’re over there” about a day after the event - what’s the pilot doing, leaning out of his plane and throwing little drawings of the enemy dispositions to allied soldiers at a rate of sixty per second?  And in that case, surely there’s a better way to use the Flash in the war effort?

He was having fun behind our spawn until now.

Of course you don’t care if it’s possible, only if it’s fun.  Which it is.  Make the most of intel when you have it and save any artillery until the recon is up (even if that means dying in the meantime).  Just don’t get too dependent.  The camoflague perk still hides enemies from the air, which can be a nasty surprise if you’re playing “HUD map Pac-man.”

3.  Martyrdom

Alas, one barbaric practice has persisted throughout all the ages of warfare: the Martyr perk.  Reach level 20, gain the ability to drop a grenade when killed, and stop worrying about having to “aim” or “exhibit any kind of skill” when attacking.  Just throw your useless corpse into a flag room, get yourself rightly machine-gunned to bits, then explode!  Because we all know that people who do that kind of thing are loved and respected by all.