Valve are updating Left 4 Dead 2 servers with infected bots, which isn’t the first stage of an attempt to destroy the world it sounds like.  While death itself doesn’t stop zombies, disconnection does, with millions of enraged undead doomed by the loss of one player.  It’s a great help for versus modes, but - as a hybrid of AI and infected brain-munching - it’s also an incredible combination of two of the greatest video game enemies ever made.

So we got to thinking about which other game servers could co-operate:

The worst thing is, one terrorist with an AWP could still take it.

Day of Complete Total Defeat

Aperture Science is all well and good, but he solves practical problems.

Dino D-Day hasn’t won the Lifetime “Gravity Gun Throwing BFGs” Award for Best Concept Ever, but only because that award doesn’t exist. And the award doesn’t exist only because we never knew that Dino D-Day would be invented, creating an impossible spiral of awesome which risks destroying the laws of logic by being a better concept than our universe was built to withstand.

This isn’t some trash flash web-garbage where the ‘funny’ title took three-quarters of the development time: this is a full Source engine game pitting a lone hero against the entirety of a Jurassic Reich. With a free demo already online you can go download it right now and be blasting dinosaurs within the hour, for free, effectively making the next sixty minutes an intelligence test. Because anyone who doesn’t do that is a fool.

All your old favorites from World at War, MoH, and Day of Defeat servers are present and correct: the Thompson, the stick grenade, and of course the Garand which - as always - musically ‘tings’ as it ejects a spent clip. What isn’t as always is that it tings because you’re desperately pumping those shots into a charging triceratops, which is exactly the sort of shakeup you need to make these weapons fresh after approximately one million World War II titles.

The only time it’s acceptable to NOT shoot a videogame Nazi.

Because this game doesn’t rely on its gimmick: it’s a real shooter, and if the demo level is anything to go by that’s short for “really fantastic shooter”. In a single level there are several modes of play: standard Nazi-plugging; a three-way armed misunderstanding between you, Nazis and a Triceratops; being stalked through a maze of ruins by a swarm of raptors; and a final battle against if-I-even-need-to-tell-you-what-you-won’t-get-it.

Now you tell me

Particularly pleasant is the tightness of the weapons: like Half Life 2 Deathmatch servers before it, the game really rewards accurate shooting instead of spraying. Yes, that does extend to dinosaur headshots. A phrase so incredible we’re going to say it again without even pretending to have an excuse: DINOSAUR HEADSHOTS.

You can also do this! (If you don’t want to do this please leave our site.)

There’s also real humor and skill in developing the brilliant concept. The website is stuffed with great propaganda material (including an announcement that Eisonhower is serious about sending only one man against the entire Dino horde). The full game will be released on Steam later this year, featuring a full multiplayer deathmatch (so you can see Source physics on something other than Counter-Strike servers for once) and all sorts of goodies. But don’t just take our word for it: watch this, and if you’re not excited by the end please check to make sure that you aren’t dead.

Twenty-ten’s already here and we still haven’t got HAL nine thousands, but that’s probably for the best.  For one thing he was pretty terrible at graphics (outputting only plaintext and embarrassingly limited vector graphics), and for another we prefer our AIs not to kill us in the real world.  Instead it’s time to make New Year’s Resolutions!

Don’t leave!  They may be traditionally terrible self-scourging instructions to enjoy yourself less, which - for not entirely unrelated reasons - rarely survive to see a second month, but they don’t have to be.  Here at Lowpings we actually enjoy life instead of laying guilt-trips on ourselves, so we’re releasing resolutions which will enhance your enjoyment of online game servers.

1.  Try New Classes

The great thing about game server self-improvement is that you’re never digitally deprived: you don’t need to think green when firing plasma weapons, you’re getting exercise by sprinting every second of every day, and no matter how many health kits and hunks of raw meat your character absorbs he’ll never put on any weight (unless you count all the shrapnel).  Instead of giving things up you should take more on, and nowhere is that more evident than the wallpaper while waiting to connect to a TF2 server: the “time spent as class” chart.

Resolve to do better!

Spend some time as those cursed classes at the bottom!  You might not play them because you hate them, because you only play Sniper (in which case you suck), or because of the “Medic Malady” (if a team of twelve people are stupid enough not to have a medic, you don’t want to be the one looking after them.)  But each class is a whole new way to enjoy the game.  You might find you like them after all, and more importantly, you’ll learn how they think (and how to avoid and kill them when you return to your beloved first choice.)  A few days as Spy and Sniper is the most educational experience a Heavy can have.

2.  Try New Modes

Left 4 Dead 2 servers don’t offer many classes (at least until someone unlocks a way for Coach’s mass to count as extra health, or at least as cover), but there are more modes than the average Transformers episode.  Everyone ends up with a favorite - from the movie-style slog of the campaign to the pick up and play instant enemy action of Scavenge - and they’re all awesome.  But why limit yourself?

Whichever you play, pick a different one next time!  The mechanics may be the same, and the chainsaw might always be the best thing ever, but the mood differs with playtime and the bonding experience over the whole campaign.  Spitter goo detonating the racer’s fuel is an annoyance in Scavenge, but an adrenaline-soaked catastrophe after two hours of versus play.  And adrenaline-soaked catastrophes are awesome.

3.  Counter-Strike New Maps

Not every game rewards different modes.  Counter-Strike servers occasionally offer hostage rescue maps, but you can replicate the experiment by playing bomb defuse, randomly turning on your toaster, then declaring that you lost for no reason at all when the stupid machine goes off.  This will save you from smashing the screen when the hostages ‘hide’ inside a hail of terrorist fire.

No dust at all!

But the best playmode isn’t limited to de_dust, as infinitely playable as it may be.  Sites like FPSBanana offer an awesome selection of user-generated map, many polished by thousands of hours of competitive play.  And “competitive” on CS servers is a lot like “murderous” everywhere else.  Set up a selection, and enable an add-on like mapvote to find out what your players like.

4.  New Games

There’s nothing like a new game, even if it’s old (and therefore much cheaper!)  You’ve a fantastic first-person-shooter spectrum to enjoy, from the chunky gibbage of Quake servers to the frankly unlikely DIPRIP destruction derbies.  It’s a real concentration of joy – the first few rounds of a new game are an array of incredible sensations, literally blowing things up like never before.  We live in an incredible world where we can say things like that.

Enjoy more of it in 2010!

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.

Gamers dressing up as the gamees is a tradition dating back as far as disposable income, but what about the characters themselves? Can they cackle in costumes for all hallows eve? Since we don’t waste opening paragraphs around here, the answer is “Yes”, and we look at seven skins to spice up your servers:

1. The Creepy Counter-Strike Skull

Counter-Strike servers are already stuffed with Skullz and Killaz [sic], usually embedded in usernames between clan tags and half the number row’s symbols. Modder “Laca” enables the anti-terrorists to become even scarier than “someone with an assault rifle out to kill you” by skulling things up under the creepily human eyes.

2. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Those playing on Medal of Honor servers shouldn’t suffer because of the age or authenticity of their game - so “Vdog777” has built an in-character costume, and is far better at 3D modeling than coming up with a name. The French resistance fighter adds another option when you’re dressing to impress (and shoot several times in the head) those fashionable Nazi chappies.

3. Team Fortress Halloween

Halloween costumes are something fun and awesome, so of course Valve are involved. We’re only talking about this because we enjoy it, anyway, as anyone on any TF2 server has already enjoyed the new koth_harvest_event map, exploding pumpkins, brand-new hats (to pile on top of all the other awesome headgear), and the incomparable ghost costume of Zepheniah Mann.

PS We love our Gibuses, though proper grammer sometimes makes for odd pronunciation.

4. The Classic Spy

Just because you’re ten years behind the times doesn’t mean you can’t dress up - though it can mean you wish you were more advanced. That’s the lesson behind the awkwardly-named |WS|*Nikon’s smooth spy skin, disguising a Team Fortress Classic server’s Spy as: a TF2 spy!

5. The Red vs Blue Crysis

In the most insanely complicated meta disguise outside of Major Smith in Where Eagles Dare, “not so l337” lets Crysis commandos disguise themselves as the staff from Red vs Blue, who in turn are played by Spartans, from Halo. It would be impossible to add more layers to a costume without forming a human pyramid or dressing up as a double-decker bus.

6. Day of Metal Gear Defeat

Dr. Cloud understands exactly how to guarantee an Allied success on Day of Defeat servers: staff the side of the angels with an endless army of Solid Snake clones. With the Axis forces represented by far inferior GRU cannon fodder it’s quite likely the sheer psychological pressure will force them to fold (despite their advantage in heavy machine guns).

7. Left 4 Dead

The most popular costumes over the last week come from the Left 4 Dead pre-order exclusive demo, with our four favorite survivors sporting spanking new skins.

Bill: Everyone’s favorite armed uncle-figure swaps Vietnam flashbacks for a love of candy, and an incredibly convincing Coach fatsuit.
Zoey: The apocalypse’s only female pulls an incredible double reverse-Michael-Jackson, both turning from white to black AND staying alive to play Rochelle.
Louis: The hard-working everyman goes even further than Zoey to become Elllis’s engineering Suthan bo-ay.
Francis: Why hate everything at random, when Nick can hate and distrust everything as a scumbag conman?

The best bit? Game servers can be dressed up every day of the year!

Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le is gearing up to release his sequel, Tactical Intervention, and while that might sound like a thesaurus-based restatement of the original concept it looks like being a very different game.  For one, it doesn’t involve original co-creator Jess Cliffe.  For another, it seems entirely engineered to enrage CS Server players.

Image Credit: IGN.  Graphics Engine Credit: Ten years ago.

Why Minh made a whole new game instead of adopting the insanely attention-grabbing title of “Counter-Strike 2″ is simple: the insane expectations associated with that attention.  Minh used to work with Valve on exactly that project, but hardcore gamers respond to change like vampires react to garlic-flavored sunlight, and CS server experts are to hardcore what the BFG is to a pistol.  It’s hard to express just how obsessive some players are, but when we tell you he’s still getting shit over some of the gun models having cartridge ejection ports in the wrong place a full decade later you might have some idea.

That’s why Minh broke loose and decided to make his own game (while Cliff started seeing Seattle and living with some extremely cute cats), and Tactical Intervention is the result.  A result where every change, good or bad, will inevitably enrage the CS veteran.

The Good Changes

Faster Rounds

The first and most important matter Minh made an issue of was the length of CS server rounds.  He’s concerned with the enjoyment of every player, and waiting in spectator for five minutes while the top-ranked players stalk each other isn’t much fun.  The problem is that kind of mastery is exactly what the expert loves, viewing other players as expendable target practice, so expect world-class-whining about any changes enforcing this.

Weakened Sniping

Minh’s main complaint about his creation, just like most people who’ve played it, is how incredibly overpowered the AWP sniper rifle is.  This single-shotter singlehandedly stalls the whole game as people are either too scared to move or sniped from approximately half a light year away.  This results in an eternity of waiting as dead players spectate, hovering over the ghosts of teammates too terrified to step out into the open.  The thing is, CS masters have spent years perfecting the ability to noscope you AWP-style with the merest mouse-twitch - any change with eliminates that advantage will be opposed.

The Bad Changes

Hostages

Go to any Counter-Strike server and see how often they play cs_office (and how instantly it empties when that cursed place appears).  CS servers make middle-management at Cannibals Incorporated just before lunchtime look like Sesame Street - “ultra-competitive” doesn’t cover it simply because the phrase doesn’t involve enough swearing.  Now remember any game where you lost through no fault of your own, but because some idiot AI escort mission moron didn’t know which end of a gun the bullets came out of.  Now try to combine the two in your head (Warning: may cause rage-splosion).

Attack Dogs

Another addition taking any risk of your results being related to ability is the attack dog.  Because we all know how popular homing missiles are in online games (here’s a fun party game: say “Blue shells are great” to a Mario Karter, just be sure to duck).  Imagine in an online game, and while you’re at it, just thump yourself in the stomach a few times.

The thing is, the complaints of the obsessive aren’t exactly anything someone who plays for fun should worry about.  Minh made one of the most popular games of all time, and when he releases another you can be sure we’ll be on hand to see how those servers stack up.

Video games are all about living the dream, about doing the impossible and the awesome and everything you ever wanted to.  Never was that truer than with Eternal Silence: not only is it the absolute image of sci-fi space combat (intership dogfightining leading to boarding the enemy ship and sabotaging systems) but people wanted it so much they built it themselves.

Lock S-Foils in attack position! Go in for strafing run!  Shout “WOOOHOOO I’M FIGHTING IN SPACE!”

It’s a Source engine mod and they’re not messing around: the entire thing has been utterly reinvented and also shot into space.  You’ve never played anything like it: a unique multi-staged combat with everything from Interceptors to Bombers to running around with a flamethrower.  That sentence either convinced you to play it or made you realise you’re on the wrong site.  The two-level combat creates brand new tactical situations for even the most experienced FPSer.

Flame helps with ANY pest

Both red and blue have Capital Ships, protected by three Corvettes (unmanned, auto-firing heavy ships).  When one team loses those defenders the game switches to an Attack/Defend strategy: the corvetteless side must defend their capital ship against attack, either getting into space to intercept incoming ships or running around in first person defending critical systems.  The attacking enemy can either stay in space, hammering the ship, or board to try to turn off critical systems to make attacking easier.  Weapons, Shields and the Hangar are all capture points which affect the space battle.

This dual-level combat means that the game massively rewards teamwork, especially with ship classes like Bombers requiring fighter escorts to get into range.  The game can bewilder at first glance, but with plenty of loading instructions and a supportive forum, it’s easy to get up to speed.  A couple of points for the first-time player

1.  Use targeting

If you just charge out and start firing into space, well, space is pretty big.  You’re not going to hit anything.  Use the targeting controls to select who you’re shooting at - this will give you the “leading” indicator, telling you where to aim to hit a distant enemy, and allow you to lock-on with missiles by holding your cursor over the target.

2.  Don’t panic

Don’t panic, most of those Giant Death Beams will miss!

3-D combat confers control complexity but you don’t need to worry about yaw, pitch or roll at the beginning.  The mouse and forward/back will give you more than enough maneuverability until you get an idea of what’s going on.

3.  Defend the Hangar

Point capture is determined by numbers, and if you’re a Hacker or Combat class

If you’re boarded you should defend everything, of course, but when the enemy takes the hangar you lose the ability to launch ships at all.  Meaning the entire space aspect stops being “Exciting combat” and starts being “Their entire team just killing you.”  Don’t let that happen.

Eternal Silence, even more than any other mod yet, really rewards playing with a good team of friends on a solid server.  It’s truly a scifi fantasy come to videogame life, and a small amount of learning is well worth the fun rewards - and official Steam support means that you (or your Eternal Silence server) doesn’t have to worry about patches, files, or other awkward install issues which plague third-party programs.  Oh, and did we mention it’s free?  You’re either playing it, or you don’t like cool new things.

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.

The internet is awesome: only a few weeks ago, a Counter-Strike/Ghost In The Shell crossover would have been the worst fan-fiction in the world. Now it’s a fantastic free mod for any Half-Life 2 Deathmatch server, and one you should really be playing.

If you don’t know what Ghost In The Shell is, don’t worry: you’ll still appreciate the excellent Blade-Runner stylings, texture rich multi-level locations and brutal combat of NeoTokyo servers (which, unlike many mods, actually have an active population.)  Think “near-future cyberpunk” with cyborgs, cloaking devices and high-level governmental shenanigans - usually resolved by gunfire.

The game has a real Counter-Strike brutality - it only takes a couple of bullets to put you down, and keep you there until the end of the round. The twist is the unique “Capture The Ghost” gameplay, a Capture The Flag variant where both teams are trying to take the same object back to their own exits. The “Ghost” is a piece of a cyborg shell, and also a giant flashing neon sign shouting “Yes This Is Totally Ghost In The Shell In Everything But Name, Isn’t It Awesome?”

Carrying the Ghost gives you information instead of ammunition

Picking up the Ghost means dropping your primary weapon, giving the game a real VIP-mode feel. There’s also an intelligence aspect - you can switch to your pistol, or “use” the ghost to detect enemies and relay the information to your team-mates by voicechat. The central nature of the ghost defines a whole new style of play. Players can choose to make an end-run with the ghost, rely on their comrades to defend them, or simply camp the objective and wait for the enemy to show up.

Another addition to the Counter-Strike core is classes and levels. Levels are simple: the more points you score on the server, the more XP you gain and the more weapons you unlock. There are three classes:

1. Recon

Recon have unlimited running, can use an “Aux power” bar to make incredible jumps (very nice for landing behind entrenched enemies) and have a fair bit of thermoptic camoflague. And by “thermoptic camoflague” we mean “cloak”, except you can actually fire while half-invisible - something of a shock for anyone coming over from a TF2 server, adding a real “Was that all of them?” element to any firefight.

2. Assault

Less cloaking, and they have to use their aux power for running, but more health and heavier weapons. The Assault class support the spearhead of recons out for the ghost (or the enemy) while maintaining the ability to make a few surprise sprints of their own. They can also counter cloaking with “motion vision”, at the expense of missing camped enemies.

3. Support

Defending the ghost-carrier with a support class.

No aux power, no cloak, just a great big health bar and a great big gun. The Heavy of the NeoTokyo rooftops, the extremely 3D nature of maps means a well-placed Support player can really change the course of the game. Thermal vision means they have the best view of the battlefield.

On top of all the innovations, NeoTokyo servers are beautiful. Detailed maps making great use of the Source engine, where even the lighting effects have tactical considerations (the act of cloaking causes a bright flash, advertising your location before you become invisible). With everything from rust-stained walls to Metal Gear-memorializing “Calorie Mate” advertisements, you really feel you’re engaged in urban combat in the middle of a major city or governmental facility. A lot more interesting than de_dust, and just as much fun.

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.