I’ve given up on being good at first-person shooters for a long time now. I simply accept that I don’t have the quick-twitch muscle fibers, or the brain capacity to be excellent at them. So when I try and talk my friend Bags into playing some MW2 with me, and he hits me with:

It’s going to be tough, because I’m going to suck at first.

I can absolutely relate to him. I’ve just come to grips with that a long time ago. I am not a unique gaming snowflake. There’s always going to be noobs that school my sad ass. Even with my acceptance of this fact, it still burns deep down inside to hear some twelve year old kid laughing at me because I missed with two full clips and then had the dishonor of him meleeing me to death.

The horror, the horror.

It didn’t always use to be so resigned to mediocrity. I used to be the shit in my close-knit gaming circle. High school friends and myself spending hours in my room as I took them to task with the beatdown stick in Mortal Kombat II or Mario Kart 64. My mortal enemy was also my best friend Joe, and it was usually the two of us giving each other a run for our money. Of course, even back then I sucked at FPS gamers. I can recall the teenage rampages I’d go into as Joe would remember spawn points (before we knew they were called spawn points) and usually throw a knife through my dumb face.

Then everything changed when Al Gore invented the fucking internet. And global warming. He condemned me to bake under the sun’s unleashed fury amidst a legion of gamers far superior to me. I was like the high school quarterback, trying all of a sudden to play college ball.

Oops.

Double oops.

I learned quickly that whatever lame skills I had on a local level didn’t translate to the global scheme. Fucking internet! I was aghast, I mean, I won the local Blockbuster video game challenge! A year’s worth of unlimited gaming rentals (which they stipulated in the small text was two a week; even my pre-pubescent brain recoiled at the trickery) at my disposal! But I wasn’t special, I wasn’t even good.

Fucking shit.

So the same applies to Modern Warfare 2. I’m not really good. If I get five kills, I feel like the fucking man. Oh, those ungracious gamers who rattle off 15 kills a session. What does a kill mean to them!? What does sex mean to a pornstar! Probably fucking nothing!

But Modern Warfare 2 is different. Because It’s kind of like little league. Everyone can win! Well, sort of. In other words, there are things even retard gamers like myself can strive for. With their dope-ass built in leveling system, this RPG whore right here can work towards swag, even while blowing. If I have enough persistence I can unlock new guns, modifications, et cetera. This is probably old hat to other Call of Duty players, but for me, it’s friggin’ tight. I mean, what other way to suck in a WoW-addicted gamer who sucks at FPSers?

Give them swag to work towards! If there’s one thing I like, it’s loot! LOOT, sweet, delicious loot. And even if I never come in first place, I can still garner myself a tight grenade launcher.

It’s a nice balance. Because of course, the skilled gamers, as in not me, can unlock this shit quicker. Every match gathers you XP, and the better you do, the more points you gain. They even have “Aw, you’re cute at sucking” type rewards, like getting five assists. I mean holy shit, they reward you for breaking your own death streak. It’s like free experience points. A little league reward for the kid who finally hit the ball. There you go Charlie, you may drool and you run to third base instead of first, but you successfully threw a ball to first base today.

Well done, here’s a cookie.

I love it.