thinking about a mw 2 tutorial

Some of you old coots know me and remember my previous tutorials for halo 2, halo 3, baseball, modern warfare and world at war. I'm thinking of doing one for modern warfare 2 for the community, but only if there is a demand for it.I say this for two reasons; they are a drag to write...each one i did got progressively smaller and less in depth because i spent more time writing the damn things and thinking up ways to easily impart the wisdom i vomit unto the masses than playing the games i loved to play.

if i do this, t will be comprehensive. i will blog one nugget, or aspect of a perk or equipment or gun or boobies a day for as long as it takes. many of the future entries will look much like the following one.

Scrambler

One underappreciated perk a lot of players absolutly despise is the Scrambler.Generally players believe using scrambler is more of a hindrance than an asset, but it does have some benefits for certain gametypes. This entry will discuss the merits and demerits of this quirky gold perk.

Personally, I hate scrambler. It doesn't fit my playstyle. If you like to stay in one quadrant of a map and hold it while maximizing your kills and minimizing your deaths, then this perk is not for you. If you hate people who run with heartbeat sensors or are playing against a team that uses them, then this perk is not for you. If your team runs a lot of counter UAVs as perks, then this ain't the perk for you. Why? Because if you like to camp, people can use your own scrambler as a sort of proximity detector to find you. The scrambler gets weaker or stronger the closer an enemy approaches your position, and because of this they can usually figure out your position and get the drop on you. the scarmbler does not combat against heartbeat sensors, and since scrambler is niether and offensive improvement perk like commando or steady aim, or a defensive improvement perk like ninja, you have no counter to help you out in those 1 on 1 encounters with others. And if your team runs a ton of counter UAVs, then the scrambler perk becomes redundant and helps you not a whit.

Scrambler seemingly has so many drawbacks it is hard to even say it has a proper pfofitable use. This is not the case though. Scrambler shines in objective gametypes where multiple players on your team are defending an area or when you are assaulting a bomb arm point that might have a ton of claymores or c4 planted around it. It helps in capture the flag games when you're trying to disguise a buddy who might be hiding or assaulting the flag. how? scrambler get rid of that pesky uav map of the enemy players in the top of their screen. when you have those guys scrambled, they might find you, but they won't know where your team is on the whole map because scrambler hides your team from them. Srambler causes c4 and claymores fuses to delay their detonation for 5-10 seconds(if you have scrambler pro) thus helping your team. Not only that, but you don't even have to trip the claymores, you just have to get them within the radius of your scrambler. If your team were to assault a building in demolition to arm a bomb, like say on Quarry, all your scrambler guy would have to do is run around the outside of the building to disable the claymores within.

In the end, scrambler has no real benefit in a team death match or if you are considered one of the top slayers on your team, but it does shine if you play an objective game on offense or defense, and you know you're not the best player on your team. If you know this, and can accept the fact you're not a great slayer, then use scrambler to help the people on your team who are the good slayers. every time your scrambler(pro) helps save their lives long enough for them to get a harrier, or you disable numerous claymores and c4 you make your team that much better.

Halopiphany

So I said I'd never write any thing else concerning Halo unless it was a news article...I lied.

Since the site mml tourney has begun, I've found myself reentering the Halo world. I've discovered there are many things about Halo 3 I neglected to blog about in my previous tutorials and there are still many things I have to learn to become not only a better Halo 3 player, but a better FPS player. But this entry will deal entirely with Halo 3.

My previous tutorial blogs might be a bit misleading. Because they were written for beginners I feel the gist of the matter is sound, but I based much of my information and strategy on the play styles that were popular in Halo 2. Since I started playing H3 more often it has become apparent to me H3 is a different animal than H2.

In Halo 2 pro MLG strategies in slayer and objective game types were often to dominate map position by holding three key areas on a map and have your main slayer or main objective player use those positions to his advantage to get kills, grab the flag or take time in the hill depending upon the game type. In Halo 3 this doesn't fly.

Static map dominance strategies worked really well in H2 for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons was the button combos of BxR and RRx. Both of those combos made it much easier for a single person to hold a position even if he was being charged by two opponents. he could always RRx the first person and BxR the second and still come out on top. Another reason was the aim assist for H2 is much stronger than H3. This created the ability to shoot at and hit your target with much greater confidence than H3 allows, which again made it easier to hold a position. Spawning in H2 was (and is) much more predictable than it is in H3. Your map set up in H2 almost always determined where the other team would spawn and also set your team up in an extremely advantageous position to deal with any new opponent spawns.

Halo 3, like Homey da Clown, don't play dat. No combos means positions are more apt to be overrun. No aim assist seperates the wheat from the chaff, and rarely do you find a team consisting of four great shots who can consistently get four shot kills. Spawn locations in H3 aren't in areas that only allow one or two ways of quick egress from a spawn so opposing teams often find themselves out of position to consistently spawn trap. Add to that the new beatdown method which often results in the death of the attacker and defender in H3 and you have a recipe for disaster for teams who habitually try to occupy the same sopts on a map over and over again.

So what is the new strategy for Halo 3 pros? I call it circular aggression. Circular aggression is still a map dominance strategy, but with much more motion and certainly much more aggression than players used in Halo 2. Players on a team practicing circular aggression are still trying to achieve the same results as H2 teams who set up areas and held them, but in H3 players often trade spots every 4 or 5 seconds with team mates in order to consistently occupy 2 or 3 of the main spawn points on the map. This ensures if someone dies while travelling through and area, a team mate will replace him within a matter of seconds to eliminate his teammate's killer (who has low shields due to his prior battle) and continue to ensure that area will no longer be a spawn point for the enemy. He then stays in place long enough to reload and recharge his own shields and then manuevars to his next destination on the map which should be an area recently vacated by a teammate.

What circular aggression accomplishes that a static map placement strategy doesn't is the ability for a player to always be attacking and always have an unpredictable avenue of escape. If, as I have suggested, it is much harder to hold a position in H3 than it was in H2, then it would only make sense that instead of always defending a position, you'd always be trying to attack those positions instead. By always attacking your team is almost always going to control the initiative in any given battle or match. True, in real life, defenders always have a stronger position to work with because they choose the ground, but with circular aggression you eliminate the choice of the matter. You are giving them the position so you can either kill them or flush them out so a team mate can. Also, this ain't RL.

I've also noticed that teams using this philosophy have a tendency to avoid one part of a map at all times in the hopes that vacated area will be their opponents' spawn area. On guardian in slayer games it tends to be green tree. On construct it is almost always gold 2 or the basement. If teams find themselves spawning in those areas they have designated as no travel zones they vacate that area as fast as possible so as not to drag their team into that spawn with them.

Circular aggression is used in every gametype except it is toned down a bit in oddball. I've noticed in oddball games on the initial spawns pro teams definitely attack from the start. Teams spawning green will fight to take gold or snipe and blue spawns will fight for the same, but once those positions have been established better teams always tend to try and take the other team's position using circular agression until only one person is left in the original attacking position. This straggler is more often than not the de facto ball guy and he runs the ball to the new team's position. The ball doesn't stay put though. Often the ball will dictate his team's position by shuttling them towards the offensive to take a new position. By forcing the other team to fight from their position, they avoid having to deal with the ball-less team attacking their position. They're trying to force the attacking team to defend their attack formation. It is often a sound strategy and usually leads to 20 to 30 seconds of unmolested ball time. If the ball teams fail, the ball carrier can always opt to play the ball at the last second to force another showdown at the ball spawn and waste another 10 seconds while the ball respawns. His team, which has just respawned, is almost always in the better position to re-grab the ball so it becomes a win/win situation.

Hill games also show the prevelance of circular agression. teams are always switching out players to take time in the hill and hold better offensive positions. Construct is a good example of this. When the hill is low-middle, hill occupying teams often have one man in the hill and another waiting nearby in river or on the arms waiting to take his place should he die or need to vacate the hill to recharge his shields. The vacating player will often run to basement and take open or closed lift up to take someone else's spot who has moved on to cover an open or closed side high. The open or closed side guy then moves to 1st level center console while that peson takes over the sword position so the sword arm guy can take over the hill. In this model of circular agression this team is claiming sword room as their spawn and leaving outliers like open side high and center cosole to defend the spawn. They are deliberately avoiding gold 2 and gold platform to force the other team to spawn as far away as possible from the hill. When the hill changes to open side, this example team is already in position to hold it by virtue of their previous placement. The player left in the previous hill now needs to make his way to lobby or open or closed lift high to deny the enemy there while sword guy moves to center console and console dude takes over defending gold 2. the player who was playing high close or open has now become the defacto hill dude in the new hill. Shoul he need to recharge his shields he drops off the side for a quick fall to basement or he retreats into a lift room. (i've noticed pros tend to favor the long drop because by the time they use the lift to return to the battle their shields are already recharged).

I've given a few examples of this type of play, but I don't think I've fully explained how circular aggression works. The aggression part can be a bit misleading. Indiviual players are not attacking at all costs. Their first priority will be, and has always been, to stay off the respawn timer to deny the other team kills and/or overwhelming force in objective games. If a player has been shot first, he does not fully challenge his attacker expecting a kill, he only wishes to get maybe one or two shots off on him to help prepare him to be taken by someone else on his team. He then moves to recharge his shields and continues his attack. He does not run while reloading. Doing this leaves the player running in the open defenseless for that precious second or two it takes the reload animation to complete. He does not chuck grenades willy nilly thus giving away his position and depleting him of offensive ammunition. The circular aggressive player is a cooly calculating player who must be good at communicating what he knows to be important, and he must trust his team mates to pick up his slack. And he will slack. Not even pros run these strategies perfectly the entire game. Attacking does leave you open, so you must know when you have to sacrifice your life and when you must cut and run.

Circular aggression is tough to pull off, but it is a dominating strat when it is done correctly. It constantly forces the other team on their heels by taking the initiative and denying any semblence of a set up for the other teams. Circular aggression is so dominating i've come to believe if a team can win the initial spawn battles and set up their run, the game is effectively over.

New Topic

It has been some time since I've blogged about anything other than some FPS tutorial. In fact, I've blogged so many "play" enhancements for halo and other games I feel as if I'm the smiling Bob of 2old2play. I'll pass up on writing those guides and save them for news items on the site...

lemme plug the new guides that will be releasing as news items on the site homepage. I've got one coming out on how to sing on expert level, maybe one on Call of Duty:World at War, and a series of articles on halo coming out in the future. So if the only reason you read this blog is to improve your stamina, er, I mean gameplay, yous might want to start looking elsewhere.

I'm taking this blog back oldschool.

That's right.

I'm going to blog about those hot tracks that just dropped 20 years ago like Young MC, Robb Base and who can forget those kids who wore their pants backwards? I know I did.

No, I'm going to return to blogging about the absurdity of the media, smart ass guides to doing simple things and occasionally I'll write about my life including refridgerators crashing through ceilings and late night ramblings. (all previously blogged)

So let us begin.

Today's topic is the supermarket. I think most supermarkets are rediculous entities. I understand they're necessary, but most of the time I don't think the management of these establishments have a grasp on what people want to purchase when entering said establishment.

I don't know about you, but when I go to the market I'm thinking food. Specifically meat, eggs, veggies (preferably fresh but canned will do), soda some sort of starchy snack and maybe, if I'm in the mood, I'd enjoy reading about Rhianna's fucking nitemare or the woman who gave birth to a grown man. (I ain't making these headlines up)

I want to know what lazy, mindless excuse for a person goes to a grocery store and says to themselves, "If this store had a lawnmower I'd buy that sucker right now." That's right folks. A freaking lawnmower. I saw not one, not two, but three red lawnmowers lined up on aisle 4 of Kroger in my hometown for sale today.

What ever happened to grocery stores that sell groceries?

Lawnmowers aren't the only odd thing this grocery store sells. It also is a proud purveyor of lawn furniture, cheap kids toys, alarm clocks, gas grills and statuary. Yup, Kroger, your one stop random fucking shopping home. I understand these places expect a certain amount of impulse buying to occur, but isn't placing a lawnmower and a statue of a urinating cherub a bit optimistic on management's part?

I want to see the poor schlub's shopping list who buys the lawnmower. Eggs...check, pop-tarts....check, toro power lawnmower...aisle 4 here I come.

It astounds me people would impulse-buy something as pricey as a $300 mower or a 6' cherub in flight watering the plants with a watering can. Hell, it astounds me someone would even plan on buying the cherub. (cherubs are a small step away from pink flamingos imo)

I can understand the impulse buy on that Kit-Kat bar at the check-out. I get that 20 ounce drink you just had to have even though it costs the same or more than a 2 liter. But who in their right mind buys a lawnmower at a grocery store?

The logic to this astounds me. I know the mower is there because someone has bought one there in the past and chances are someone will buy one again in the future. But what crazy fucker decided to sell a lawnmower at a grocery store in the first place? Where is the connection? Hell, I can kind of explain why the cherub is there even if it is a stretch. I can even explain the alarm clock, the grill and the lawn furniture, but the mower blows my mind.

The cherub is there to beautify that garden you're growing your herbs in...maybe...the alarm clock is there to get you up to make breakfast, the grill is obviously there to bar-b-que those great cuts of meat our butchers make for you and the lawn furniture is there for you to have the party outdoors for all you friends to enjoy a potlatch.

The mower is going a bit too far I believe. The only next logical step is to say that the mower is there to cut the lawn so the yard looks nice for the party. Too bad it is winter and there's snow on the ground.

Hell. Why stop there Mr. Grocery store executive? Why don't you sell the car to carry all these things home from the grocery store? Next you should go into real estate and sell people their freaking homes, and the furnishings of said dwelling. After that, it is only a matter of time before world domination.

I'm on to you Kroger.

Give. Help.

This is a repost of a blog I do every year. Please help if you are able.

I used to work in a homeless shelter for a short while. Was my first salaried job actually, and while the pay was horrible, I believe my work was important. Unfortunately there were many things I could not do because there is so much work to be done. My main job was to keep the housing establishment safe and help elderly people apply for medicade and eventually move into assisted living homes, while helping others search for jobs. But much more needs to be done in a shelter.

Feeding our guests was usually the job of church volunteers who would have their congregationsdonate money for one night of the week and have a few actually appear to serve food, but many nights the shelter could not provide dinner. This is actually an easily avoidable tragedy. If any of you work for a grocery store of fast food restaurant you have unused food at the end of the night that will spoil and is usually thrown away. Do not throw this food away. Baked goods from grocery stores are especially easy to give away, and every selter will accept them unless they are an unusually successful shelter. Ask your local baker or grocery store managers what they do with extraneous food. Ask them if they would be willing to donate that food to a homeless shelter. Youd be doing your community a great service.

Another way to help is to volunteer time helping kids stuck in shelters with their homework. These kids are usually starved for attention and need some kind of direction. Their parents want to help them but are usually stuck trying to find affordable housing, jobs, or going to school. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

I only bring this up now becase I remember summer was a horrible time for shelters. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are generally holidays that shelters rely upon, but summer months are hard for these places. There are no college kids or high school kids who need to earn community service hours for school, no presents or donations from large corporations, and even less church volunteers because of the vacation season.

So help out now while it is most in need. Give your time, food, other items many people never think about like blankets, old linen, clothes, toilet paper (lord how homeless shelters need toilet paper), cleaning supplies like bleach, sponges, mops, brooms and pine sol. Give what you can, because these institutions are worthwhile enterprises. It has been almost four years since I worked in a shelter, and even then government grants were hard to come by. Im sure with a conservative (no offense, its just their policy to have churches help more than the government, and there arent enough churches to really donate what is needed) government in office funds are even harder to come by.

Give what you can, and feel better.

COD4---A Beginner's Multiplayer Improvement Guide: part deux

In the last lesson I tried to show you how to improve a bit individually. This time I'll give a couple more hints about individual shooting, but I'll focus the majority of this blog on team play.

Here's a tip for those of you having a hard time aiming, or just finding yourselves a bit slow with your reaction time. Try using steady aim as your third perk in conjunction with either juggernaut or stopping power as your second perk. Then select a weapon with a high rate of fire like the P90, uzi or RPD/SAW and spray and pray as you come up on your victims. As long as you're aiming in their general direction and not allowing your weapon to ride up from the kickback too much, you should kill them faster than they can kill you. This method of killing does have a limited range though. If your crosshairs don't cover at least 1/3 of your opponent's body, you must aim to be a reliable shot.

Team Play-- When playing with your team, your strategy should change depending upon the gametype being played, and the roles already likely to be filled by various team members. I'll explain further by listing these styles of play by gametype.

Death Match -- In death match games, the object is to score 750 or 1000 points via kills before the enemy does. This depends on if the game is being played with 12 or less players or 13 or more. . This means you have two immediate goals...1) Kill....2) Don't die. I admit the second part is damn hard to do. COD3 is built to have people die and respawn quickly, but if you limit your deaths...within reason...you should come out on top. This doesn't mean play uber conservatively and be the tactical genious MLG competitors must be. It only means you need to know when you set up and cover a flank, when you seek the relative safety in the middle of your group, or when you should go it alone and try to flank. Those options all really depend on which weapon and loadout you are currently using. If you're a Light Machine Gunner and you find yourself in a fairly defensible position, go prone and cover that flank. You should get at least a 3 for 1 kill/death ratio if you do this before the other team knows where you are. If you're a sniper, I would suggest you find some ground in the back to middle of your team that has long, wide firing lanes for you to snipe from. If you're an assault gunner you should try and push slowly through the middle or try and go it alone and flank from the sides. And if you're using a shotty or an SMG, you should charge into the heart of darkness and face the horror so others on your team don't have to.

COD is not a slow game. You'll find fronts move quickly if your whole team loves to run into the enemy, or the enemy loves to run into you. Try guessing where the new spawn locations will be for you and the other team. That info should help you decide on your plan of action. But you better make it fast! If you don't decide in 10 seconds or less, you'll find yourself out of position.

Domination -- Domination is all about locking down spawns. Kills, deaths, who really cares? Just as long as you always know where the enemy is, you can always line guys up to feed the slaughter machine that is usually created in domination games. The best way to lock down these spawns is to take two territories and allow the other team to keep their territory and try to funnel the enemy into one of three or four preprepared kill zones. A key to this strategy working is having no one get overzealous and charge into the other team's spawn. Should you do so, you increase the liklihood a few, or even all of that team will spawn to your team's rear. Since your team isn't set up to defend your flag, or defend the middle from a rear assault, you could jeopardize the outcome of the game by running in their spawn guns blazing. Just don't do it. It is that easy to win in this gametype........If you find yourself locked in, you must mass all on one flank and push through, ignoring the middle capture point and trying to run an end-around their defenses to force yourselves to spawn closer to their flag.

Headquarters -- Headquarters is basically a mad rush to capture a territory. You must constantly change your tact in this game from pell-mell suicidal rushes when you're trying to capture an area or take away a headquarters that has already been set up, to a more conservative, camping style when you have already established a headquarters. It is helpful to change your loadouts often in this gametype. If you find your team is having no problem at all capturing headquarters, but can't defend one for more than 10 seconds, try switching to a LMG with claymores so you can lie in wait watching one direction and have the claymores watch your back. If you find yourself losing out on getting headquarters and constantly trying to dismantle the enemy's base, try switching to an SMG loadout with extreme conditioning for those quick footraces to the headquarters. Under no circumstances should anyone ever snipe in headquarters games with the exception of playing on the map Bog (and I'm leary of even letting anyone do it on that map). This is because that sniper will act as an anchor for your team's spawns, and more than 3 out of 4 times you'll find yourself spawning so far away from the new headqurters that the team will have a hard time just arriving in time to stop the other team from taking it. Another helpful hint in headquarters is when taking a virgin headquarters and after the other team has made their initial rush to stop you, pile two or three people on the headquarters to speed up the process so everyone can find a good hiding place to surprise the enemy should they arrive again. And another hint is also to have one person stay just out of range of the headquarters and rush in just as the person trying to take it dies. There is a split second where your time accrued in the capture zone does not disappear even though no one is in it. Use that time to dash in and take over where your teammate left off.

Sabotage -- This gametype is a lot like search and destroy but with infinite lives. The one difference between it and the other gametypes listed above is that instead of respawning whenever you press that X button, you're now on a group respawn. 10 seconds from the point the first person on your team died, everyone who died within that 10 second span can respawn together at your initial bases. This means should one guy die, and then 7 seconds later everyone on your team buys it, press those X buttons fast so you can all respawn at the same time! In sabotage the object is to plant the bomb on the other team's arm site while defending your own. It is essentially a great big game of rugby with firearms. The best bet in this game is to have one guy run one direction early to draw fire and have the rest of the team run the other way for a quick arm. If this is successful the game won't last longer than 2 or 3 minutes. If it isn't then you could be looking at a 20 minute game at least. At the end of regulation time the game suddenly becomes a search and destroy game with only one life. If you do not have the bomb in your posession, you might as well kiss a win goodbye. Aggression is the name of this game. You do not want too many flankers. One on each side is plenty and they should always be in front of the main group. The reason being that if the other team decides to push through that flank with the bomb your main force should be able to jump right on them and nix that push. The flanker's death let's you know ahead of time which direction the main enemy force is going.

Search and Destroy -- One life, best of 7 rounds. Use your life well. Quick feet is essential here. You and the rest of your team must be in synch in order to push into one of the two territories you're given to assault. This choice is what gives the offense a slight edge. On offense you have three choices: 1.) Send all your team to one arm site and the bomb dude to the other (high risk but high reward), 2.) Send everyone to one site and try to defend the bomb guy while he plants the bomb (has about a 50/50 shot of working) or 3.) Just try to turn the game into a death match and hunt down the defenders. On defense, teams usually send two to one arm site and two to another leaving two somewhere in the middle for quick backup after the other team's destination is known. The defender's strategy is almost always one of turning the game into a death match. If they kill everyone but the final guy with the bomb, then they have a distinct advantage. They can then use the clock against the bomber forcing him to give up his hiding spot to try and arm the bomb quickly and live long enough to defend it so it blows. The Offense always has the advantage in search and destroy. They have the initiative. Once that is taken away by thinning their numbers, the defense has a better shot at winning the round.

Hardcore gametypes -- Hardcore gametypes usually have the same strategies as their regular counterparts. The differences are they should move slower, and the loadouts should be much different. This is because the weapons do much more damage...to the point where one bullet from a skorpion SMG will kill someone. This makes stopping power unnecessary, ans since running and gunning isn't on the agenda, steady aim. The best loadout to use in my opinion is UAV jammer with dead silence and a silenced weapon. This loadout helps you in a number or ways: 1.) It makes it harder to hear you if you happen to run past an enemy hiding spot and might let you get the jump on them. 2.) The UAV jammer makes their UAV's useless, and if they manage to get an air strike, so long as you're not hiding in the middle of a bunch of your guys who don't have a UAV jammer, their air strikes won't hit you. ( I like to run on teams where everyone has the UAV jammer as their second perk. 3.) The silenced weapon will still have almost the same amount of killing power as an unsilenced one, but the lack of noise will make it even harder for the other team to locate you due to the lack of the kill cam.

Hope this helps anyone who feels they need it. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to pm me with them and I will answer them every Thursday.