CoD4: The Timmy Factor

The Face of the Enemy

Hideous, ain't it? Playing on Xbox Live, you run across a lot of these. It's a bit disconcerting to struggle against another player, getting your ass handed to you in a basket over and over... And, when you get in the lobby, you hear these piping, little-girl-sounding voices and realize that the player who made you his bitch isn't old enough to shave. In fact, his balls haven't dropped yet. (He doesn't need them yet, since he's busy collecting the balls of adult males all over Xbox Live. And, the Timmy likes to rub your face in it, too.) Usually, Timmy doesn't cheat; he's just faster. It's the older douches who cheat with stuff like turbo controllers.

My younger brother, über-player Reibochief, is only 4 years younger than I am, but being introduced to gaming at a younger age than me has made him a much better player than I am. Yeah, he plays more, getting more practice, but except for a brief golden period when I was dominating him and Matt64 on the original Halo, he has always had better eye-hand and faster reflexes. He got acclimated to the biomechanics of gaming younger than I did, and I never caught up.

So, now what? I hate conceding to youth's advantages in reflexes and co-ordination, so I try to compensate as much as I can. I'm all thumbs with a controller, so I use a mouse/keyboard adapter called the XIM360. (It's a gizmo that uses a PC to translate mouse/keyboard commands to an Xbox 360 controller; it works but there are drawbacks. A lot of time has to be invested in fine-tuning the sensitivity settings for every game. Also, it limits my participation in organized play, since many players feel it gives an unfair advantage over gamepad users. On the plus side, tho, it means I enjoy the same input controls on all games. The melee strike, the reload, etc. are the same in every shooter I play.) I also try to caffeinate myself before taking the field against the Timmies. Usually, I drink my own strong coffee. I dabble with energy drinks. Red Bull is too expensive, so I usually get discounted energy drinks at the local outlets, where a 16 oz. energy drink is fifty or sixty cents, as opposed to $2.00 at normal retailers. Ace is available in a low-carb version. Joker is OK. My favorite is the low-carb version of Rush, which tastes a little like apple cider to me. The energy drinks sometimes work well. Other times, all they do is raise my already legendary irritability to stratospheric levels.

Since I'm transitioning to CoD4 to prep for MW2, as noted in earlier blog entries, I've added some FFA to my regular play time. It's a mixed bag, tho, since I'm a hardcore player. If Den Kirson's data is right, stock CoD4 player health is 100, while hardcore player health is 30. That means non-hardcore really puts a premium on aiming. I've always tended to be a spray and pray guy on the move; on HC, I camp and pick people off from a distance. I always have a hard time with non-HC because, dammit, if I get the first shot in, they should be dead. The always-on mini-map means that as soon as you take a shot at someone, everyone on the map knows where you are. So, if I'm lucky enough to get a kill, I get fragged a fraction of a second later. Using a silencer means compromising range and damage for many weapons. Since my aim sucks, I switched recently to the M249 SAW. Though the SAW only does 30 points damage, the damage doesn't fall with distance. Up close, the insane rate of fire compensates a bit for my crappy aim, so with the SAW, RDS, Stopping Power, and Steady Aim, I managed to have some good games on Wet Work last week, calling the heli in twice and coming out way positive. Still only managed 3rd place, tho. A sniper was the top dog with 25+ kills and like 3 deaths. *sigh*

The best way to metaphorically keep the Timmies off your lawn in TDM, tho, is to play with a regular crew. I'm still working on getting that going... :)