CoD: Attempt #1

After staying back late to work on a project one day, Yaning, Lazy Y (who I will now start referring to as Jamal), and I semi-subliminally decide to stay at Jamal's house for a while before heading home. What I mean is, we just walked in the direction of his house, and he says, "you're coming over?", and we both say "sure". After a pleasant ten minute walk in the sunshine, we arrive outside his tall and narrow building. It's a small house, but I like the layout. There are many miniature flights of stairs that sort of separate the open space into different areas. I'm not quite sure why we are there, or what we're going to do, but either way, I greet his dad with a smile as we reach the second landing. This is where the living room and kitchen are. I glance at the centerpiece, a 50-inch Samsung plasma television. I recognize that crisp, sharp, piano black colour and the reflective polish over linear lines and rounded edges characteristic of LG and Samsung.

He serves us all a glass ("cup" really doesn't sound nice here) of root beer, and as we drink and pig out on his strawberries (or at least Yaning did, and left NONE for me), he sets up his PS3. The PS3 menu pops up, with the vertical bands of icons and I'm amazed to see that he manages to scroll through three menus in two seconds to find the eBuddy interface.

"Hm. Nobody's online now." And in half a second he scrolls back though the menus and starts the game. "Here, you two play."

"Uhhhhhh..." I have no idea what to do, having never played on a Sony console before, and FPSs also happen to be very foreign to me. Ignoring my slight xenophobia, I acquiesce and take the controller. I already know that my coordination sucks, but I decide to give it a shot anyway. After all, what is there to lose? He goes through a few menus and we end up at the gun selection screen. Not only did I have absolutely no knowledge in this field, but those colourful icons below the pictures weren't very explanatory either. I turn to him. "Would you like to choose one for me?"

"Fine. Both of you, go to... that one."

"Okay, which screen is mine, and what player am I?" I ask. He turns my controller upwards slightly. I notice that there is a red light next to the number two.

"You are player two, bottom screen." Ehhh. I feel so smart. To make up for my temporary lack of observation, I tell him I want to try and figure out the controls on my own. The map loads, and I find my character standing amidst an industrial looking area, much like any other shooter I’ve seen. He'd chosen the smallest map and turned radar on. It's basically a square with four giant crates in the centre that create a cross. Random metal shelters were placed around the exterior. Attempting to move forward, the first thing I do is press up on the d-pad. Instead, the screen turns green.

“What the…” I look down at my controller, and only then do I realize that the d-pad and left thumbstick are swapped compared to the Xbox controller. Using logic, I tap up again, and the night-vision like ambience goes away. I easily learn to move and rotate the camera. Once I've tried out all of the buttons on the front surface, I still haven't learned to shoot. I hit the left bumper and notice that my character had just thrown a grenade. It takes me a second to compute that I should move away, lest I want to end up as a carcass, and another two to relocate the thumbstick. By then, it's too late. The screen turns white, and a high, ringing noise blooms. Oops.

Luckily, that was just a flash grenade. I activate the regular grenade next, and blow myself up. A sinister "+5" pops up on Yaning's screen. Rather offended, I attempt the right bumper and finally, a "welcoming" gunshot sounds. We start actually playing, and I quickly learn to keep an eye on the minimap. It took me about five deaths to get used to the fact that the weapons we were using had automatically detonating grenades when we died. As I played, I managed to panic less and less, and I even started building some reflexive reactions. After having two airstrikes (each worth a three kill streak) called on me (both of which I survived), I finally managed to bring in a helicopter (worth a five kill streak). I waited as the helicopter did its work, then Jamal replaced Yaning.

I knew my doom was inevitable, and within twenty minutes, he managed three helicopters, even while fooling around, performing stunts such as tailing directly behind me, waiting to see when I would notice. I marvelled at his lethal three movement take-downs; right thumstick, left thumbstick, right bumper; which always seemed to lock directly onto me. The only compliments and reasurrings I received were, "Hey, you noticed me stalking you faster than most people" after I remembered to check the map for once, and turned around and knifed him, and "Don't worry, when most people play against me, they die immediately too," after a ten kill streak.

If I can, I'll try again tomorrow and see how much I improve.