As a thirty something male with a fondness of fat based products and decades of home based computing under my belt, a lot of my exercise is virtual.  Usually running about stealing cars, killing most other people I meet and generally running, cycling and driving between crime scenes that I create (I sure wouldn’t want to be a CSI in San Andreas).  In the world where I’m not black, built like Mister-T and more heavily armed than most Texans, I wouldn’t even dream of doing these things, but in the world of GTA it’s everyday to kill drug dealers, crash helicopters and jetpack around town collecting cash and guns for no good reason.  There is very little that these two universes have in common (eating 13 burgers in either will make you puke I’m told although who’d really want to try it?).

I’ve been a part time resident of San Andreas for a long time now, but it’s time to holiday elsewhere, only I am not a purchaser of X-box or PS3.  I have a perfectly good PC, better than either the two aforementioned items.  A PC that I already have and would still need even if I had a console.  So there is no way I’m getting one.  Plus I don’t own a TV (that’s a whole other post fest right there).  So they are out.  Which means no fecking GTA4 for me any time soon.  Not until Sony and Microsoft double their money anyway.

What having no GTA4 means is that I’ve had to buy another type of game.  Games from people who don’t even host their own fecking enormous patches themselves but make you get them from other sites.  Yes we are talking about Activision and Call of Duty 4.  I’ve played the story a couple of times and now only use the online gaming multi-player bit.  Which is good.  Much better than Wolvenstein: Enemy Territory and along the same lines.

The main issue for me with online games is the Long Ping.  Out of 17K+ servers I can see about 5 have a ping of less than 30 and about three dosen are under 60.  More than that and it’s a waste of time playing unless you enjoying being shot dead before the other guy gets rendered correctly.  Which I do not.  The trouble is that the Ping on the server window is a complete lie.  Sometimes it’s about right but mostly it is way higher which means I get shot a lot.  So I play it less and less, since I have to hide out and doodle about a lot and also avoid servers with more than 20 players.

This last point is very important because a Spawn Killer loves a crowd.  You know a toss pot who works out where players will be put into the game (spawned) when they start or re-start after getting killed, and then sits behind them and kills them as they appear.  This was a huge issue in Unreal Tournament but it still happens now in COD4.

This is just what Microsoft and Sony are doing.  They are giving as the Long Ping unless we move to a select group of servers and once there they Spawn Kill us until they have enough points to be promoted.  Well with the downturn in the economy it looks like they might get Punk-Busted because a console is a luxury I for one am prepared to do without.  I’ve got the money ready and waiting for RockStar – but only on my chosen platform.  The PC.