The death of PC based First Person Shooters?

I’ve been a fan of PC based First Person Shooter games since before either was invented. I used to sit for endless hours with my right hand holding a twitching half-dead rat while my left was busy pressing an assortment of Yale Keys stolen from my Dad’s dungeon. I’d stare at my bedroom window shouting things like, “WTF? LTP Noob!” One time my Mum got a priest in who declared I was speaking Sumerian.

When I was released I quickly became enthralled with the PC revolution. FPS games became my forte. Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, FAACS (Fictional Anthropomorphic Animal Character Slayer) – I played them all! Online play added a whole new element. I could pwn real players; the only enemy being the evil lag caused by the demonic inspired modem.

I did briefly switch to the Dark Side and tried the original Red Faction and Halo on consoles. I laughed so hard I split a hair follicle. Aiming on console based FPS games involved juggling with two thumb sticks in a virtual world which refused to keep still. I had more chance of catching Mr. Miyagi with chopsticks than hitting my target. The AI’s had to be programmed with Storm Trooper levels of accuracy to give players a chance of winning. At the time I imagined if they tried to develop multiplay FPS all players would have to wear a blindfold and detect each other using the oral “Marco – Polo” method to make it fair and balanced.

I laughed and went back to my superior PC with superior graphics, smooth mouse/keyboard action and skill! I didn’t stop laughing until the neighbours beat me senseless with a cricket bat. Then of course the dreaded Haxor emerged to ruin it all.

Hacks made CounterStrike a nightmare to play. VAC is blatantly insufficient but then again it does stand for Virtually Any Cheat Is Allowed. The ‘IA’ is missed off the end because VACIA sounds like a sex enhancing tablet.

Servers run by Admins who didn’t become power obsessed evil despots saved the day and made the game playable. I soon learned only to go to those blessed of servers and for a couple of years had great fun. However, now we have a fish based FPS series called Cod and when Modern Warfare 2 came out, it had been designed in Infinityward’s wisdom not to have server-side support. This, they pronounced emphatically, was to stop hackers dead in their pants, plus had an unforeseen and unplanned side-effect of making it possible for them to charge for DLC…which is nice. /sarcasm.

I fell for this nefarious claim and purchased said product for my preferred platform from a Game shop assistant with chronic urticaria.

I played and enjoyed the Single-Player Campaign even though it was remarkable easy and quick. According to the stats, when I completed the game I’d been playing for minus 5 minutes. Nonplussed I dived straight into the multiplayer arena!

It soon became blatantly obvious some players had the ability to see through walls. Others could shoot one player with one shot, spin around 790 degrees and shoot another in the nads while teabagging a third. Odd Perks indeed I thought. With these abilities I expected to unlock a Killstreak called, “Delete All Enemy’s Accounts.”

At rank 68 I struggled to gather enthusiasm to play. I hada negative ratio which was so large it makes the San Andreas Fault look like a builder’s butt crack. It was rare for me to go through one gaming session without encountering at least one obvious hacker and Bod knows how many who are more discrete in their cheatering shenanigans. I had taken to playing obscure game modes which hardly anyone plays like ‘Third Person Capture the Hag’ as the haxors tend to stay in normal modes but it’s hardly ideal. The old woman hates being picked up and dragged around the map. She threatens to tell her son-in-law or regale me with tales about her bunions.

Then a mate (who strangely enough only I can see?) bought me a pre-owned copy for the PS3 and said, “Just try it mate!“ whilst smiling like a bible basher. Going against all my instincts and beliefs I did and the difference was simply incredible!

The first few matches were like a ‘Carry on’ film. I’d go to aim down the scope but threw a flashbang and blinded myself instead. I’d try to knife someone but ran faster into their oncoming bullets. Saying ‘Stop’ and holing up my hand doesn’t work like it did for Neo. On my third match I fell backwards out of a window in Highrise. I don’t even want to say how and why I got stuck upside down on a ladder in Quarry.

This was all down to the barbaric controller which is JUST WRONG! I missed my smooth mouse and keyboard action. A player would appear in front of me and I’d panic! I’d press both triggers while rotating the thumb sticks in the hopes I’d unlock a special move and shoot a fireball while screaming ‘Hadouken!’ but it didn’t work.

But then something happened and suddenly I got used to everything. It was like the controller needed to bond with me like a Trill or Goa'uld. I started winning matches. Within a few games I was really enjoying myself; within a few ranks I hit a positive ratio. At rank 42 I had a ratio of 1.27 and found FFA quite easy. I have to seek team based matches for a decent challenge. On the PC version I got killed in the lobby.

There’s good players of course but what’s so refreshing is you don’t see biblical miracles of skill on a regular basis, nor does a Dark Lord of the Sith join the match under the pseudonym /\L33TR@:P0rZ*^|. It appears the PC is the preferred platform of the Empire.

I continued playing both versions for a while, however I found myself spending more and more time on the PS3. It’s hard to login to a game where you don’t know if you are on a level playing field and the evidence from the HackCam proves the mutant genome is ripe amongst the PC community.

Maybe it’s my experience on the PC which makes the PS3 version more playable; maybe the general skill level of the PC’er is greater. Maybe the ‘not talked about much in public’ aim-assist in console FPS games makes all the difference. I don’t know. All I know is it is blatantly obvious a major factor is because the cheaters are more prevalent than ever before. Valve’s stony silence since the 2500 account bannage after MW2 was first launched on the PC speaks volumes. The lack of visible bans in-game encourages more to cheat just to keep up. I actually think it’s reached the point where it’s not the player with the hacks who wins but the one with the best hacks; it’s like the Olympics if drugs and bioengineering were allowed!

Is this the beginning of the end of FPS Multiplay on the PC? Such claims have been made before of course and it’s still here. All I know is I've not looked back since. Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3 were all PS3 purchases. Maybe the hacking problem has got better on the PC? I do not know but it's too late for me.

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