Online Gaming

I did something this week I've never tried before. I hooked my Playstation 2 up to the internet to try out the world of online gaming. The games are good fun but you join games with people of all different levels and the main problem is that if you don't know the game environment well and all the moves and combos (who has the time?) then you can get turned into toast pretty easily. I tried out the free game military game Hardware and its good shoot 'em up fun, just driving around shooting other players but after a while it is a bit repetitive and there is no story to play out. But that's OK, it was easy to join a game and worked well and the environments and vehicles are pretty cool, which made up for the repetitiveness of the action. I was doing well to turn 5 other vehicles into toast but some players were getting scores into the 20s - probably mostly off charring my vehicle. The other game I tried out was SOCOM a game about Navy SEALS where you play either with a team of SEALS or a team of terrorists. I was a terrorist in the game and I played about 7 games and didn't manage to kill another player. I seemed to be quite good at getting shot up though. I have other games with online modes, I'll check those out over the coming weeks.
I also wore my USB headset naively. It's a bit strange and there isn't really anything to say - I heard a variety of questions that went mostly unanswered, I certainly didn't answer. Any talk was minimal, it was mostly "Nooooo" as someone was blown up. There were a few "Good game" comments and stuff. I heard some swearing and in one game a guy and a girl were chatting constantly in an accent I didn't understand or recognise but they spoke as if they weren't playing the game at all. I don't think they were talking about game, odd really that they would be choose to be chatting in a public game rather than somewhere else more private. I don't think I'll bother wearing my headset again.

A lot of the new game consoles like XBox360, Wii and soon the Playstation 3 seem to emphasize the online side of gameplay. I'm glad I tried it out but I wouldn't say I'm addicted to games online, I just don't play enough to get that good. If I could play games with other newbies it would be better but I think the stigma of any match called "For Newbies" is off-putting, that's why nobody was joining those games.