Gaming the way I like it!

I've been a big fan of military shooters for years now. I loved the feel and playstyle of the XBox versions as of late, and would be lost without my beloved Ghost Recon series to keep me warm at night.

I've shy'ed away from the XBox for the past few weeks just because I 1.) hadn't really had the time and 2.) I was a bit burnt out of gaming for awhile.

Well, a few weeks ago, the newest Official XBox Magazine hit the news stands and had a playable, online version, of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. My buddy Brian (Vitamin B) was instantly hooked and got us all in to it immediately as well. The game was an absolute blast and I couldn't get enough. Unfortunately, being that it was a demo, it had a few issues. First, you could only play 2 sessions, then there was the 1 game mode and 1 game map to play. I fell in love though, that didn't stop me (and hasn't stopped B yet, I think he's still playing it even as I write this!)! But I made the fatal mistake last week of picking up a new military shooter, Black Hawk Down. If I had been on the second floor of a building playing this game, I would have found the nearest window to jump out of. What a horrible piece of gabarge this game was. It made me want BF2:MC on the 'Box that much sooner.

Well, fortunately for me, I spent the extra $3 and had 14 days to return my smelly piece of garbage game for a full refund. But when I walked in to that store, there, glaring at me in all its box art shininess was Battlefield 2 for the PC. C'mon, I couldn't resist! I snagged it right up!

Now, just a little history on games of this origin. Most of the FPS (first person shooters) out there are your basic run and gun mentality. No one takes the time to plan out your strategies and they maintain the me, me, me attitude of gaming! Everyone's Rambo!

Well, gaming with Dave (Dagon Fel) and the other BoG'ers really got me in the mindset of gaming with a strategy. Take on the concept of working as a team to control an area, or working together to overtake a flag position. This is what the game is about to me. Organizing your guys to work in a fluid motion, having your team work together to come up with the best strategy in-game. Drawing up maps and planning your attacks and defenses. To me, this is what its all about! This is gaming the way it's meant to be played!

So many people today are in to modding games and coming up with hacks and cheats and it becomes frustrating to a guy like me who plays the game to simply be competitive on a fair and balance battlefield.

Well, in picking up the game, I wanted to find the best experience that I could and get the biggest bang for my buck in the investment I just made. I cruised around the web looking for BF2 sites to see what was going on out there and I happened across a site called Battlefield 2 Combat: A tour of duty based on Battlefield 2 ! Now you've got my interest! A tour of duty? What could this be about. I spent the rest of the day Thursday and most of the day Friday researching what was involved here. I'll break it down for you:

You spend anywheres from 9.99$ for 4 months to 34.99$ for a full years subscription to this site. What you get is servers that are controlled by the site for you to game on, a controlled environment. You don't get the hacks that don't want to work as a team, these guys are organized, and they mean business!! So I plunked down the $9.99 to give it a shot.

They start ya off by filling out all of the necessary documentation to get you enrolled, you almost get the feel as if your entering the military, with all the paperwork! You then decide what group you want to be a part of, the US, Chinese or Iranians. What the heck, throw me in the meat grinder! Put me where ya need me! Well, the Iranians are in need! So off to camp I go. The whole process is very methodical in its approach of being simple, yet it is to the point.

You get a message in your inbox telling you to report, in my case to the MEC 3rd - New Recruits section where you are given your orders. You sign up here as well and within 24 hours you are assigned a division you will be attached to. In my case I was assigned to the 21st ID. Here you meet your team leader, who for us is Captain Comrade. Being that this division is fairly new, he's getting a lot of the new recruits that are coming in. These of course are going to be your front line guys! Hoooo rah!!!!

I spent the better part of Saturday just going over all of the intel. that is available to you on specific maps, strategies for those divsions, and just proper procedures of how this ship sails! There's a great tool that they use for communicating back and forth during battles called Team Speak. The software is nice in that it is a stand alone deal and allows for you to just talk with your team mates.

The way it is organized, Tuesdays and Thursdays are reserved for practices. Each group has their own practice servers to get together on and strategize with. Which kicks ass! You again can avoid the rooms full of tyrants and not have to worry about laggy rooms and having to kick people. See the nice thing about this is that you PAY to PLAY. So someone that spends the extra money to be a part of this is going to be a little more attentive to his investment and want to work with you or risk losing that money when he's removed from the competition for not being a team player. Sundays are the big battle days. When the war officially begins, teams will battle it out from noon until 8pm EST in what is sure to be epic battles.

I'd seen this in the past with a guy I used to work with that was diehard, like this, with Medal of Honor. He was part of a group that was structured the same way and competed in tournaments as well. But here, your not going out competing against another clan or team, your battling it out in a mock tour of duty. This is a war that is waged and going to the site you get headline news from around the globe talking about the developments of the war. It really brings a different edge and feel to the game.

So, this past Sunday (July 31st) I recieved my orders for deployement in the early A.M.! I was to report to Team Speak and my divisional section of Team Speak by 11:30am to go over some basics for the match. It was a great turnout. We ended up with 8 guys in our division showing up, and a hand full of us were new recruits, not even having been in competition yet, let alone the game. Captain Comrade had it all under control though. He had is troops ready for battle and everyone was quick to follow thru with their assigned orders and duties. We gamed our hearts out! I played for about the first 4 hours and had to take a break for some weekend lawn duty, but jumped right back in to finish up the rounds with my team!

Low and behold, MEC took it to the NATO 1MC's! We had 2 maps, Area 4 - Zatar Wetlands and Area 11 - Strike and Karkand. We seemed to dominate on the Area 4 map and really did all we could on Area 11. In the end though we came out victorious.

For the first few weeks, these are organized scrimmages, so that we can get up to speed with our teams and start becoming a cohesive unit. And for a first run thru, we seemed to work pretty damn well together.

The next few practices should be fun. We seemed to all get along great and follow the plan perfectly. It was very well exectuted. I'm sure there will be bumps along the road, but thats' what makes this so fun!

This for me is my kind of gaming!