I’ve spent a good chunk of my gaming time recently playing Call of Duty 4, and quite often a routine part of the postgame lobby has been muting players who are complaining about another player ‘camping’. Well I say complaining, what I actually mean in this context is that they were either hurling abuse, or having full blown temper tantrums. Now maybe I have had a bad run of gamers to play against, but it does appear to me that there are a fair few people out there that really get angry at this topic, so I thought I would put fingers to keyboard and try and put my thoughts on this subject down in a manner that hopefully will be easy to understand, and leave itself open to well reasoned debate.

To set the scene my playing style is not that of your typical camper, I tend not to have the patience to stay in one spot during a match; I like to run and gun with an SMG or Assault Rifle, if I find a good perch I may try some ‘sniping’ with an M4 or M16 but I generally find that I’m not consistently accurate enough for this to be a reliable strategy for me, so I tend to hoof it and pray while I spray. However this does not mean I disapprove of camping as a multiplayer strategy. I personally have to go with the Rooster Teeth definition of camping “it’s a legitimate strategy”, though it has become apparent that not everyone agrees with me on this, and some even consider it cheating.

To me Call of Duty 4 is essentially a military simulation, in multiplayer you take on the role of a soldier in the British SAS, US Marine Corp, Russian Spetznaz or the Opposing Force taking part in a variety of combat scenarios. The game’s major selling point is the realism of gameplay; as such real military tactics are very effective when used in game. For example two soldiers fighting side by side as a fire team can take down lone opponents quicker than if they were playing solo; another example would be someone acting as a spotter and using the team talk feature to call out targets for their team’s sniper to take out. By using simple military tactics, you can be more effective in game, and camping is one of these tactics that can be used.

Indeed in some cases the classes in the game seem designed to camp. Take the sniper for example. Even the semi-automatic rifles like the Dragunov are not well suited for a head to head confrontation against most of the other main weapons in the game. If you get close to someone playing with a P90 or MP5 chances are they will unload into you and kill you before you can even line up the scope. Sniper’s in the real world of modern warfare are usually a highly trained marksman that shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel.

Other forms of ‘legitimate military’ camping include holding a thoroughfare for a tactical advantage; this is the most common form of camping I run into while playing. I will be moving through buildings only to find that someone has hunkered down with the intention of cutting off that route for me and my team. I usually get a face full of FMJ as a reward for my discovery.
This however raises the issue, when faced with an opponent in a superior position, with the capability to take you out in a rapid manner, how do you counter that? It seems like an untenable position to be in, what’s the secret?

Keep Calm! As infuriating as it is, if you foolishly charge in you’ll only get killed again, and again, and again! I speak from personal experience; my abilities as a player are inversely proportional to my blood pressure. There are a few things you can do to deal with a determined camper:

1. Take advantage of the kill camera to get an idea as to where he is, it seems simple but if you wait those few seconds rather than furiously mashing the X button you can get a very good ideas as to where they are;
2. Use the map’s terrain to keep yourself in cover as you approach them;
3. Let your teammates know where he is, they might be better placed to get the drop on them;
4. Make use of your grenades, a well placed smoke grenade can provide cover for moving closer, and a fragmentation grenade can outright kill or injure the camper enough for you to finish them off with gunfire;
5. Switch class. Before hitting X to re-spawn, go to the start menu and pick a class more suited to the situation. Try a spot of counter-sniping, or utilize the shotgun for some close-quarters combat if you can;
6. Avoid the camper.

Often overlooked is that final tip which is easiest done on larger maps. It sounds ludicrous at first, and smacks of cowardice to some. However if you can stay away from the field of fire of the camper and work your way around via another part of the map; deprived of kills the camper may well be forced to up sticks and move elsewhere. Though even more satisfyingly, you may also find yourself approaching the camper from the rear. Shoot them in the back of the head or give that sniper a taste of your knife, I assure you either way it will be quite satisfying to have gotten one up on them.

There is however a form of camping that cannot be defended by the proponents of legitimate camping; I am of course referring to the act of spawn-killing. While legitimate camping tactics can be countered this reprehensible ‘tactic’ is where an opposing player sets themselves up in a position where they can kill players as they spawn into the match.

This usually results in the targeted player dying before they even have any chance to move, shoot or defend themselves in any manner. With all other forms of camping, the opposing player can, through using their head, counter the camper’s tactics; however in these circumstances the limitations of the games spawning system are used to deny the player any chance of having of fighting back.

By playing the game in this manner you remove the possibility of having any kind of game played in the spirit of friendly competition. Instead you have moved into the realms of malicious griefing, and nobody wants to play with people like that. Hold back and let them spawn. Yes your final score may be lower, but you will have so much more fun if you play the game as Infinity Ward intended. After all as Sir Winston Churchill once said; “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

I finally got round to playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 this weekend. Admittedly the two sessions I spent playing only totalled up to four hours or so of gameplay.

For those of you who are unaware of what the team in Rainbow Six are all about, then I could be mean and direct you to the Novel ‘Rainbow Six’ by Tom Clancy. However that is a little mean so I will briefly explain it for you. By ‘I’ I really mean wikipedia, who have an excellent write up of the team available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_6.

So RAINBOW are a NATO counter terrorist special forces unit, and in this title you are playing as the leader of a four man squad, as you infiltrate and assault terrorist held positions in the casinos of Las Vegas.

While playing this I had the good fortune to be in Co-op mode, where I was squad leader, and my friend Idle Han was playing as one of my squad. This led to my first complaint about this game. Only I could give orders to the two AI controlled squad members, more realistic maybe having a clearly defined chain of command, but when I am pinned down and stuck returning fire, Han while in a better position to direct the troops could not give orders to the AI troops to assist.

However that little problem aside for the most part this game is very, very good to play! The AI squad is easy to control, with the A button acting as a contextual button, and the back and down buttons switching between actions (hold, regroup) and behaviour (assault, infiltrate).

It is a fantastic feeling you get as you watch your troops get into position and then storm a room, watching as they drop smoke grenades to hide their positions and execute a quick clean takedown of a room full of terrorists. All as per the orders you gave them with few clicks of your controller.

However the AI were very happy to hold position everytime you ordered them up against a doorway, and then entered yourself. If you didn’t remember to order them to regroup they would stay there indefinatly. They also on one occasion glitched as they both tried to enter a doorway at the same time and got stuck running into each other, rather than one letting another through first.

The actual manner in which you play the campaign is quite different from Halo 3, my usual frame of reference when playing an FPS on the Xbox. For starters like Call of Duty 4 the game features a more realistic damage system, you can only take so much damage before you are killed. Switching between weapons is slower, again more realisticly portraying a soldier pulling out his backup weapon out from his webbing, before being able to open fire.

I never got a chance to play the online multiplayer aspect of this game myself, which is a shame considering the high quality of the single player campaign. I would have loved to take advantage of the online cooperative play to get four of us in versus the single player campaign.

If you liked Halo I would definatly say Rent this title, as I feel you might not enjoy the game-play transition. However if you are a COD4 fan and if you can put up with the few minor flaws in what is otherwise an excellent game then I would happily recommend that you Buy this title. I will be to.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Call of Duty 4 campaign this week. Between the Xbox Live downtime, and some problems with my ISP I have been unable to join multiplayer matches without lagging out mid-game, so I have returned to single player campaigns to keep me entertained.

I am a Bungie fan, and I loved the Halo series. After playing the campaign of all three games to death, the first thing that I noticed about Call of Duty 4 was how ‘gritty’ everything looked in comparison to the shinier more cartoonish look of the Halo 3 single player campaign. It immediately sent back to eight years ago when I was playing an entertaining FPS called ‘Delta Force 2′.

This game was introduced to me by two guys that I was on an IT course with, after listening to them talk about how great this game was they slipped me a CD-R and a slip of paper with a CD key. That night I had my first experience of Software Piracy and of Online FPS Multiplayer. For those of you wondering I went out and bought my own copy of the game that weekend; it still gets used on the odd nostalgic occasion, along with my copies of Dark Forces and Tie Fighter.

As I played the first few missions, I became amazed at the almost dual nature of the game. While playing as the SAS you have to play the game more like a stealth game like Splinter Cell than say a game like Halo where you can just charge in and let your shields take a pounding. Then you switch to the US Marine Corps, and the game changes slightly. You are now in pitched battles with insurgents. The usual tactics of sneaking up and knifing the opposition will not work. They know you are there and they want you dead.

This tonal change in gameplay threw me at first. I had done the SAS missions on Veteran difficulty without to many problems, but playing as a Marine was kicking my arse so hard it had turned me into a hunchback. I had to drop down to Normal to progress through the storyline. It amazed me how difficult more ‘realistic’ games could be compared to the typical sci-fi shooter I was used to playing. Grenades could, and routinely did take my legs out from underneath me. Death came on swift wings for me on more than one occasion, I was left staring at the screen wondering how I died.

For the first time in ages I actually found myself stopping to think before I acted. Even on Legendary in Halo 3 you could get away with infrequent acts of stupidity, but in COD4 stepping into a doorway without checking first could and would leave you face down in a pool of your own blood. After the initial confusion and frustration wore off I found myself quite fond of this game and cannot wait to get on to my ISP so I can jump into the multiplayer as well.