I own 2 games I bought thru the Steam client, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. While I have not dedicated much time to Bad Company 2 at this time, it’s a shame it will be the last game I ever buy on Steam. Not necessarily because of Bad Company 2, to be honest, it’s not necessarily because of Modern Warfare 2 either although it is in part.
Last night (like almost every other night) I was playing with my Clan friends online. We have been playing Modern Warfare 2 for quite some time now, it’s the game of choices at the moment. Here’s the thing about Modern Warfare 2, it’s the game you hate to love and love to hate. Had it not been for the lack of dedicated servers, the useless and horribly designed IWNet and the can’t_catch_a_hacker_to_save_its_life_if_it_had_one VAC system, Modern Warfare 2 could have been one of the best Call Of Duty’s to date. I like the game itself, all the new perks, the killstreak rewards, the new maps. The game is actually fun. Until you get kicked from the server.
When ever I play the other Call Of Duty games, the only waiting time I get is the time it takes to load the next map or if I’m on a modded server first the first time I have to download several files and maps. But normally I go from map to map with the same people with only Punkbuster to be dumb enough to kick me. Basically, playing on dedicated servers can be seamless most of the time and hackers are usually dealt with pretty quickly and usually permanently.
Modern Warfare 2? I spend more time in the game lobby some days than I do in games. The most common connection errors? “Unable to migrate host”, “server disconnected”, and my favorite “Steam disconnected”, all of them happen during game play. There are times when we try to enter a game 3 to 4 times before we finally start a game. Not to mention when ever we go in as a group, someone always gets kicked during the process of entering games forcing us to back up to pick them up and try again. Combine all of this with the enormous amount of hackers on Modern Warfare 2 (can hardly find a server that doesn’t have one) and while I can’t stay away from the game because the game itself is fun, when it works, I wish I could just delete it and shove it up Infinity Wards ass.
The next Call Of Duty version is coming in November, called Black Ops, it’s being created by Treyarch. Although Treyarch does not have a great reputation when it comes to Call Of Duty (World At War was not exactly that great though was fun most of the time) with the exception of the Zombie mode in World At War which was an interesting addition to the game, we hope they take advantage of Infinity Wards complete disregard for PC gamers and give us a game that could rival Modern Warfare 2. Of course odds are they’re more likely to throw a rehashed version of World At War to us but we can still hope for the best. We already know it will have dedicated servers so that’s a plus for me. Lets just hope it’s not as dull as Battlefield Bad Company 2.
Steam will only remain on my PC because of the fact that it’s the only way for me to play Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 but otherwise, never again will I buy from Steam as I am tired of not being able to play my games just because Steam decides to AWOL on me from time to time.
