Online Gaming

When I was young, I remember imagining something like this. Masses upon masses of video game connoisseurs, joining together on separate consoles/machines, playing together from a distance for an enhanced experience. While I put the flag down, I'd just like to say that sometimes I look back upon my younger self with disappointment and wonder what the hell he was thinking. You know, besides "maybe if I spend another three hours playing Sim City, something might actually happen".

Online gaming has been around in some form for a few years now, even if at first it was only available to rich people and 80s computer nerds, and at some point between the invention of the Internet and this morning, the latter realised (NO, BLOGGER SPELLCHECKER! REALISE IS NOT SPELT WITH A Z, YOU TWIT!) that they could use the Internet to make online gaming a reality, and the former realised they could use it to download porn to make their long lonely lives slightly less long, then paid the latter to make it available, at which point they rebelled and made online gaming instead.

Online gaming nowadays can be classified as one of five types. Well, maybe more or less, but I'm classifying it as five because they're the ones which spring to mind. The first consists of people who use the Internet and their PCs (no, not their Macs - people with Macs are too busy spending time staring at the screensaver with psychedelic content) to play First-Person Shooter games online. Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, Quake...the genre's been around for years, since the days of Doom and the original Quake, which is much better than any of the ones in the series since the fourth one and the jump to online play. Which is ironic really. Of the five online gamer types, I would say that this first group (hereafter referred to as "Moleyites") is probably the most mature, as anyone who takes the effort to get their computer up and running with enough power to work a nuclear reactor (the amount it takes to run a FPS with all the fancy visual settings disabled to increase game speed), so they can be forgiven for screaming over Teamspeak for their rivals to eat lead, and most of them have enough self-control not to Teabag the corpses of their deceased rivals (and in some cases, teammates - you bastards). Then again, this is probably because Teabagging someone leaves you open to sniping, and if you actually complain about being sniped in the head while Teabagging someone - then you fucking deserve it.

The second group is known as "The Jocks". This is similar to the Moleyites, with the exception that the screaming and Teabagging occurs via an Xbox 360 console and Xbox Live. As all Xbox 360s are capable of playing online once connected to the internet (that's if they haven't crashed and suffered the Red Ring of Death), not much effort in the term of setting up an expensive PC is needed, and the trigger happy alcoholic wannabes can log straight in and get to screaming at their fellow man. The Xbox Live community is well known for being full of miscreants, vandals and adult men living in their mother's basement at the age of 45 who have still not yet hit puberty.

Group three, also known as the "Mangled Housewives", are those who once in a while turn on the online function in their Playstation 3. Once all the bandwidth for five miles around have been sucked up and then stabilized again, they can access Sony's online Home service for hours of fun with their fellow man. OH WAIT, THEY CAN'T BECAUSE SONY HAVEN'T ACTUALLY RELEASED IT YET! What they can do however is play such online gems as the Metal Gear Solid online beta...if they can be bothered to register three accounts and cry through the lag. Note that so far I have not mentioned the online Playstation 3 games that actually work online because they are all Resistance: Fall of Man and they are all in the same category as Moleyites and The Jocks anyway. The reason I refer to this group as the Mangled Housewives is because while a lot of Sony gamers will sneer behind their monocles at gamers who loyally follow the sequels to their childhood games instead of heading online, they have no right to do so - Sony seriously needs to start listening to their fans and tending to their needs, rather than launching plasma screen televisions through the air and taking aim at them with the high-tech laser cannon originally designed to be the Home server. Basically, Sony gamers will wait for their loving company to stop doing unspeakable things to them and actually get on with it.

Next up on the firing range - I mean "examination of online gaming" is the group designed for all gamers including younger ones, but actually averages out as the same age as the previous two groups. Nintendo has been in the Great Console War longer than their rivals, the expensive Microsoft and the multitasking Sony, and the Wii's online service isn't that bad. With all my experience of the online gaming on the Wii, there has never been any lag - if the thing actually gets to connect to the online server. Nintendo gaming is known as being fun for the whole family (with the exception of Manhunt, and only Manhunt - oh and Resident Evil 4 if anyone is actually afraid of spanish people, and the racist generation doesn't play video games), and likewise Nintendo likes to make their followers wear metaphorical blindfolds, in the same way I like to don a metaphorical cape and trident and go around fighting aliens. I mean metaphorical aliens. In order to play against people online while talking to them, you need a phone or a laptop with teamspeak. Friends exchange "friend codes" - long several digit numbers, in order to play with one another. Anyone randomly met online cannot be spoken to, or speak back at you, so you need to use the language of love to talk to them. And by the language of love, I mean "make them cry at Mario Kart". I use Mario Kart as an example because it's the best example - despite not being able to actually scream at randomers to suck the ban...red shell, it's the most reliable online Wii game and actually the most fun - if you look away from Mario Kart Syndrome and the Blue Spiky Shell, an item which causes recurring nightmares in the mind of every Nintendo gamer as they sleep with their stuffed Mario. Nintendo needs to grow up a little bit in terms of letting people talk to one another. Oh, and don't think I haven't noticed Wii Fit yet - I'll tear into that soon.

The last of the five groups in this little romp through online gaming is known as the Grinder. Innuendo and euphemisms aside, I'm talking about the ones who use their PC (again, Macs are possible too - if you get away from the funkalicious screensaver) to play online Arr Pee Gees (RPGs, for anyone who didn't get it), such as Guild Wars or World of Warcraft. Approximatly 89% of Grinders are the type who will pick healing classes and then fail miserably to heal you as a bear chokes on your oesophagus. 8% are the type who will pick healing classes and them fail miserably to resurrect your oesophagus-less corpse on the sole basis that they are selfish bastards who would rather use the small portion of Mana to shoot squirrels with holy magic than bring you back to life, and I'm being entirely serious. Online gaming is supposed to be about teamwork, not making your dead allies walk all the way back from the graveyard while you take out your revenge on the nut-crunching wildlife. The remaining 3% are the ones who actually work well in a team, and I can't really criticize them. Arrogant bastards.

Oh, and FYI? Don't ask people if they want to see your Gnome Warrior.