Queuing Up All Night To Buy Call Of Duty

Nothing draws nerds out of their pits like the midnight launch of a game that lets you feel like you’re wreaking your own bloody revenge upon society. So it was that myself and a friend found ourselves queuing on Oxford Street to get our hands on a copy of the new Call of Duty game: Black Ops. If you’re a child/well-adjusted adult who only picks up a pad to play FIFA or Happy Smiley Puppy Land on the Wii, you have to understand that this game is expected to sell more copies than any other game ever made, so to a lot of people it’s kind of a big deal.

Armed with serious amounts of Stella, energy drink and an assortment of designer snacks, we headed to the Game store on Oxford Street at around 10pm. When we arrived about 100 other freaks were already there, including two guys who had been queuing for 36 hours, which – on their part – was a gross overestimation of how common their obsession was.

We kept warm by getting pissed on cheap nasty beer and by trying to engage the other twitching nerds in “banter”. Talking points among the CoD faithful included the use of grenade launchers in multiplayer making you a n00b and debate over which emblem tag is better – High Command, Blunt Trauma or Joint Ops? The elephant in the room/street was the matter of how we were going to keep our girlfriends/wives whilst this game swallows our lives.

I managed to convince the Geek Wardens to let me in before the opening to take some photos. The men in the glasses are testing the game in 3D. One of them in particular looks pretty excited about it, but realistically only about 0.1% of the population are going to play this version as: a) 3D TVs are still more expensive than houses, and b) 3D games are still shit.

Yes, that is a real bazooka on the back of that man’s pack. He was handing out goodie bags full of XL t-shirts, posters and Xbox Live Points which are completely useless to the people who use the more superior PS3 and aren’t fat, like me. FUCK YOU Activision!

Just before midnight the shop was opened. The excitement, coupled with the booze, was too much for this guy, who stripped down to his boxers and posed with the models brought in by the PR guys. No one seemed particularly impressed and the staff warned him to put his clothes back on or they wouldn’t serve him. I’ve never seen anyone get dressed so quickly, not even strangers in the sad, miasmic half-light of my bedroom on a Saturday morning.

Hello girls! If you’re only reading this to find someone to blame for your boyfriend’s total lack of interest in you for the next six months, blame the bald guy. That’s David Vonderhaar, the guy who built the multiplayer mode on Black Ops. A hero to men, a destroyer of love to women.

Within 20 minutes we had our copies and rushed back to the flat to indulge in some celebratory Bollinger (Stella) and set about starting our 24 hour CoD: BO marathon. You’d think they’d have chosen a title that doesn’t remind the world of sweating fish.

If there’s one thing the Americans love more than eating their own beards, it’s killing commies. Not only can you shoot Lenin, the father of Communism, right in the face, you also get to kill Castro (which Nixon never managed to do in over 60,000 attempts) and pretend you won the Vietnam War. The man whose cold, dead eyes you’re peering through is Alex Mason, a member of the top secret, don’t-even-tell-your-mum-about-it S.O.G. We’re not sure what they did for real, but if this game ISN’T just a gratuitously rewritten version of history, they sure did murder loads of “Charlie”.

In Hong Kong things go a bit Matrix as you fly across impossible gaps between buildings while maintaining enough composure to score three clean headshots. If only real soldiers were this cool.

This is evil British scientist Dr. Clarke. You’ve been sent to Hong Kong to rescue him, but as you near your escape Clarke gets shot in the head and plummets to the streets below; in effect dying twice.

After sucking hard at the campaign we moved on to the multiplayer where we saw this screen, A LOT. Even though the game had only been out a few hours people were already stupidly good and we got pwned almost every game. Black Ops has significantly improved the multiplayer aspect of the Call of Duty games, introducing split-screen online play, the ability to unlock any perk or attachment at any time with the CoD points system and hauling over the annoying killstreak system of Modern Warfare 2. Yadda yadda yadda.

There’s only so many times a man can be flame-throwered to death by 12-year-old Swedish children before he decides to bow out in disgrace. After throwing out a hail of insults through our headsets, we retreated back into the chaos of the single player campaign, where we enjoyed blowing off this bro’s limbs with a revolver.

Yes; now I’m skydiving down a mountain whilst an avalanche thunders behind me. In reality though, I’m sat in a cold flat in London and I’m worried about the beer running out.

From awful, lighthearted comedy films to voicing the token dead black guy in a video game, Ice Cube is really going up in the world. RIP in peace, Corporal Bowman; shoulda packed your AK.

A casual bit of Russian Roulette = most tense video gaming moment since trying to shag your mates in Baldur’s Gate 2.

Did I shoot the monkey? You’re fucking right I shot the monkey. It’s OK though, it was probably a communist.

The last mission sees Mason and his team assault the underwater base of the evil Soviet General Dragovitch. The showdown sees you smashing the controller frantically to choke him. :)

So you save the day and everyone thinks you’re great; then after the credits roll, you’re transported into the Pentagon as JFK and instructed to fight off a horde of zombies. Yep, Nazi Zombies is back, the one saving grace from World at War that unites Robert McNamara, Fidel Castro, JFK and everyone’s favourite Richard Dickie Nixon in a pitched battle for survival against zombies who’ve at some point picked up fervent right-wing views.

HENRY LANGSTON

NERD DISCLAIMER: To conclude, Black Ops is a much improved Call of Duty experience, a definite step-up from Modern Warfare 2 which many saw as lazy and short. The single player campaign in Black Ops is longer and is a lot more coherent and less predictable, and the “Cold War” setting is a fresh theatre of war. Multiplayer is now fairer and the addition of gambling style “Wager Matches” and full customisation brings a much welcome change to MW‘s overly simple n00b fest. Yadda yadda yadda.