RISE OF THE EXPLETIVES! ... or ... Fix Black Ops 2, please.

For fucks sake, Gaming Industry, get your shit together.

There is one time a year that I allow myself to go into an uncontrollable rage, and that time is November-ish.  That's right, it coincides with the release of Call of Duty.  This year, I held a party called "The Second Annual Hatefest" and it happened in my living room, in front of my bemused girlfriend, and my disinterested cat.  As pissed as I was at GameStop yesterday, nothing could have prepared my TV for the callous, furious things I was screaming at it yesterday.

"But you said you'd always love me."

For all my neighbors, know, multiple community members are missing and buried somewhere in my backyard.

In 2011, Infinity Ward decided that it really sucked for people who bought Call of Duty to encounter lag on their terrible dial-up and dsl connections, so they implemented something called Lag Compensation.  This made the game practically unplayable for people with decent connections to the internet.  In essence, what happens is this: Player A (that's me) sees an enemy, and begins shooting at Player B (the player with the terrible connection).  The only problem is, Player B's gameplay has been boosted by the server, so that he isn't seeing the game later than he should.  Modern Warfare 3's netcode for their lag compensation overcompensated, leaving people with decent connections in the dust.  So in that example above, Player B sees me well before I think I see him.  I never have a snowball's chance in hell of winning a duel with someone unless they're absolutely horrid at the game.  Barring the opportunity that I can sneak up on another gamer unaware, I am totally up shit's creek.

"My, that's a lot of shit you've got there, creek."

With that in mind, I don't think it would be totally unheard of for Treyarch to have prepared Black Ops 2 with a more comprehensive netcode for lag compensation.  For instance: any other netcode than MW3.  Of course, what do I encounter the first day I pop CoD:BO2 in, but soldiers who will turn around while I'm unloading an entire assault rifle clip into them, and drop me with two or three shots.  When you watch the killcam, it tells a completely different story.  They were already in mid-turn before I even began shooting.  The same thing happens when I'm patiently guarding a corner, or aware, thanks to an overhead UAV, that there is an approaching enemy.  By all rights, they should not know that I am present immediately, but as soon as they come into the open, I go down like a drop of a hat.

This kind of bullshit is unacceptable.  I know that the game has many other features, including a badass singleplayer campaign and zombie mode, but one of the primary reasons I purchase Call of Duty every year is to excercise the sin of pride.  How in the hell am I supposed to do that when I'm fighting against soldiers from the future who can anticipate my every move before I make it?

My only hope is that Treyarch takes this complaint (and mine is not the only one) seriously.  I didn't spend $60 to enjoy 2/3 of your game.  I can only imagine how people feel knowing that they already spent an extra $50 on the game's season pass.