Welcome to this fifth day of November, 2014.   I’m John “Boomjack” Hoskin and this is Here Comes The Boom – EP #31

Call of Duty.   It’s hard not to like a game that the vast majority of the population pronounces as “Call of Doody”.  It’s the most popular potty joke ever.   Thank you Activision for not only publishing an incredible series of games that has brought joy to millions, but for making this writer smile every time I hear someone enthusiastically exclaiming that they love “Call of Doody”.

I’m not 20-something any longer and much to my chagrin it is harder to compete in first-person-shooters. 

I was passable as a player in my “prime”, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 showed me just how far I had fallen.   I enjoyed the game, but more often than not I was somewhere in the middle of the pack when it came to the Leaderboards.   That said, I also appreciate that the scoring doesn’t necessarily indicate the skill of the players as it can be “gamed”.    The guy who runs around, dying more often than Tom Cruise in End of Days can still be top of the scoreboard even though he didn’t defend a single flag in Domination for instance.    I get it… I still don’t like to be in the middle.  You're that awkward kid on any team.  Nobody is outright telling you to go play somewhere else, but they all wish that you were better. 

Call of Duty: Ghosts held my attention for such a short period of time that I can’t even rate it other than to say that I disliked it so much that I stopped playing after only a few hours.   I chalked it up at the time to coming back to a PC shooter after playing Black Ops 2 on the XBox (my first console shooter and a surprisingly excellent experience).   

Titanfall arrived and I enjoyed it, no I loved it…, but it didn’t hold my attention very long.   I can’t put my finger on it, but if I had to explain a reason that I didn’t play Titanfall for long I would have to say that it was too erratic.  The change of pace between fighting on foot and being in your Titan was a rush, but it also broke some of the continuity for me.    I can’t fault the game.  It was a great experience, but it didn’t hook me in like Black Ops 2 did.   I enjoyed the seemingly endless weapon upgrades and prestige in Black Ops 2 and I find it hard to play a shooter that doesn’t give me that mind-trickery of being a MMORPG.   Again, I played Titanfall on the PC, so my concern that I “could never go back” was reaching confirmation as I had found a great game, but couldn’t commit to stick with it.

Destiny, oh how I love thee.    Finally, a FPS with RPG elements and …. What the heck?    I found myself playing, loving and never wanting to quit the PvP in Destiny.   As a middle of the pack skill player there were plenty of other players just like me…  Supers allowed me to contribute even during games where I was on tilt and rocking around as a Space Wizard (Warlock) or Robocop (Titan) was fun on so many levels.   I played (and still do) on the PS4 and my fears that I had forsaken my PC roots for console-mania were becoming reality.   I missed the long-tail RPG elements of Black Ops 2.   It was becoming brutally apparent that my MMO heritage had either ingrained the love of the grind in me or that it had been there all along and explained my love of games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

I wasn’t convinced that I would even purchase Advanced Warfare.    Heading to BlizzCon, followed by the release of Warlords of Draenor (which I will play with my family), my newfound love of Hearthstone and life in general meant that there simply wouldn’t be time to play the game even if I liked it.   

Enter the marketing team and an offer to have a go through AW with them.  No strings attached.  They were sure that I would love it.   I explained that with my time constraints and my predisposition to the title being a disappointmenting affair similar to Ghosts that I probably wasn’t an ideal candidate to approach, but that I would make time, but no promises that I would be impressed.

I downloaded the PC version of the game.   The trifecta was in play.  If I didn’t like the game then this would be three PC shooters in a row that had disappointed me and I would have to admit on some level that I was enjoying console FPS more than that of my PC roots.    Note: the game is massive.  On my Internet connection that resides somewhere between usable and maddeningly slow it took all night and part of the next day to arrive.  

If you are still reading then damm, thank you and you're a trooper.  I’ve drawn this daily column out a lot longer than I had hoped, so for the sake of brevity I’ll state that I am enjoying AW far more than I expected.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that it has me hooked more than any other FPS that I have played in the last five years including Destiny.    It may still be the novelty of the gameplay and the off-time with my travels to BlizzCon may wipe the shine off the apple, but right now I love the game.  It’s as entertaining as anything I have played in recent memory and… and… and… it’s on the PC.   Huzzah!  So far... two thumbs up!

Now on to something more entertaining

Vin Diesel Fact: There is no CTRL button on Vin Diesel’s computer.  Vin Diesel is always in control.