Enough is Enough

Jul 7, 2009 · 3 minute read

Checking my multiplayer stats in Call of Duty 4 has become a terrifying reflection on my addiction. Two hundred and twenty-eight hours. On a single game. This isn’t even close to the top of the CoD4 leaderboard though. That guy has something like eighty-three days logged. That’s one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two hours. And that’s not even the highest! The person ranked number 14 in the world has three thousand, one hundred and ninety-two hours. If you played this game for eight hours every day, it would still take you over a year to get that kind of play-time. Can you imagine?

The worst part is that I’m not even enjoying it any more. I’ve gotten to the stage now where most people who would be at my ‘comfort’ level of skill have all moved onto something else. Gears of War 2 or Call of Duty: World at War, maybe? And so what I’m left with is people that are beyond my skill-level, and just don’t make the game any fun. (I often accuse them of playing unfairly, but I think this is just my way of not having to admit that I’m not good enough to play with them.)

My achievement score has suffered too. I used to love my gamer score, and took great care to nurture it. Now it’s getting neglected. While I could be finishing other games that I started playing (like Dead Space, or Rainbow Six Vegas 2), I’m more likely to ignore them and fire up CoD4. To make matters worse, my Call of Duty achievement score is rather pathetic too, not at all reflecting the hours I’ve sunk into it.

And so, from tonight, I’m giving up. No more Call of Duty 4. Instead, I’m going to focus on other games. I’ve got a stack of games as long as my arm that I’ve been itching to play. Including (but not limited to)

  • Beautiful Katamari - barely touched

  • Stranglehold - played for an hour and stopped

  • Persona 4 - ironically, haven’t started because I’ve heard about the amount of time people sink into this game

  • Punch Out! - I play this now and then, but haven’t given it a decent run-through

  • No More Heroes - played about an hour

  • Deadly Creatures - really want to play it, but haven’t touched at all

  • Condemned 1 & 2 - played them both for about an hour, really enjoyed, and stopped

And, of course,

  • Battlefield 1943 - isn’t actually out yet, but I can feel my fingers twitching at the thought of playing it

So if you see me on Xbox Live (gamertag: swishypants) and you catch me playing Call of Duty 4, please, send me a digital kick in the pants. I’ll thank you for it.