So, there I was holding the ol' cell phone in hand, reading the message sent by my brother-in-law, "Target has a buy 2 get 1 free deal, any suggestion?"

Ha, did I have any suggestions? Poor bastard didn't know what he had coming to him.

I had recently come off the "high" from Batman Arkham City. So, I mentioned it to him along with Gears of War 3...which is a series he wasn't exactly thrilled with.

Nevertheless, he brought up Battlefield 3 as an option.

Now, mind you, during its announcement and E3 presentation I was almost entirely convinced this would be the game that would bring down the juggernaut we all have come to know as Call of Duty Modern Warfare. I mean Frostbite 2 was probably the most impressive proprietary graphics engine I've seen since Crytek's CryEngine 3. Of course, this was in part due to it running on a high end PC, but I digress (don't you love that word?).

I argued with my brother-in-law that I over-hyped Battlefield 3 for myself and although it was good, it was definitely not the game I had come to expect. Mainly due to the single player campaign not having that "theme park ride" like experience that most FPS games have adopted. He then replied that the multiplayer was was Battlefield was all about.

To which point I counter-argued that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 would be his better bet because more than likely he would get not only a better single player, but a solid multiplayer experience.

In any event he ended up purchasing Battlefield 3 and was explaining how great the multiplayer is. So of course, I had to stick with my guns and reply on how the single player was, ok.

His retort was on never playing the single player, only multiplayer and being fine with that because it was a good time.

Basically I mentioned if he got his 60 bucks worth out of it then the game sought out what it was meant to do.

However he mentioned "40 bucks" for him, good gameplay and immersive multiplayer. "Since when did you start disliking multiplayer so much, probably Resident Evil 5."

~Remembering the past...bare with me here~

Honestly, my prime in multiplayer was Golden Eye on the N64, some where from that point to now I haven't been able to find that type of multiplayer experience. Maybe it was just playing with a huge group of friends and staying alive so I wouldn't have to give up the controller added to a sense of competitiveness and reward...and some bragging rights for keeping the controller the longest.

Truly, multiplayer has evolved in such a way that maybe "I'm getting too old for this shit," but honestly the amount of skill needed and chaos experienced mixed with cheating and "cheap tactics" (i.e. spawn camping and exploiting glitches) kind of turned me off to the whole experience.

The funny thing is when the XBOX 360 first launched and I experienced Perfect Dark Zero's multiplayer I fell in love with that experience again. I loved the trash talking, the screaming, the laughing, the craziness of it all, and most importantly I had fun, actually more fun than I had with the single player campaign.

Halo 2 was my next foray into competitive online multiplayer and it was a blast, but I noticed something, there were some freakin' amazing and skilled players that began to dilute the experience for me. Overall fun began to transform into focus and frustration. Being respawned to immediately find my character launched in the air by an exploding rocket or sniped upon reentering a game was the equivalent of slamming my dong in the door repeatedly.

In any case, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter would be the game to separate my involvement of multiplayer for a good while. No matter how good I felt I was in single player, multiplayer put me in my place. At first I had a blast playing with a fellow co-worker, but soon I was costing us the games by sucking incredibly bad. It wasn't about fun anymore, this was a serious testament to skill and extremely competitive. Which I understood, but it cost me that appealability that most saw about multiplayer.

In short, I was garbage at multiplayer.

Gears of War would soon reawaken my joy of multiplayer.

My roommate was an incredible gamer, in fact I would regard him as above average. He always started games on the hardest difficulty and on Halo, him and his friends usually came out on the top even crushing MLG players...which I'm told isn't the feat it sounds like it is.

So, I proposed we gathered everyone up to enter MLG, if not for anything else than experiencing what "that" was all about. Besides I had a crush on one the PMS clan members, so I was hoping to chat with her, yeah lame, whatever.

"Well, if we do this we need to practice and frankly, I don't think you have what it takes."

I looked at him narrowing my eyes, "Don't have what it takes!? Dude, I bet I can beat you 1 on 1 on Gears!"

"Ok, show me."

I quickly darted to my room while my roommate hopped on the living room couch. I knew in my mind I was full of it, but maybe, just maybe I could pull it off. Hell, I beat the crap out of the game on Insane mode...with my roommate's help.

We launched the game on the Gridlock map.

It was a total slaughter, not to say I didn't get my fair share of kills, but it no way did I come close to an even match. It was a little embarrassing because obviously my ass couldn't cash the check my mouth wrote.

I think he knew I was at least a little serious about competitive gaming so we approached it jedi-style. He became the master and I, the apprentice. We trained on Halo 2, first on sniping players on moving Ghost's, then effectively using an Energy Sword to instant kill a horde of players.

We trained after work till the early bits of the morning and then finally crashing. It was fun, but it was beginning to ware on him. Other engagements, life, newer games, and procrastination began to eat away at our training routine and the vision of MLG slowly faded away as I pursued education.

As time went on I began noticing XBOX Achievements and slowly became hooked on competing with my friends' scores.

However, after trying to achieve certain multiplayer achievements I totally gave up on it after failure to failure. I made it my goal to attain every single player achievement there was and eventually my view toward multiplayer became skewed. It was more of a feature to me, playing second fiddle to what I saw as the overall core of the title; the single player campaign.

It's funny my brother-in-law mentioned Resident Evil 5 as the precursor to my voracious negative view on multiplayer. See, I'm an enormously huge fan of the Resident Evil series...not at the beginning, it took Resident Evil 3: Nemesis to open my eyes to the series (that's a whole other story to get into). So, for a game I was a huge fan for I wanted to "1000" the game, to which I did. Then the DLC was released, with the inclusion of multiplayer. Ok, now, I'm pretty hardcore with Resident Evil, I even went through Professional Mode all single player (although the Wesker and Jill fight took over 73 tries, true story).

I was hell-bent on getting all the multiplayer achievements, I was cruising, getting It Takes Two to Tango, Keep the Good Times Rolling, and The Team That Slays Together... on my first tries. However, getting a game match going in some Capcom games is a true nightmare. So after a few hours I was exhausted mostly in trying to get a match started and getting booted for whatever reason.

I came back to it a while later around when the Gold Edition was announced. Oh my nuts! This was my introduction to the most nefariously atrocious multiplayer act; "Rage Quitting". Man, almost every time I was about to win a lengthy match someone would pull the plug on the internet. I'd say a good 95% of the time my matches would end this way even worse was how some players let me get within seconds of the match's end, only to be hit with the disconnection message and receiving no points towards my winnings.

I almost had my fist in the television after a few more of the "Rage Quits", at that point I tossed in the towel.

Maybe it's true, Resident Evil 5 was the straw that broke the camel's back.

~Back to the Present~