Ten Signs You Are a CoD: Black Ops Addict
Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter game wherein multiple users can band together and blow one another away over and over again in a series of interactive environments. With several different modes, a plethora of weapons, and a seemingly-endless amount of other players to take on, Black Ops can become quite an addiction. Here are ten signs that you or your partner may need to take a break.
1) You gleefully cry out “Noob Tube!”
whenever anyone fires a grenade launcher or something explodes. You don’t care if it’s on the news and your grandmother is in the room, you’re in your glory. Should you disdain noob tubes, your tone will be suitable derisive. When others question you about the term, you look at them like they’re speaking in tongues.
2) ‘Camping’
no longer involves a tent, marshmallows, or hiking. It involves setting up at a strategic point and shooting others who will assault you with fruity curses and a barrage of insults. Conversely, should you be a camping hater, it involves meticulous and consistent virtual murder of said camper.
3) ‘Spawning’
is no longer a half-remembered term from high school biology class. Now, it means you have risen from the ashes like a modern-day phoenix, ready to perform the perfect payback kill. You hunt the person responsible for your demise like a deranged zombie, sometimes shooting him with your noob tube.
4) You know every
single permutation of gear and every nook and cranny of every map. You can kill 24 people in a row without dying. However, you have no idea when you went on your most recent date. In extreme cases, you may not know when your last shower was, either.
5) If your partner,
children, and pets can sleep through the sound of machine gun fire and explosions, you should take this as a bad sign. People and animals should also be concerned, not dismissive, of screaming, expletive-filled tirades booming through the house at odd hours. A cat that will sleep on your lap through carpet bombings, napalm strikes, chopper gunners, and gun ship assaults with nary a flicked ear is concerning.
6) If the ear
you wear your headset or bluetooth device in has gotten infected more than twice, is chronically sore, or has become more sensitive to noise than its partner, there’s a problem. Ditto if you’ve had to buy specialty equipment or are using an external microphone to give your ears a break.
7) The sight
of another human being getting shot, blown up, or knifed on TV no longer makes you cringe. CoD, with its realistic graphics, can inure you to all kinds of heinous violence. Being accustomed to seeing hideous mutilation, death, and dismemberment is never good.
8) Check your stats.
Among the numbers is how many days or hours you have played. Now compare that to how long you have owned the game. If it averages out to more than an hour or two a day, you definitely have a problem. Consider setting up a time limit for game play and stick to it.
9) You got an F
on your paper concerning the assassination of JFK because you described Lee Harvey Oswald as ‘a quick-scoper using steady aim pro and sleight-of-hand pro’ and you titled it ‘One Shot, One Kill’. Allowing game parlance to leech into your everyday speech is cause for alarm.
10) If your Youtube account
is comprised primarily of people who post epic videos of their conquests and you’ve spent hours researching the best strategies, camping spots, and ways to exploit weaknesses, it’s become a job, not a fun hobby. Get a hold of yourself, man!
If you’re showing disturbing signs of addiction, consider taking up a new, healthier hobby that will get you out of the house and engage you with other people face to face. Black Ops should be a challenging, fun game, not a lifestyle!
