Fat Ninja

My Xbox Live career is long and distinguished. While I can’t lay claim to being one of the service’s beta testers, I can say that I’ve been a Live gamer for quite some time now. Xbox Live is what prompted me to get broadband, and a copy of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (a copy which I still own to this day) was what drove me to sign up for Xbox Live. Since then, I’ve met a lot of great people, one of whom actually rooms with my family and I, and I’ve had some great times.

Born of this community is Crescendo, a clan with which I have been affiliated for almost as long as I’ve been gaming on Live. In the beginning we were a tight-knit group of gamers whose attentions were fully devoted to any and every game bearing the Tom Clancy badging. Ghost Recon served as our proving grounds, pitting us against countless foes and really pushing us to work as a team. I cannot relate in mere words the level of committment we put into our success with Ghost Recon. We downloaded screenshots of the maps to plot out strategies. Practices were held nightly, often spilling into the wee hours of the morning.

As new games hit the market, we soon ventured away from the Ghost Recon series. When Rainbow Six hit store shelves, we rushed out to pick it up. We stormed through the game’s close-quarter maps with enough vigor to challenge our Ghost Recon days. These regular sessions continued for sometime, until one fateful November 9th when Bungie dropped Halo 2 on us. At first, it appeared it was business as usual for Crescendo, but within weeks it became clear that Halo 2 was to be our Yoko Ono. Many members rallied behind it as the game of choice. Others (such as myself) found it to be lacking in a number of areas. In particular, I loathed the types of foul-mouthed miscreants that seemed to gravitate towards Halo 2.

In light of this, I looked forward to Ghost Recon 2, which released a mere week after Halo 2. I quietly hoped it would reunite us. However, when I picked up my copy, none of my fellow Crescendoans seemed to follow suit. As a result, I was largely alone; I became a digital ronin, travelling from match to match and offering my services to whichever team the server assigned me to. I was thankful to find that the Ghost Recon community remained, for the most part, mature and on the level.

So, here we are nearly a year and a half later. The Xbox has become the Xbox 360, Ghost Recon 2 has become Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW), and Halo 2 continues to dominate clan activity for Crescendo. With no one in the clan supporting GRAW, I soon found myself playing less.

Recently, however, I’ve started venturing back onto the virtual battlefield and have found myself really enjoying a sort of personal gaming renaissance. In the past few weeks I’ve really been getting back into the Xbox Live scene. Not only that, I’ve found another clan that reminds me of why I used to love playing Ghost Recon. I hate to say it, but I want to take GRAW seriously. That is to say, I want to play on a regular basis in a competitive setting. I want to strategize, take up defensive positions, coordinate movements; and I want to use these elements to effectively eradicate our opponents.

Unfortunately, given a general lack of interest in GRAW, combined with huge scheduling gaps, I don’t believe it’s something that’s really going to come to fruition with Crescendo. But I’m trying to look after my own needs here. Okay, I’ll just come out and say it. I think we should start seeing other people. Oh, we can still be friends and hang out. I just need someone that shares similar interests and looks after my needs.Trust me, it’s not you, it’s me. In other words, I’ll still be hanging out with CC the same way I have for the past few years, but I’ll be joining up with Lethal Injection for clan matches.

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