Just to Reiterate…

The Mature Gamer's Club rocks.

Despite the fact I've owned it almost as long as I've owned my Xbox, I've only played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance multiplayer twice. This is because both times I tried to play it online, I ended up playing in a team with at least one other player who expected everyone to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and thought everyone else was playing purely to follow his orders.

I pick Spider-Man as my character? I'm a noob fag because Iceman is way better. I pick up some gear, I get fifteen minutes of verbal abuse for taking 'his' power-up. I head down the left corridor when you're supposed to go to the right? Another fifteen minutes of verbal abuse. Let's just say that this was the game that convinced me the majority of online gamers don't play for fun, but to work out the frustration and aggression of their sad little lives. They may be pale, friendless virgins in real life, but online they can be M3G4-ULTRA-PWNER-XTR3M3!!!1!1!

Anyway, as you can imagine, I didn't play it online again, despite the fact the game was purposefully designed to be played as a co-op multiplayer game. I have better things to do than listen to some idiot twelve year old scream like a spoiled child.

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, playing with the MGC is like night and day.

For example, in Ulimate Alliance we got to a part in the game where all four team members have to get across a balcony where you had to time your jump over three gaps that have fire blasting through them at regular intervals. Me and another guy just couldn't make it across despite multiple attempts…and instead of getting screamed at, instead of being called 'noobs', all four of us ended up laughing our asses off at a superhero dream team being defeated by a six foot gap…especially as one who kept getting blasted and hurt by the fire trap was the Human Torch.

That's what I was looking for. A group of people to game with who just like to have fun, and realize that having fun and winning with a perfect score aren't necessarily the same thing.

All I can say is that playing online with the MGC has made online gaming fun again. It reminds me of the way PC multiplayer gaming used to be when it first took off in the early 90's. Namely intelligent, mature people playing a game for fun. Not hyper competitive, sugared-up idiots working out their frustration by screaming at people from behind the safety and anonymity of their monitors or TV screens.