Is there a happy medium for multiplayer shooters? You've basically got two types of games: Quake and Rainbow Six. And then every other game that picked one of those as its model. The latter types were probably friendlier to newcomers because in those games you're less alone and usually part of a team. In the former even if you're part of a team you're never really part of a team, you're just a solo madman running around clicking and tapping.

I don't know which I'm better at, but I think I hate both. More accurately, I hate all living things. That includes people. There is no way to truly "win" in online shooters because to win you must be two things: 1) successful, 2) liked. If you are successful at online shooting games, it probably means that you use so called shortcuts and tactics that apparently must be "mastered" (jumping, strafing, jumping whilst strafing, jumping with rockets, etc.) and therefore you are probably not liked. Players who do well are usually taunted and called a colourful assortment of names. To be liked you must be a player who is always available to be killed. i.e. 'Hey, that TK-421 is a great chap, always there when you need a kill! Beers on me!!' If you are constantly killed then it follows that you are probably not so successful.

I've been successful and horrible at my fair share of online shooting games. Thing is, I don't think they're worth the grief anymore. And where can they still grow, where can they evolve next? In my opinion neither type of the genre has evolved at all since Unreal Tournament/Quake 3 and Call of Duty 4, respectively.

What is Brink, or any future game, going to offer?

I think we'll continue to see a trend of "offline multiplayer" competitive games growing; by that I mean ranking players' skills via a leaderboard, and not a match lobby. Now I'm not saying I prefer that, but sometimes human beings are so fucking infuriating that it's a hell of a lot less stressful just to chase some ghost's score than to look the asshole right in the face (through a computer monitor, into an avatar and handle, over the internet; just to clarify!)

These days I don't care about being "good" at games any more, or having "skill." Skill to do what? Click buttons and be a jerk? To hell with that. I have a lot more fun co-operatively shooting AIs in Uncharted 2, or fumigating digital bugs with Luke and Gregg in Alien Swarm, or listening to Armand for the umpteenth time telling our group of survivors to "c'mon guys, stick together, stick to the plan!" in L4D2.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hate people (in games, on the internet, to be clear!) when they're not actively working toward the same goal that I am. There's a reason I haven't bought StarCraft II.