Geeks whup Marine ass in Call Of Duty 5

The streets of San Francisco were yesterday awash with blood as geeks battled real-life Marines at the debut of Activision's Call Of Duty: World at War - an apparently unequal struggle which in fact saw one "bespectacled teenager" ice an entire elite Marine unit "without so much as straining a thumb". A victorious John Chitman …

[kevin elliott]

Codswallop!

I'll get my coat

[Mark]

"between saddos and Marines"

Which was which?

The RL Marines were sad.

The RL saddos worked like Marines.

Did you put some beer money on the Marines? You poor, deluded fool.

Now if the geeks had played on the same *side* as the Marines, the marines would have waxed them!

Mine's the HEV.

[Paul Murphy]

When did body bags come out?

They certainly weren't around in WW2, so a coffin, dumped in a ditch, slung onto a cart or train were the most likely options.

That's if anyone cared and survived whatever did you in.

ttfn

[Anonymous Coward]

Real world kill:death ratio consequences

That's a bit harsh, isn't it?

[James Hughes]

Let make it fair

Now the geeks have to fight the marines for real.

I wonder who will win...???

[Jon Double Nice]

And for a rematch

The nerds should have to go and do real army training and stuff like that.

More CoD online though, I better book a few weeks off.

[Not That Andrew]

no title needed

More to the point, which idiot thought that was an appropriate event for Remembrance Day?

[Clive Galway]

Inaccurate?

Title: "Geeks whup Marine ass in Call Of Duty 5"

Second to last para: "the carnage went to a tie-breaker as the opposing sides fought their way to an eight battles apiece draw. The Marines eventually prevailed"

These statements are surely mutually exclusive?

[Mark]

Think of the possibilities...

Does this mean the next time a new Resident Evil comes out, we'll see gamers vs. real zombies?

[Mark]

re: Let make it fair

How does that make it "fair"? you may as well say "lets make it fair and have a competition to make a VBScript botnet in the shortest time".

At least there won't be ANY DEATHS.

FFS.

What a binch of pansies. Pissed off because they "lost". Worse are you, pissed off because SOMEONE ELSE lost, just someone you didn't want to lose.

[EdwardP]

Blimey...

A victorious John Chitman told AFP: "They weren't so hard at all." His teammate Glen Robinson added: "We totally waxed them. It was awesome. We smoked them."

If that isn't just the most pathetic thing I've heard ever. Whose idea was this promotional circle jerk anyway?

While being good at video games provides little benefit in the real world, being Marine means you're cooler than ice, tougher than god and stronger than steel.

Suck it up gamers, this is the first, last and only time you'll get one over on a marine, ever.

[Peter]

Rubbish!

So where were the brits, australians, new zealanders, south africans, french, poles, czechs etc. Funny how the yanks 'convieniently' forget what really happened for their own ego centric version of the world.

P.

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother

Could get one over an American marine, and she's dead. They are nothing compared to your average British soldier.

In the 80s, on manouvres and war games in West Germany, the Brits were told to let the Americans win on more than one occasion because they were destroying the morale of the men from the other side of the Atlantic. I think that says it all.

Geeks rule and British Geeks rule all other geeks!!!

[Rab S]

hehehehe

If only RL with miles gear....."bunny hop out of this you little toerag...."

[Mark]

Re: Blimey

"If that isn't just the most pathetic thing I've heard ever."

Not really. These kids thought that real life training would make the poor analogue of a FPS a cakewalk for trained killers.

What's really pathetic is the quote from one of the marines:

"Sure you can do it in the game," a Marine taunted. "We do it for real."

So? This isn't real.

If you want to pick on a side for being weird or infantile, pick on both. I would prefer that it would have been nicer for the Marines to admit that this was a washout for them, congratulate the winners and drink with anyone interested.

If you want REALLY pathetic, one of the tank commanders in Gulf War 2 likened the battle to "it's just like a video game" and how they played their favourite music in battle. Just like Apocalypse Now. WHILE REAL PEOPLE ARE DYING!

But they are trained to see this not as people dying, so it isn't their fault.

Admitting defeat and just enjoying (maybe even learning) the game which is, after all, a very poor equivalent but has no death in it whatsoever, would have been good.

At least some admitted it was a blast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill to Death Ratio

One had better hope the real life number is a singularity. The gaming concept isn't a ratio....

[Ian Ferguson]

AWESOME!!!1!

Cool, get the marines all excited over how simple it is to machine-gun geeks on Call of Duty, and it'll make their jobs so much easier in real life! Next time they come across a village of suspected terrorist families, they'll know EXACTLY how to machine gun them down and flame-gun their houses, without hesitation. Followed, of course, by the traditional 'WE 0WNED UR ARAB ASSES'

[David Gillies]

Body bags?

You didn't get 'sent home' in a body bag or a coffin or a bit of blotting paper in an envelope. You were buried in theatre. The second largest US military cemetery outside Arlington, VA, is in the Philippines.

[Kenneth Chan]

Training Ground for Land Base Kill Bots

I bet some guy at DARPA was watching and using what he learn in the next gen of Killer Bots and the "Marines" is really SkyNet learning how ordinary meat sack work.

KC

[TJ]

Now now now

Lets not get our regulation britches in a wedgie. The Marines had as much fun as the Gamers, I'm sure, and I'm also sure the Marine recruiter was on site at gamestop signing up "winning" souls. This was an across the board victory for everyone. Everyone had fun. Gamespot/Activision got PR, and so did the Marines, They did it on "remembrance" day because I'm sure school was out, more people were available, and it was World War II themed. So what better way to remember than to take shots against those who ultimately lost. (These would presumably be the gamers, in this case, as I highly doubt the Marines would sign up for Nazi garb online)

Both sides needs to calm down. Its just a friggin Game!

[Dan_Hibiki]

"Sure you can do it in the game," a Marine taunted. "We do it for real."

Really? You fight Nazis in real life?

[Anonymous Coward]

recruiting drive ?

Perhaps the marine recruiting teams have reached critical mass on duping the poor underclasses in the middle states and are resorting to the lonely Poindextors to fill the coffers(ins).

'Yeah you're great on screen son but can you handle the real deal"

[Anonymous Coward]

@Clive Galway

Those sentences only contradict each other if you're unaware of a little thing that we call "the passage of time". Here they are again, this time with subtitles for the hard-of-thinking:

First,

> the opposing sides fought their way to an eight battles apiece draw

then as a result of that

> the carnage went to a tie-breaker

which had the long-term consequence that

> The Marines eventually prevailed

I don't believe that El Reg intended you to believe that the result was ever /simultaneously/ a draw AND a win for the marines. In fact, I find it hard to believe that you could actually have thought that was what they meant. Perhaps you are suffering from a slight case of http://www.xkcd.com/169/ ?

[Mark]

@TJ

You're right and wrong.

I would sincerely hope that some marines just took it as fun. I suspect some did and it is merely the "Semper Fi" attitude that the media *expect* from marines that is being brought out (because people WILL tend to act like they find people are expecting them to act).

As to the recruiting drive, I would say not.

You can't get in the marines unless you're insane, poor, really fit and unable to get a job on civvie street.

Insane? Well, wouldn't YOU have to be to pick "kill people" on a job aspiration questionaire???

Worse, if you get into REAL combat (where people can shoot you) rather than TV wargames (where you dial up number 17 and watch it hit "the target"), it really is dangerous!

[storng.bare.durid]

nitpick

last line of article..

divide by zero is either infinity or if you're silicon and count in binary, usually an error or undefined.

[Magilla]

A little disappointed...

...that there was no reports of tea-bagging. What is this world coming to?

[stranger on the road]

how many games did the marines play?

no really, are those marines, gamers as well? can their fingers move smoothly on the keyboard? How about their mouse control?

I got one of non-IT people in the company I work for to try Portal, even though he could type long letters, he had trouble moving around and every time he tried to turn around he ended up looking at the floor or at the ceiling. He is intelligent, but "game control" is a different matter. (getting him not to move his body when the character moves on the screen was tough).

[Pascal Monett]

Not really surprising

I would suppose that the Marines started their approach of the game by implementing the same tactics and behavior that they use in real life, meaning keep your head down, save your ammo, short bursts and all that. The Marines are professionals, and approached the matches by identifying primary and secondary targets, setting their well-known tactics in place and following them religiously.

Whereas the geeks went for a par the course game, guns blazing, bunny-hopping and grenading like mad, running willy-nilly all over the place without care for tactics or strategy, jumping in the middle of Marine squads with a detpack to take 'em all out and up the kill count, no matter that they die in the process.

So I am not surprised to learn that the Marines had it a bit hard in the beginning, nor am I surprised to learn that they eventually evened out the score.

As the matches progressed, the Marines certainly learned that, in the game, the geeks do wierd, even stupid things that no sane soldier would ever dream of trying in RL, and adapted their mindset to it. They most probably had lots of fun gunning down the bunny hoppers, like any sane person would. In the end, they evened it out because teamwork and strategy will win over l33t solo skllz any day, and the Marines KNOW teamwork.

The geeks don't, and most likely never will for the most part given the society we live in today.

So yeah, it must have been lots of fun all around, and lets not get all hot and bothered over a few snide comments on either side. Let the geeks think they actually won. Nobody ever looks at the death score, only the kill score counts.

I play a lot of shooters, my current favorite is BF2. It's fun, but if there is one thing to learn from these games, it's that a battlefield is murder, pure and simple, and Justice is on holiday far away. While I have fun shooting pixels and gunning bots or other players, I always realize that, were this a real battle, my life would be hanging by a thread like everyone else's.

It is a frightening thought.

[TimNevins]

Recruitment? You Betcha

It is Pentagon sponsored propaganda and a PR stunt to get people to start thinking joining.

Since Barack got Presidency ethnic aspirations have changed and not so many may settle for the military a a defacto choice. But I fear with the 2nd Great Depression many will not have a choice.

However the coming Draft will snare anyone with a pulse as they have stated they will not exclude previous 4-F candidates from duty.

This explains why Predator UAV drones have been flying over the Canadian border for the last year or so, and that a new agreement was signed a few years ago with Canada to prevent people fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft.

[TeeCee]

@Dan_Hibiki

They did in version 1.0.......

[drunk.smile]

@stranger on the road

You forget that most american war tech these days uses Xbox controllers so they've practiced for real with airstrikes on schools, hospitals & british ground troops.

[Gary]

The Marines won?

Hats off to them, playing and beating the geeks on their native turf.

I bet we wouldn't expect the geeks to last long on the Marines 'home' ground would we. But would love to see them try!

[Dave The Cardboard Box]

That's how to commemorate the war dead

Here in the UK we just had a few 108 year olds breaking down in tears because the memory is still so painful. Diff'rent strokes I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

@TJ

Not to be too pedantic or anything, but Remembrance Day is primarily for the First World War. Includes the fallen in all wars since of course but's really for WW1, which would explain why it wouldn't be such a big deal in the States to have this on that day. Also, it's not 11/11 over there it's... Oh...

[CharleyBoy]

Major assumption

Most comments here seem to be assuming that the marines weren't also geeks. I don't think that they are exclusive. I lot of the ex-soldiers I know have said that they used long period of "wait time" to hone up their gaming - not online though, I think.

[Peter Hawkins]

An observation on games like this

"key clashes between US, Japanese, Soviet Union and Nazi Germany forces at the close of World War II"

Seems to be someone missing here...

I'm not British but I if I recall correctly they did play a major part in the battles against all of the Axis forces. Yet that contribution seems to be ignored in most WW2 shooters/RTS games etc. In fact the Commonwealth forces in general get a pretty raw deal. In this particular case it can't just be the usual "Merka saves the world single handed" as the Ruskies are included.

Just wondering.

[Simon]

To see the real cost of war check this link

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-of-Duty-4-PS3/dp/B000RE3I9Y/ref=cm_lmf_img_1_rsrsrs1

COD is good, but come on that's a bit over the top!