It's something I've been noticing in all my nineteen-some years of gaming: playing games online, especially shooters, means that nine times out of ten you're going to get your ass handed to you.

Stepping out of the relative safety zone of playing split-screen erases the ability of 'sneak-peeking', or the ability to scope your opponents part of the television for a quick assessment of your placement compared to theirs. Long considered cheating, people who claim not to do it are the same people who claim they don't urinate in the shower. Everyone does it.

My first experience playing online shooters left me severely handicapped - no more sneak peeking! Not only that, but radars are more often than not rendered completely useless. Some shooters incorporate a radar where enemies are always visible though with no indication of their placement on the Y-Axis: you don't know if they're above or below you. Perfect Dark (way back on the Nintendo 64) attempted to address that issue by transforming the blip on the radar into an arrow, pointing upward if your opponent is above and likewise pointing downward if he's below you.

Most modern day shooters have a radar of the map and yet, the players are 'invisible' on it unless they make some sort of sound, which erases the entire point of the radar because when a player shoots, it's to kill.

My problem with this genre is that it's so unbalanced. No matter the game, I am constantly being beaten down and the general response is an apathetic 'eh... get better.' In Halo 3 I am sniped from the other end of a level that is a mile in length three times in a row. Not just once, or even twice. THREE TIMES as soon as I spawn. In Left 4 Dead three Hunters and a Smoker effectively dominate my survival team while decimating my Infected team, seemingly knowing my exact location when there's no way they could have been notified unless they've memorized the game, which is probably the case. Freaking virgins with too much time on their hands.

In Call of Duty, I am stabbed, sniped, bombed and the bastards release the hounds to chew on my testicles all in a row. And the dogs get me three times.

Speaking of Call of Duty, it awards players who are good to get even better scores by granting them recon planes (which show your position to the enemy on radar-hey!) then artillery strikes (which allow the enemy to select an area of the map to bomb) and then those bloody hell hounds (which are agile and easily kill you, racking up an insane kill count). An argument can be raised that it takes skill to rack up seven kills and my response is: not really.

But it does happen more with players who are familiar with the game than it does with newbies. If the losing team is getting its ass kicked, shouldn't they be the ones to get these bonuses, which would then level the playing field a little more evenly? If the other team is so skilled, they should have no problems avoiding bombs and rabid dogs.

Minor personal gripes aside, the game is still fun when I'm not going against someone who knows the level better than the back of his own hand. Look, when I'm playing 'Boot Camp', which is a training ground of sorts, I don't expect to go against some Neophyte whose level is at 54! It's a question of balance,and the games should pit those of similar skill against one another. I'm aware that most games 'claim' this is what they do, although I've yet to witness a definite example.

Another point that turns me off of online shooters? Those bloody microphones. I cannot stand the slightest semblance of those unintelligible lag-infected voice-disorienting screams and cackles and people-who-do-not-SHUT-UP.