Seems one of the best television shows of the past decade I had ignored, manly because I have an adverse reaction to “cop shows.” It’s the like a rash that I can’t stop scratching until the correct oinkment has been applied, in this case, switching to another channel, poking myself in the eyes, or reaching for a frying pan to hit myself over the head with.

24 came very close to being like that when it first started and that was one of the reasons why I fell asleep during it’s first season, along with the fact that everything was so drawn out to the point of wanting the terrorists to win so it would end. Not even the vapid eye candy known as Elisha Cuthbert enough to stop me from switching to the porn channel that resides in my head.

That show I kind of watched on and off but to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what the hell was supposed to be going on, as really it’s one of those shows you do have to watch from the beginning to get some of the references in later episodes, and considering I couldn’t stand the first season, it wasn’t a price I was willing to pay.

Cut to this weekend, and given my success with defrosting the fridge, doing the washing up and having my annual bath, I decided to wander out to the local store to pick up something different to watch.

The first season box set of The Wire was available at a cut price, and as it had been mentioned by friends and also Charlie Brooker during ScreenWipe as being something you just had to see, I picked that up instead of Hot Tub Time Machine, and put on the first disc.

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The world of multiplayer gaming. It’s brought us all together in an digital orgy, only for people to bellow out written and spoken cries of “noob”, accusations of being cheating bastards, and give birth to 10,000 “your mum” jokes.

It’s come on leaps and bounds over the last 15 years, from the simple beginnings of Doom over an IPX connection, to the full realisation of the online console arena, where facing your foes in a virtual world has never been easier to do. However perhaps all this great progress has come at a price?

While conversing with a friend who had just quit from a session of Modern Warfare 2, he stated that a change from the usual multiplayer blood bath would be welcome.

I simply stated that it wouldn’t be a problem and we started to work our way down the list from the Steam games browser to see what tickles our collective fancy. What we initially thought would be a simple task, was not so simple after all. Why is so much of the titles on offer, offer the same thing?

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