Ronson Vs. Call of Duty 4

Video games. Ever since the days of Intellivision (Astrosmash) and Nintendo (Punchout and Super Mario Bros.), I've been hooked and I can't really explain why this obsession hasn't been in decline with age. This weekend alone I spent far too much time playing XBox and a bit on my newly acquired (third) Playstation 2 (thanks, Rich). Today I wasted about 3 hours playing this game called "The Getaway" that was probably made in 2004 and still I was strangely hooked on blowing people away and stealing their cars. Nice. Like I said, if I thought about it more, I'd probably be concerned. And I even like playing games that I suck at, which brings us to the latest Ronson vs.: Ronson Vs. Call of Duty 4.

The battle: Shoot 'em up games aren't my forte. Most people who aren't addicted to video games know about the Call of Duty series from The Office episode where the entire Stamford branch stops working, shuts off the lights and intensely plays CoD (you can watch that segment here). My role in that clip would be that of clueless Jim ("I'm just killin' Germans any way I can"). My most impressive match-up to date was a legendary battle with Gina, but against my other XBox junkies Paul and Dan, I'm a giant, bumbling bullseye.

This weekend, we played again and Dan (quickly stepping up to ranks of CoD Master) outmatched my usual strategy of just finding the biggest gun and spraying bullets at my opponent. In fact, he was able to find new ways to destroy me, like calling in an air strike, getting a big massive helicopter to do his dirty work and I believe he even made my soldier's stomach explode using mind bullets. It was ugly I tell ya.

Winner: Call of Duty 4 in a total ass-kicking. After this particularly humiliating loss I vowed (or was it more of a whine?) never to play again. Yeah right, I'm sure I'll hold to that. The lure of spraying bullets with a big gun is just too strong. Thank the video game-playing gods I'm good at NBA 2K8 or I don't know what I'd do.