South Australian attorney general and professional bugbear, Michael Atkinson, has announced his intention to appeal the MA-15 classification of Modern Warfare 2 for all the terrorist glorifying it does. Aww. No doubt he'll also get on the large hadron collider people to see what they can do about altering the fabric of the space-time continuum, transmuting the content of the several million copies already sold. Ha! Too late. We won this round. Let it go, you stupid old cunt.

Anyway.

"You didn't try the online multiplayer portion of modern warfare 2????? Seriously????? THAT'S LIKE TRYING ORANGE BOX AND SKIPPING OVER THE SILLY PORTAL GAME."

-Matt, via email

Yes, I had a feeling I'd be answering for this today. Why didn't I give Modern Warfare 2's online multiplayer the time of day, despite it being one of the game's big selling points and apparently bestowed upon this Earth by the divine hand of Siddhartha Buddha? I suppose if people are confused enough to use five question marks at a time then I'd better explain why I usually feel that online multiplayer isn't my department.

1. Because I live in a faraway kingdom of fantasy.

Australia is a land of flowing alcohol and happy people, of Christmas on the beach; where even the louts will have smiles on their faces as they kick your teeth in, but the one place you won't find us smiling is when we're trying to game online. Australia is very far away from other English-speaking nations, which is usually a bonus because it's a lot easier to get along with people when you can't understand a word they're saying, but it does mean it's hard to find decent servers. So either you try to get by on a US server and put up with being issued some kind of strange delayed-reaction gun, or play on one of the few local Australian games you can find, which doesn't offer a lot of choice.

And you can forget about playing the more obscure games online. It took me something like fifty tries to join a Fat Princess server. That's a lot of wasted effort to finally figure out that a game is a pile of shit.

2. Because of time restrictions.

The thing about me is that I'm a professional game critic, and that means I play a new game every week. Sometimes I regret that. Sometimes I'd like more time to explore the nooks and crannies, just like I did your mum. But this is the lifestyle I have chosen for myself and I can't really complain. Anyway, the thing about the multiplayer portion is that it's usually the bit that keeps the value for money going once the actual story, campaign-y, structured part has been exhausted. And I'm not usually around long enough to care.

Besides, especially in games like Modern Warfare 2, you join your first game and are immediately flattened by fifty people who have been playing for way longer than you and know every level inside out. It's easy to be discouraged from playing any further. People tell me "Ooh, you'd have fun if you stuck with it" but I've never accepted the "it gets better later" excuse. I've never been bumming around the house and thought to myself "Hm, I don't really feel like playing a game now, but I might a few hours from now, so I'd better start playing a game that gets better later."

3. Because there's nothing more to see.

You see, there are various different kinds of gamer, defined by the reasons they play games. Some do it to test their skills, some to find all the secrets, and some people like to see things brought to a conclusion. I'm probably one of the latter.