Is Hard-Scoping or Quick-Scoping a Better Way to Score Kills in Modern Warfare 2?

Is traditional hard-scoping or flashy quick-scoping a more effective way to snipe off targets in Modern Warfare 2?

In old fashion first-person shooter games, sniper roles would hide in a high vantage point while blending with their surroundings to slowly pick off hostiles. With the new wave of first-person shooter games, many people find that too boring and ineffective. Instead, they rely on their skill to quickly centre their target to quickly scope in and shoot their target, hence the technique, quick-scoping.

In Modern Warfare 2, it is often frowned upon players for people to hide in bushes, waiting to snipe an unsuspecting target. As a player walks by, the sniper would aim down their scope, line up their crosshair with their head, and wait for the perfect opportunity to fire. If done properly and in the right places, one can pick off many targets without them ever know what hit them or from where.

Many players find this an unfair advantage towards snipers, as they can easily take down targets with one shot and with ease, while the front linesmen are simply soaking up all the damage without a decent chance to hit back their stalker.

It is popular culture to explore the map, and quickly scoping and shooting any players who come into sight. For those who are skilled enough, this can be a deadly technique to quickly rack up kills. A sniper rifle shot can easily kill a player with a single hit. This is only for those players who are skilled enough, however.

So the question comes. Which technique is the most deadly?

How does traditional hard-scoping work? Let’s consider the requirements of a camping sniper. Firstly, they would need intense patience for players to walk into their range. Not only that, they have to be in a low profile spot where not many players will search. There are few maps that truly give snipers a useful vantage point while being able to look down high traffic areas. Already the ingredients for a strong sniper are at an impasse. Secondly, the player would need a strong sniper rifle that can generally kill in one shot. When shooting from long ranges, the sniper rifle’s range will decrease and become less lethal. A useful perk to strengthen bullets is Stopping Power, but by using this perk you would not be able to use Cold-Blooded, which makes snipers virtually invisible. You would also need a silenced sniper rifle to not show up on enemies’ radars when you fire, which greatly reduces the range of a sniper rifle, and further decreases its lethality. Finally, ammunition may also be a problem, as not only will your bullets disappear quickly, your claymores will not protect you for long either.

These requirements can be quite daunting to new snipers. However, if this is an experience player, they can easily headshot players, which is almost a definite instant-kill. Traditional scoping will be more welcoming to new players as they can take their time to line up targets. This technique of sniping also allows you to hit players across the map with ease with the long zoom a sniper scope gives.

What about quick-scoping then? Quick-scoping can effectively take any players at any distance. The con? The skill level required. A player who has been quick- scopes every day for three months is likely a professional quick-scoper, being able to hit virtually anyone at anywhere. But this requires immense patience and practice. Imagine walking into a building with a sniper rifle that has at least one hostile with an automatic firearm. Before getting the chance to even aim down their sights, that other soldier could already spray several dozen bullets into your body and head. This leads to another disadvantage of quick-scoping.

A low kill to death ratio. Generally, a highly skilled quick-scoper will do significantly better than everyone else in the game. An average quick-scoper can expect to get a decent amount of kills in return for a lot of deaths in return. Quick-scopers travel the entire map looking for targets. Unlike hard-scopers, they are much less protected by their surroundings and much more visible to the enemy.

If one truly does put the effort and practice in quick-scoping, they could become a dangerous one man killing machine. Sniper rifles work in a specific way in Modern Warfare 2. As long as you aim through the scope and if you don’t move or get shot, the bullet will fly and hit wherever you point your gun at. Quick-scopers take advantage of this by spotting their targets, and immediately centering their target, and shoot before the other player can react. Due to this programming, this makes quick-scopers able to accurately hit targets from long distances as well.

So who wins at the end? If you have the patience to wait in tall grass for a victim to walk by, then you’ll generally get a better kill to death ratio when hard-scoping. If you have the skill and experience however, quick-scoping will score much more kills than traditional hard-scoping.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using ACOG Scopes in Modern Warfare 2

Have you ever changed the scope on your Intervention to an ACOG just so you won’t have an oversized scope blocking your sight? This article will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using ACOG scopes on Modern Warfare 2.

ACOG scopes are basically a circular scope with a red crosshair showing where the bullets will hit. Adding an ACOG scope slightly improves most guns’ range, meaning it deal more damage when hitting far targets. ACOG scopes are sometimes more preferred than red dot sights and holographic sights since it also has a red curser. A slight difference from an ACOG and a laser pointer sight is that the ACOG is slightly longer and takes up a bit more space.

When aiming down ACOG sights, you will zoom in more than regular sights, giving you a slightly larger subject to hit. To balance this, the sight will bounce more when you are firing. For example, a player shooting with a SCAR will generally shoot straight, with recoil slightly making the gun shoot higher. If a player was to fire a SCAR with an ACOG scope, the aim will not be as accurate as it would bounce up and diagonally.

Many players choose to put ACOG scopes on sniper rifles such as the Intervention and the WA2000. By doing so, the ACOG scope would replace the regular sniper scope, giving it less range and a shorter zoom. This can be advantageous and disadvantageous in many ways. When aiming with an ACOG scope, the view around the scope would not be pitch-black, as it would be on a regular sniper scope. This gives the player a better view in their immediate surroundings, making it much easier to hit targets who suddenly pop up near the player. It is widely thought that by placing an ACOG scope on a sniper rifle replicates a regular high-powered rifle without a sniper scope, similar to the semi-automatic and bolt-action rifles used in World War 2. In a way, this is true. The scope allows the player to aim like an ordinary rifle, but an ACOG makes aiming more difficult to do so. In fact, an ACOG scope will make any firearm, and especially sniper rifles to sway when aiming. A marksman aiming down a sniper rifle in Modern Warfare 2 will see that their scope sways. They have the ability to hold their breath to reduce the amount of sway. ACOG scopes do not have the ability to hold breath. They will sway relatively heavily and greatly reduce the player’s chance of hitting far away targets. Again, this will make hitting closer targets much more easy.

ACOG attachments are widely used by the military today in real life. In Modern Warfare 2, the choice to attach one or not is completely up to you.

The Best Horses in Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption has a plethora of horses for you to tame and choose from. Every horse does not have the same health and stamina however. Therefore, instead taming the prettiest one, this guide will help you decide which horse is meant for you.

The American Standardbred.

There are five horses that you should generally consider having. These five horses are: the American Standardbred, Hungarian Half-bred, Kentucky Saddler, Dark Horse, and War Horse. Each of these horses has different qualities and traits, and so one should consider their preferences before mounting a horse.

The American Standardbred is a black horse. They one of the fastest horses in the game. To counter this, however, the American Standardbred only has average health and stamina. American Standardbreds are useful for quick getaways, but don’t expect to travel far quickly with this horse.

The Hungarian Half-bred is a white horse. They are slightly slower than the American Standardbrd, but have a higher health and stamina level. Hungarian Half-breds aren’t a bad choice for a regular mount, but know there are probably better horses for you out in the west.

The Kentucky Saddler is a yellowish-gold horse or palomino coloured horse for those who understand what palomino means. At the end of Bonnie’s mission “Wild Horses, Tamed Passions”, you break and keep a Kentucky Saddler. They are relatively fast horses with high stamina. Their health isn’t very high, but with a high stamina, Kentucky Saddlers are more for traveling than going into gunfights.

The Dark Horse is a jet-black horse with a white face. A Dark Horse can only be attained by having an honor level of Desperado, the lowest honor there is. A Dark Horse isn’t particularly strong in anything, but they have an interesting advantage. They can travel through the wilderness with no penalty. When riding a regular horse, their speed lowers when they travel on grass or other areas with roads. Dark Horses receive no such penalty when traveling outside of roads. If you enjoy cutting through civilized pathways, this horse is the one for you. As long as you don’t mind being an evil and hated person in the Wild West.

The final horse to be discussed in this article is the War Horse. The War Horse is a jet-black horse with a silver mane and tail. They are simply the fastest and strongest horse in the game, with their speed, health, and stamina levels at max. Unfortunately, the War Horse only attainable by pre-ordering Red Dead Redemption (which is now impossible to do) and by purchasing through the Xbox Live Marketplace for 80 Microsoft Points.

Being the heroic gunslinger you are, it would be nothing less than embarrassing to be seen riding a half-starved horse into a gunfight. With these five horses to choose from, know that you’ll be riding in style.

4 Big Things to Do in Animal Crossing: Wild World

Even though your small town in Animal Crossing may seem uneventful and boring, there are plenty to do in order to reach a hundred percent completion. Here are 4 must does before you put Animal Crossing away.

1. Pay off your mortgage. Who doesn’t want a big house? Your mortgage should be the first thing on this list to check off. Money can be made in a variety of ways. If you haven’t read this article on making money on Animal Crossing yet, I suggest you do so after reading this list. Big houses need big money, and big money needs big pockets. In then end though, your four room mansion with a basement will be quite a sight to see.
2. Fill the museum. What is there to gain for a philanthropist donating subjects that are worth several thousand Bells? Pretty much nothing, but the nice happy feeling you get when you and your friends tour the museum. As well as bragging rights.
3. Collect everyone’s photo. This is the best part of Animal Crossing. Befriending talking animals! If you send letters to your neighbours, carrying out their small errands, and by simply chatting with them, they might award you with a photo of themselves for you to remember them by when they decide to leave (for a better place). Collecting every animal’s photo is a great accomplishment that cannot be accomplished in a short time, so buckle in for wasting hundreds of hours talking to animals.
4. Touch every item in the game. If you haven’t already recognized, Tom Nook’s personalized catalogue is actually a list of every item that you’ve ever picked up, including the animal photos. You don’t actually have to own every object, but simply picking those up will count towards this tasks accomplishment.

If you think you’ve “completed” this game, well think again! These four things will keep you playing for hundreds of hours.

5 Easy Ways to Make Money on Animal Crossing: Wild World

Money is everything right? Here are 5 ways to haul in Bells in Animal Crossing.

1. Selling exotic fruit. Every Animal Crossing game will start you off with one type of fruit. Your local fruit will only sell for 100 Bells each, and each tree will only produce three fruit. Exotic fruit are worth much more, each selling for 500 Bells each, meaning each tree will produce 1500 Bells every time you go to collect. There are two different ways to get exotic fruit. The first way is to get exotic fruit from another friend who has Animal Crossing. Their Animal Crossing game will likely have a different local fruit, and a simple trade-off will mutually do the two well. The other way is to play Animal Crossing a lot. Eventually your “mom” from your old town will send you a letter, including some sort of foreign fruit. When you’ve acquired your first exotic fruits, the smartest thing to do is dig holes with a shovel and plant them. Water and nurse them daily to prevent them from dying. Once they’ve matured from saplings, you’ll have a virtually infinite source of fruit trees! In order to speed up the process of tree and fruit growing, save and adjust the time with the clock on your room to later days.
2. Digging for gold, kinda. Being the pro you are, you can simply see cracks on the ground in which items are waiting to be dug up. Use your shovel to dig up buried treasure such as “roids” and fossils. Make sure you get the fossils identified with Blathers before selling. Occasionally you dig up or fall into a pitfall seed, but they’re just small annoyances that won’t greatly hinder your road to riches.
3. Netting bugs. This may be hard to believe, but in the world of Animal Crossing, a simple cicada can bag several thousand Bells! Just make sure you have a butterfly net at all times and net two squares before coming too close to the insect, or else it’ll fly away.
4. Fishing for gold. Like netting insects, fishing can also bag a lot of Bells. Have a fishing rod in your inventory at all times and make sure you cast your line every time you see a fish shadow in water. Keep an eye for fins on top of fishes, as they can really, really, be valuable.
5. Taking advantage of the monthly flea market. Every month, on the first Saturday, your house may be browsed by your animal neighbours looking for a bargain. Little do they know, you can easily rip them off by doubling the price of the objects that they browse. To know the price of an object, go to Tom Nook and check prices before selling at the flea market.

Rack up those Bells, pay off your mortgage, get a drink (of a cuppa Joe)! Life is sweet in your little Animal Crossing world when you got Bells to do whatever you want.

7 Easy Ways to Not Die in Halo: Reach Matchmaking

Spartans and Elites are deadly fighting machines. Here are 7 easy ways to die less from Halo: Reach matchmade games.

1. Do not weapon switch while you’re bored. It’s a bad habit for gamers to rapidly switch weapons when they’re bored. When an enemy comes within firing range happens to shoot you first, you’re dead. Just missing the first shot can be fatal, and weapon switching is a major cause of this.
2. Reload when no one is around. It takes almost one full clip of assault rifle bullets to take down a super-soldier. You need the ammunition to kill it, and enough ammunition to let you still kill even if you miss. If you have full gun, a half-kill won’t award you with a kill.
3. Actually using your radar. In most game types, your radar will be available to glance at every couple seconds. Make sure that when you have radar available, actually look at it. Radars can easily identify a person around the corner or someone that’s sneaking behind you.
4. Crouch walking saves lives. Even if you don’t use your radar, other players might. If you’re running around the map, you might as well be screaming “I’m here!” to the world. Crouch walking hides your player from enemy radars, which makes great setups for ambushing. On top of that, crouching makes your accuracy greater.
5. Be a team player. Travel with your team-mates. Like the old saying goes, two heads are better than one, and two guns are definitely better than one.
6. Mongooses equal death. Do mongooses carry weapons? Are mongooses manoeuvrable? Can mongooses efficiently ram players? The answers are no, no, and no. Unless you’re playing an objective-based game, mongooses are not a weapons platform!
7. Know when to run. Every good soldier knows when to quit. If you get in a firefight and you know you won’t live long enough to contribute, run while you still can. It’s better to live and redeem yourself than to die in shame.

Every death is a loss. Staying alive is a huge contribution, not only to your team, but also with your overall score. Follow these easy steps to live longer.