Annoyance, thy name is lame gamers

There's a demo out for "Battlestations: Midway" that I've been playing every night this week. Usually two battles and then it's off to bed. Well, through these two daily battles I've gleamed insight into the dark and depressing world of non-FPS multiplayer. See, with FPS multiplayer, Halo for instance, players can be fairly independent and still have a good time. You can have your own agenda, to an extent, and still not drag down the entire server or team. For example, when playing Halo CTF (capture-the-flag) I concentrate more on kills than actually capturing the flag. It just so happens that this approach is helpful to my team: I keep the other team busy with an unrelenting assault while my team-mates sneak in and get the flag. Everyone's happy: they get the flag and I get 4 times the number of kills of everyone else on the server. Yay. There's also the ability to enter and leave the game at any point without disturbing the flow. I don't really mind if one guy on our team left and was replaced by someone else. No biggie. We continue to do our thing and everyone's happy. Unless the new arrival is going to be an asshole and start team-killing, the game goes on.

Now, turn to "Battlestations: Midway". The game is great: you get to command ships and planes in the Pacific Ocean theater of WW2. While most of the game is spent looking over a map and pointing to what you want to die, you can also get behind the controls of any unit under your control and open up your own brand of ass-whooping. Imagine piloting a sub, then instantly using a nearby battle cruiser's flak guns to take down enemy planes and, finally, sit back and enjoy the first person view of a plane making a bombing run as the AI pulls off the perfect dive. The AI in the game is great and takes care of the small things, but you can also over-ride it at any time by simply focusing on a specific unit and "doing stuff", like piloting the plane. Suffice it to say this is a game I am seriously considering buying.

I say "considering" because of two things: this is not a game published by Microsoft so I would have to pay the full price. The only Xbox game I've paid full price for so far was Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. The rest I either got free (intern poker tournament and PGR3 was included with the 360), at the Microsoft store (25$ for "Gears of War"!) or at severe discount (DoA4 was only 20$!). The second thing is multiplayer.

Multiplayer in "Battlestations: Midway" can be a beautiful thing: a well-coordinated attack on the enemy bringing them to their knees by plowing through their sea-faring forces and air-carriers. It can also be a nightmare. Often enough players leave at the very start of the game, stranding you there to face the onslaught of three enemies while you have to juggle two aircraft carriers, two shipyards and the 22 units they are capable of producing! While this is a nightmarish scenario, if you're good enough and skip micromanaging every action, you can still win. If you're good. I'm not that good yet. Then, there are cases where your team-mates are either AFK (away-from-keyboard, the geek version of MIA) or have absolutely no idea how to play. At all. Their planes are stuck at the base, spinning in place, while I get absolutely no air-cover and am royally shafted by the enemy. Thanks a lot, idiot! While I understand that this is a demo and anyone can play it, I also fear that even the people who cough up the dough for the game will have lamers in their ranks. With Halo, the worst lamers are spawn-campers and whiners. There's a strategy for dealing with both and my annoyance level barely rises above a 7. How do you deal with a team-mate who controls half the forces on your side but does nothing with them?