Bobby Kotick is rubbing his hands together atop Mount Doom purring "Good. Good..." to himself.

Sometimes you have to dance with the Devil.

I regret to inform you that I write this blog post with thick, sticky lashings of freshly baked humble pie all over my mush, as despite my usual disdain for the Call of Duty series and its stranglehold on mainstream gaming, I appear to have a minor addiction to the online component of the fresh off the conveyor belt Black Ops II.

I've been here before with the original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but never since.  Perhaps five games later finally enough has changed to pique my interest. As an old-school PC gamer, I've traditionally fallen into the familiar, loving embrace of Counter Strike in order to satisfy my occasional pseudo-realistic first person shooter cravings, but I fear I've been slowly seduced by the ease of sitting in front of my large TV, Xbox controller in hand, cooking fools with made up weapons overflowing with hard-earned digital bling.

For this, I am ashamed.

Spelling autocorrect wanted me to change 'Kotick' to 'thicko'. Lulz ensued.