Black Ops 3 is a sport Im (almost) too old for

Right now Wayne Rooney isn't having the best time with the media, Manchester Utd fans, or anyone with eyes. For those of you who don't follow football, Rooney is the captain of United and (of far less importance) the England national team, that bunch of ghoulish rotters who look like, if they weren't footballers, they would be turned away from the local Outback on the grounds of taste and discretion, which would be the first time that had ever happened and a feat so shamefully Herculean it would make the Boer War look dignified.

Anyway, Wayne Rooney is now 30 and a shadow of the player he used to be. This is not unusual, of course: pro athletes go to shit faster than toddlers in McDonald's. But his is such a spectacular fall, at a comparatively young age (although he has been playing in the top flight since he was 16, so really he's 800), that watching this once fast, direct, unstoppable force lurch around, his first touch so woeful, his shooting so terrible, his decision-making so frankly abysmal, is heartbreaking.

I've spent many an hour frustrated to death with him, wondering where it all went wrong. Then I played Call of Duty Black Ops 3, and as I got killed for the umpteenth time, head knowing what to do but limbs failing to budge, the digital Yips or something, I had a Kurtz-like diamond-bullet-to-the-forehead epiphany: me playing Call of Duty now is like what would happen if I signed a deal with Treyarch to play for them, for millions of pounds, and every week the developer made me play it, without fail, while millions tuned in to see if I still had it. I don't. I am Wayne Rooney, and Call of Duty is my sport.

The signs are all there. The sheer amount of confusion as to what is going on, the aimless wandering around, arms outstretched, making all the wrong decisions. The blame being apportioned to the other team as I once again fuck it all up, no matter how hard I try. The snarling face, wrought with indignation, as another killcam shows that I actually should have been given the decision. And the absolute inability to put any shots on target, no matter from what distance or with what advantage. People say Call of Duty isn't a sport, but it absolutely definitely fucking is. Rooney and I learned our respective crafts the hard way – he had the streets of Liverpool, I had SNES Doom – before moving on to bigger and better things. But like any sport, the older players, no matter how good they are or were, get pushed out.

Simply put: I'm not as good at Call of Duty anymore, not just because I didn't play the last one or this one has a new jet pack which I secretly abhor but tolerate because the baseball slide makes me feel like M.Bison with an Uzi. The simple answer is I'm not 23 anymore, as I was when Modern Warfare made its bow, and naturally my reactions are not what they were.

Now, I was never a truly great Call of Duty player, more a sometimes pubstar, a guy who knew how his MP5 worked and also knew I had to be a bit smarter than the other players, because I certainly wasn't faster, even then. But I could wheel around the map with the rest of them, calling in the chopper, weeding out snipers on Overgrown, going totally fucking Rambo on Shipment, a man who knew how to win a game of Headquarters on Crash or any other map you care to mention.

My Call of Duty 'career' hit its peak around about the release of Black Ops, which I loved dearly and played to near-death. The 'Summit' map is my all-time favourite, and I would pay a reasonable amount of cash for it to be remade for every single one since. Then – bang. One day I woke up and suddenly I just wasn't as good. Modern Warfare 3 was doable, but by the time Black Ops 2 turned up, I was shot, and I knew it. I could still do well against other games journalists at review events, but that's like your manager saying you're amazing in training. Out there, in front of the world, I simply wasn't as good.

Like Wayne, long games meant long lay-offs: frequent rest periods became the norm. I experimented with a few new strategies: hanging back more, attempting to be less a front man and more an experienced team player. I moved out to roles on the periphery of the action while younger and better players came in and scored all the points. I did all this with a lingering sadness. I love Call of Duty: it is a design classic and Modern Warfare is one of the most satisfying and influential games of all time. So to not be able to play it at a level I once did was actually quite sad: I didn't cry or anything, it was more a nostalgic realisation that all was fucking lost and I was on some rock in the middle of fucking nowhere and I'd never get a nuke, never hear the roar of the crowd as I got a game-winning killcam with a deadly accurate shot in the last second to win it for me and the boys.

Occasionally, there will be flashes of the old me, just like there are of Wayne: on Hardcore free-for-all, maybe, where one hit kills and I'm suddenly taking out scores of people, laughing, the acoustic version of Brucia la terra from the Godfather Part III playing in my mind, like a mad Michael Corleone remembering the good times, before he got old. Sometimes I convince myself that the power is returning. And then I jump into team deathmatch and the reality is shattered. Like Rooney the good stuff is all muscle memory, and it is fading fast, a headshot met with surprise as well as applause. I can still play, and sometimes still even win, experienced enough to judge the game if not fast enough to always keep up with it. So sorry Wayne, I judged you for all these games (well, years, really): if someone made me go out and play Black Ops 3 in front of trillions of people all calling me a cunt, I would probably be much the same.

But I'd be still be better at penalties.