Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

I broke down and got the game 3 or 4 days ago, beating it in one extended sitting. I should have reviewed it a couple of days ago but real life gets in the way sometimes (Whoo hot date!) Anyway, I am now ready to review it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Overall:

I'm gonna assume most people have heard of Modern Warfare 2 considering it had one of the biggest 1st day sales ever and has had plenty of controversy surrounding one of the levels (causing it to be banned in Russia actually). The game is a FPS made by Infinity Ward, known for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and basically all the "Good" Call of Duties. MW2 picks up where CoD4 left off with some of the same characters from the first one and set in the same world. You start off chasing a new bad guy, Marakov who is a Russian Ultra nationalist or some such. Basically he's a Russian terrorist and that's about all you need to know. In CoD4 you switched off between an American and an English guy and they keep that going in this one as well, but there are 2 Americans and 2 English guys this time you get to control. You'll travel all over the world, but this doesn't mean they send you on a bunch of random errands as they all are related to the overall story (which I won't go into too much out of fear of spoilers as the game does have a couple plot twists).

Pros:

This is a gorgeous game and the AAA work and polish really shows (+0.50). You occasionally see an odd texture here and there but overall the graphics are really good and the effects whether they be in-game or during a cut scene are very impressive. Speaking of cut scenes and action events this game has a lot of them which could be bad if done badly but this game does them right and some of them are jaw droppingly cool(+0.75). Now I wish I could tell you some of the cooler ones but again I don't want to spoil the plot twists and those are some of the best.

The campaign is well done and although short takes you to a variety of places and gives you a variety of situations to deal with. The selection of weapons is quite varied and uses the 2 weapons at a time system that the Halo series is known for(+0.50). Fortunately they don't force you to use a crappy pistol for your side-arm though you often start with one. They actually give you a reason to use a pistol, you can switch to it super fast unlike switching to a 2nd rifle. The predator drone missile strikes you get to use once in a while were pretty cool too, imagine the Nikita missile from MGS but you're firing it at the ground from high in the air and its 10 times as powerful and about 1/10 as controllable(+0.25). The vehicle segments were pretty fun(0.25) though the control on the boat and snow mobile were a little stiff. I appreciate the work they put into it considering that a very large (possibly the majority) segment of the people that play the game do so for Multi-Player.

The game also comes with a "Special Ops" mode where they test your abilities in a number of different situations such as holding out against waves of enemies or defusing bombs in a certain amount of time(+0.50). You can play these co-op or solo and you get stars depending on the difficulty you play them on. New ones open up once you get so many stars. It's not supposed to be the main thing you focus on by any means, but it gives you something to do to extend your non-competitive multiplayer time with the game and the missions are fairly fun yet still challenging.

Multi-Player is back and despite the backlash from PC gamers seems to be very alive and well on all systems that the game was released on. I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it, but while I got my ass kicked when I played it, I'm already desiring to play it again so I guess it did something right(+0.25). All your standard game types are there but the real star here besides the gameplay is the progression system where you game experience and rank up in an RPG fashion(+0.75). Now you can unlock little add-ons and modifications by doing certain things with a weapon like getting so many kills or headshots. They keep unlocking new stuff all the time so you always are close to getting something new via rank up (Your stats don't go up so newbies still have a chance of course)(+0.25).

+4.00

Cons:

My complaints about this game are all rather minor. Most people talk about the dedicated servers being removed and they took out the leaning feature in CoD4. I never used those but saying they were removed to "balance gameplay" does feel like just an excuse(-0.25). I think Infinity Ward didn't like how lean turned out but the gaming public liked it. One thing I actually did think was a negative was how short the campaign was(-0.25). I beat it in 5 or 6 hours my first time through and I by no means rushed. Not a huge problem, what there was of it kicked ass and there are a lot of parts where something awesome happens that I'm sure took a lot longer to occur then a regular level with no big set pieces.

Another minor complaint is how a lot of the weapons do the same thing, but you still have your standard variety, but a lot of the rifles and pistols are very similar. Tourney-fags might care that a certain gun does 1.1X as much damage or has one less bullet in the magazine but those don't count as significant differences to me(-0.25).

Lastly I've always sorta wondered why CoD4 and MW2 reward the team that's winning with airstrikes and weapon drops. I mean, if a team is doing well and gets killing streaks it probably means they're winning and if they're winning why give them stuff to turn the odds even more so in their favor? The predator missile reward is really powerful and can kill multiple people on the other side of the map easily. Just seems counter intuitive to give the winning team even more advantages(-0.25). Some of the minor ones are ok cause I can understand wanting to reward a player for staying alive for a while in a game where you die in 2 or 3 hits but spawning a helicopter gunship that hovers over your opponent's spawn and kills them just feels cheap(-0.50).

-1.50

Overall Rating:9.5/10