Wait, there's a Modern Warfare 2!?

“This year’s, perhaps the decade’s most anticipated game.”

“The benchmark for action games has just been raised.”

These are two statements that have been surrounded pretty much every Press Release this game has, it is, in fact, also on the back of the case. It has already sold over 4 million copies on day 1, 1.7 million in the UK alone, with 3 million more being shipped in.

Now, considering the hype surrounding this game, I was slightly sceptical about it. Why? You ask, well, I was only sceptical about the multiplayer side of things, since a lot was being changed, nearly everything except the core gameplay.

New weapons have replaced old favourites (no MP5?), death streaks now stand where certain perks used to be, customisable killstreaks left whispers of unbalanced playing in my mind, shotguns and rocket launchers are now secondary weapons where once it used to be a solitary sidearm.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Infinity Ward have clearly spent a lot of time making sure all the new additions of weaponry, streaks, and perks are all just as balanced, if not more so, than they were in Modern Warfare 1. The multiplayer is as “formidable” as the case claims.

16 all-new maps and, if FBM is to be believed, at least one CoD2 remake, grace the online side of things in this game, leaving all the millions of people playing this plenty of new territory to learn. The maps vary in size, from the big to the small; to the Shipment-sized maps where respawn-dieing will always be an issue.

The new weapons are actually welcome additions to your online armoury, while I haven’t used them all yet, (I stick mainly to Assault Rifles) I can say that, from what I’ve used, they actually seem more powerful than their MW1 counterparts. Certainly, there seems to be less “bullet-lag” (whether intentional or lag-induced) than there was.

On that note, connection seems to be a lot better this time around; I’ve only had 1 or 2 games where it has lagged out due to someone using Tesco Internet. This is, in part, due to the new “Host Migration”; where in MW1, the host would quit, the game would simply end, saying “the host has left”, now, if the host leaves, the game pauses whilst it finds a new host (ie, the person with the best connection), I’ve only seen one instance where it has failed and the game times out. So that seems to work very well indeed.

On the Prestige side of things, there are 70 (I think) levels of it this time around, instead of the original 55. As far as I’m aware, there are still 10 levels of it. Apart from the level cap, it seems to work in exactly the same way as before, with players gaining XP for playing games, getting kills, scoring points etc. during a match. Gain enough XP, you level up (with the coolest riff ever). Simple.

There is also more customisation options for your classes this time too. You get your standard weapon, sidearm (or Rocket, shotgun, machine pistol), 1 type of equipment (frags, sticky grenades, claymores etc.) and 2 special grenades (flashbang, stun, smoke). You get your 3 perks, and now, you get to pick your death streak. This is essentially there for if you start sucking, it’s a little something to help you get back on top of your game. There are 4 death streaks, Copycat (copy your killers class), Painkiller (Juggernaut from the previous game (more health), Martyrdom (drop a frag when you die), and Final Stand (which is exactly the same as the Last Stand perk, except you use your primary weapon instead of a pistol).

There are also a lot of kill streak rewards, from the bog-standard 3-kill UAV, to the ridiculous 25-kill Nuke, which kills everyone in the game (including you) and ends it, winning it for you or your team. There is no way to survive the nuke, unless, by some miracle you happen to have the 15-kill EMP strike, which wipes out your enemies HUDs and killstreak rewards, such as the Nuke. However, it would need to be activated during the 10-second countdown before the Nuke explodes. So good luck with that.

On top of that, there are Titles and Emblems for your profile, you have to unlock them by completing the XP challenges, and there’s a lot of them. 22 pages, in fact, with 6 pages of emblems, too. I’m not sure whether these are reset when you prestige. I would hope not, since it takes a frickin’ age to unlock them.

So, if, by now, you’re wondering whether this game has (and, please note, I am coining this phrase) “done a Halo” on the story, you will be glad to know, it has not. What I mean by “done a Halo” is, has it focussed on the multiplayer to such an extent that the story is short and very pointless. Again, you’ll be glad to know that Infinity Ward have done a spectacular job on the story, even if it is a tad short.

The basic plot is that, 5 years after the war of MW1, some Russian terrorists, in a “controversial” display of doing things, kill hundreds of innocent civilians at an airport and then framing the Americans for the deed. Then the more Russians decide that America must pay for their sins. Meanwhile, the Brits are trying to track down the original Russian. Or something like that.

Even if it can be a tad confusing at times, it never failed to get a reaction from me. In keeping with my other review, this one will be spoiler-free, but I will say that as it gets closer and closer to the end, it just gets better and better.

IW have clearly tried something new with the vehicle sections of the game, which, in my opinion, work brilliantly as both a change of pace and style of play. I found it great fun to be speeding down a massive great hill at stupid speeds all while trying to shoot other snowmobiles hellbent on killing me. Good fun.

The other vehicle pieces are equally good, but, alas, mentioning them would amount to severe spoilerage.

I feel I should mention about the length of the campaign, it isn’t exactly huge clocking in at 6 hours. But I also feel that it’s the right length. All loose ends are tied up and if it were extended, the feeling of urgency and the pace of the story would be lost.

Once you’ve burnt through the campaign, the end of the credits suggests you now try some Spec-Ops, or Special Operations, which are essentially short but ridiculously hectic missions that don’t necessarily fit into the story. Similar to the end-game mission of MW1, “Mile High Club”.

From what I’ve played, they work very well and though can be frustrating at times (to be fair, we’re Veteran-ing it first time round) the sense of accomplishment for simply finishing them is great.

There are various types of mission for the Spec-Ops, from Survival mission where wave upon wave of enemies try and assault the spot you just, by chance, happen to be stuck at; to the stealth missions where the object is to simply walk about 200-300 meters forward, without being spotted, or killing opposition quick enough so that no alarms are raised.

If , for some reason, you tire of shooting people whilst playing this, there are also race missions, the only ones I’ve seen are set in the aforementioned snowmobile chase. But both offer a change of play should you bore of killing people.

Now, graphically, this really is a step-up from the original. The faces especially are better. All the textures seem to have been revamped, as do the animations and sounds. Guns sound and feel more powerful than they did before, and killing people almost looks pretty.

The maps themselves both single- and multi-player look very nice indeed, and when I first started playing, not a few deaths occurred from me simply looking at the background niceness that are the skyboxes. The only nit-picking I can do here is that the plants are quite flat and low-res compared to the rest of the environment.

The controls are exactly as they used to/should be, left trigger has you looking down the sights, right trigger does the killing, etc. So no complaints there. In fact, the only reason I mention it at all is that, a very nice touch is used a couple of times during the campaign, where cinematic-style kills are executed using the knife button, and also I liked the use of the triggers to climb the mountain at the start, and used again at a spoilery bit at the end. Very nice touch.

The gameplay is exactly as it was in MW1, occasionally it feels like you're just playing DLC for it. Nothing’s really changed gameplay-wise. Which is in no way a bad thing.

So, overall, I’d say that this game definitely lives up to its exuberant claims of “BEST GAMER EVAR” and the hype it has generated. I’d score it 9.5/10.

It is here that I should mention the biggest flaw of this game. And it has something to do with the multiplayer. Specifically, the party-chat in multiplayer, or more specifically, the LACK of party chat in multiplayer. IW have decided that for some reason that people shouldn’t be able to talk only to their friends, and must talk only to the mass of rascist jerks that live on Xbox Live. You can use party chat in 3 of the 12 or so playlists. Nice one IW.

So, aside from that flaw and a small touch of short-campaign-syndrome, this game is simply awesome and deserving of all the praise it gets.




Back to playing it....

Toodles