OK, so it’s a bit of a cop-out post this week but I’ve been playing this and borderlands so much since it was released that, to escape it, I locked up my Xbox 360 and relocated myself 200 miles away!!! So I’m in Wales now, where there’s nothing to do except watch TV (which I haven’t done for a while and don’t really miss it) and play old PS2 games which I never got round to finishing. (Xenosaga ep 3 was done last time and now I’m doing tales of the abyss! It’s kinda fun playing a game which actually has a sense of humour in places and isn’t so dour all the time like most RPGs. That and Kousuke Fujishima is my most favourite character designer of all time!!!). It also gave me some time to do something which I had left in storage for ages. if I get some decent pics, You can expect it for next weeks post. It’s not quite done yet!

In any case, this game pretty much needs no introduction. The sequel to the 2007 hit Call of duty: modern warfare, it has been pretty much impossible to escape some sort of news about this game, be it the lack of dedicated servers for the PC multiplayer or “that scene” (which I will come onto later). Basically, this game has been everywhere and it has been touted as THE game launch of the year. The original MW was a surprise hit. Everyone knew it was going to be successful but nobody predicted that it would be THAT popular. In fact, The original MW went and stole the thunder for the next Call of Duty game released last year,World at War!!

Expectations are high for MW2 and it has some big shoes to fill, so how did it go?

Loved

• The story: The first Modern warfare game had a strong single player which was supported by a decent plot but the plot was incredibly linear with everything unfolding almost like clockwork. With MW2 they added a few twists into the plot which really makes you stop and think for a little bit.
• All Action, all the time: Modern warfare was one of the few games I have played where they set out to make you feel like you are just a single soldier fighting a massive war with comrades and actually succeeded! You remember the opening sequence to saving private Ryan? Modern warfare managed to make you feel like you are there, in terms of conveying the panic, the intensity and the manic feeling seen in that film. Few FPS games have managed it. Killzone 2 managed it, MW did and, unsurprisingly, MW2 does as well.
• Characters: The members of unit 141 are your main teammates for a lot of the game and they have, well, character! Much like how started connecting with Cpt Price and Gaz in the first game, you do start developing a connection with Soap and Ghost in MW2. It’s not quite as well as MW1 but I did feel more empathy with the 2 moreso than any of the halo cast!
• The multiplayer: Infinity ward created one of the best multiplayer experiences for a console FPS shooter when they made Modern warfare and MW2 does exactly what it needed, tweaking. It’s not massively different from the first game but the changes just mixes things up a little while continuing to make it accessible. The base for the Multiplayer definitely wasn’t broke so IW didn’t need to fix it!

HATED

• The Pit: OK, so this was due to the personal sadist in me, but since there was an achievement/trophy in the first game for completing the training section is under a specific time and I had obtained it, I wanted the one they put into MW2 as well!! So I ended up playing the training section for hours until I managed to do just that. I never want to see the pit again!!!
• The Ranger levels: the ranger stages are the equivalent of the USMC levels in MW1. They are the missions where you play a soldier in the US army as they fight their battles and, in general, they are more hectic and intense than the taskforce 141 stages, which play like the SAS levels in the first game.
  The problems is that because of all the chaos, random deaths are common. It was compounded by the fact that I was playing the game on the hardest difficulty setting but it’s not fun when you die in the same place over a dozen times. With the TF 141 missions, you can always get an idea how or why you died but with the ranger missions, you can just fall with no idea how the enemy got you… The game also often kills you with several bullets which hit you before you can even find a chance to get to cover! And it doesn’t help that it can often be difficult to distinguish between your allies and enemies as they all wear similar gear!!
  I died so many times because I let an enemy get too close because I thought he was an ally. Shooting an ally also results in game over, so you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t unless you’re sure they’re enemies, which you aren’t always!!
• No Russian: yeah, I’m going here! “No russian” is the name of the controversial stage where you are an undercover operative in a group of terrorists. Your group walks into a busy Russian airport and then proceed to gun down everyone in the building. Or at least that’s what has been reported.
  The scene is central to the plot and the developers claim that they were trying to invoke some emotional hatred from the player and project it onto the terrorists. You are given free control during the scene and yes, you can personally gun down the civilians.
  The problem is that the scene doesn’t work like the developers intended. When I first played through the section, I felt a little disturbed by the events but that’s it. I chose not to fire a shot and simply walk through the stages, watching the others do all the killing. The feeling I got was similar to when I watched the movie hostel. The sequence felt little more than a slightly interactive cutscene and I felt detached from all that was going around me. If I had to compare it to something, I would compare it to the the scene with the middle eastern president in modern warfare 1, where you are tied up, thrown into a car, tied to a post and then shot. You cannot change anything around you during that entire section and that’s how “no russian” felt to me!
  After discussing it with my Brother, we both agreed that there were quite a few ways to invoke the feelings which the developers tried to but that would have probably been pushing things too far, such as forcing you to take the first shot at the civilians.
  In the end, the sequence just gave ignorant groups and politicians something else to grab onto in an attempt to demonize video games as doing so to films isn’t the “cool” thing to do anymore.
• Lack of a whole “OMG!!” factor: No russian aside, there are no real moments in the game which have the same impact as certain parts of the first game, like when the nuke went off. It’s all pretty much “by the book” and one has to wonder if IW just left the whole “shock factor” to that one airport scene.
  I think someone on one of the online forums I frequent said it the best “Playing Modern warfare was like watching SAW. Playing MW2 is like watching SAW 2. It’s more of the same, but the shock factor just isn’t there.”
• Single player is really short: even shorter than the first game and there’s not much to make you go back for more so the game pretty much relies on it’s mulitplayer.
• The ending: They might as well have put a banner up at the end credits saying “Modern warfare 3: coming 2011″
  I mean, we knew that it was coming but come on…

Overall, this is one really polished game. Annoyances about the ranger missions aside, I really find the Taskforce 141 missions to be quite fun and the mulitplayer is still one of the best out there. I got into MW much later than others so I only got up to level 6 on my multiplayer rank. With MW2, I exceeded that in just a few days! It’s one of those mulitplayer games which you can just keep on playing. I can’t play more than a few rounds of uncharted 2 before I can’t continue.
However, I hesitate to call this my game of the year. In terms of the complete package, I would argue that Uncharted 2 is still my GOTY. A much better, longer and more rounded simgleplayer and, although it’s multiplayer isn’t as good as MW2, it’s still pretty damn good.

It’s the length of the single player and some of the annoyances I’ve experienced which really pull the game down in the end. I’d still recommend the game and it really impressed, but it didn’t blow me away.

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