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Modern Warfare 2 Review

As promised in my first impressions of Modern Warfare 2, this is my humble review now that I’ve gotten some Spec Ops and multiplayer under my belt.

Infinity Ward has quite a history of delivering cinematic experiences inside of their games, this held true all the way back to the first Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 2 is no exception, and it has certainly generated a lot of positive and negative publicity regarding a lot of the statements made about the game itself, notably the PC version.

We’ll start out talking about the single player campaign. As I stated previously, it’s pretty short. I beat it on Regular in four hours and thirty two minutes, and while many will say that Hardened is the ‘normal’ for CoD 4 and now Modern Warfare 2, I wanted to actually focus on the game and all aspects of it, instead of just staying alive. I’m sure I’ll play Hardened at some point, but I’m not too sure about Veteran just yet.

The campaign is full of cinematic flair and larger-than-life special effects. Infinity Ward hits you in the gut with some visceral and high impact scenarios and gameplay, and this carries throughout the campaign. While the story itself is pretty convoluted and somewhat far-fetched, as long as you take it at ‘movie-realism’ value and enjoy it for what it is, it’s fine. You’ll run into familiar faces, be engaged in similar scenarios from CoD 4, and have more scripted action than before.

Modern Warfare 2 uses the same engine that CoD 4 used, with some obvious enhancements to it. If you could run CoD 4 without an issue, then chances are you’ll be able to run Modern Warfare 2 similarly. What’s interesting, is that this is the same engine they started with in Call of Duty, just continuously updated and optimized. It’s an impressive feat, to say the least, as MW2 looks rather good. It’s no graphical powerhouse when compared to the often pointed to, Crysis, but it sure as hell runs better and looks great.

The weapons are modeled correctly that I could see, and I am happy to announce that I never saw an ejection port on the incorrect side, though, I will admit that if Infinity Ward had incorrectly mirrored a weapon, I’d be very surprised. A lot of the reloads feel gritty and realistic, executed with military precision, with a little flair tossed in, and the animations overall do the job well. I personally don’t like the akimbo weapon sets in the game, but apparently they wanted to take a page out of Halo’s book. Why someone with military training would ever dual wield Desert Eagles is beyond me, much less use one for combat in the first place.

The sound of course is fantastic, with most of the music done by Hans Zimmer himself. The weapons sound chunky and maybe even a tad on the reserved side, but over all do the job admirably. The voice over work is equally well done, and you may just hear a few familiar voices during the course of the campaign.

But, while the campaign is certainly awesome and worth the playthrough, I think it’s fairly obvious that the biggest appeal is of course Call of Duty’s tried and true multiplayer formula. While it’s nothing ‘new’ persay, it’s fast paced and well done.

If you’re familiar with multiplayer in CoD 4, then MW2’s multiplayer will be nothing new to you. In fact, it’s very similar to how it was in CoD 4. There’s a few new perks and some removed entirely, and naturally more weapons and gadgets to play with, but the formula you’re familiar with is still there. Some examples of the new perks are: Scavenger, which allows you to resupply your weapons by running over a corpse (this is in place of Bandolier, I think), Sleight of Hand is now a tier one perk instead of a tier 2, Commando, which allows you to melee from a farther distance, and Marathon, which allows you to sprint into infinity (this replaced the tier three perk Extreme Conditioning). There’s also a handful of new game modes, that require you to be a certain rank to unlock, but all are unlocked relatively quickly. In addition, all perks now have a ‘pro’ version, which gives them added benefits the more you use them. Of course, there’s also new attachments to slap on your favorite gun, so you’ll be busy for a while unlocking everything there is to offer.

Spec Ops mode, for those that aren’t familiar with it, is a series of challenges that you can undertake with a friend cooperatively. These challenges net you stars when you complete them, and you are granted more stars for playing them at a higher difficulty, or completing them quickly. There’s sixty nine stars to be collected and five different tiers of challenges to undertake, which is an impressive amount of cooperative content right out of the box. A lot of the challenges are genuinely fun and challenging as well, which is definitely a plus. While some are plucked straight out of the campaign, a few of them are unique to Spec Ops and will offer you something new to undertake.

Overall, Modern Warfare 2 offers a lot of content, and while some PC players (myself included) were a little miffed to be shelling out $60 for the game when the usual price for PC games is $50, I think the game was worth the price of admission.

To address some of the complaints and flames brought about by the various announcements concerning the PC version, allow me to shed some light on them from my own personal experiences.

IWNet gets a bad rap, and only some of it is warranted. Yes, it sucks not being able to have dedicated servers and all that comes with playing on one of those regularly, but after playing with the multiplayer for quite a while, I’ve come to find that for what it is, IWNet really isn’t all that laggy. Yeah, sometimes it’s noticeable, but in the entirety of my play time today, I noticed very few serious latency issues during play, and only had to have the host migrate twice. It’s annoying when the host has to migrate, but it’s better than dumping you back in the lobby and making you start over. It serves the purpose it set out to do, which is make it easy to find a game to hop in and play, and even better, people are actually playing other game modes besides Free For All and Team Deathmatch, which is fantastic. I know I personally got extremely tired of playing both of those in CoD 4, but those were really the only options available.

Some players were also annoyed by the fact that games are limited to a maximum of eighteen players. I, personally, think it’s great. Thirty two player games in CoD 4 were just massive clusterfucks and no one really accomplished anything. Grenades were being tossed everywhere, there was never a spot you could stand momentarily to catch your breath, and combined with CoD 4’s atrocious spawn system, you would usually only live a few seconds at best. Ten on ten was my ideal size for games, so eighteen is just perfect in my opinion. I say, if you want massive scale battles, play a game from the Battlefield franchise. Leave the smaller squad combat to Modern Warfare.

Play it for yourself and see, before you buy into all the negative criticism. I was skeptical when I got it Monday morning, but I was admittedly relieved when I found out that a lot of the claims where somewhat unfounded and exaggerated.

To conclude, is Modern Warfare 2 worth a FPS fan’s time? Absolutely. Everything you loved about CoD 4 is here, with some improvements and changes, some needed and welcome, some not so great, but overall, it’s full of content and should keep you busy for a while if you enjoy multiplayer shooters.

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