Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Blown Away! Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward's new behemoth from the massively successful and popular Call of Duty series. The game picks up where the first one left off and is one of the most eagerly anticipated games of 2009 and of the decade. With that, comes a great pressure to keep the entertainment train going.

The story starts 5 years after the end of the first and sees you, again, take the roles of many different characters. You will play a U.S Army Ranger, a C.I.A operative and a member of “Taskforce 141”. One piece of news that is pleasing from a continuity front is that “Soap” is back. He is the guy you play in the first game. Now he is an NPC and a Captain none the less. Ghost who was previously “Gary the incredibly cockney fella from the first game” also returns to aid and assist. The story itself is engrossing and immersive. It is told very very well and has you taking on a great deal of different scenarios. You'll have to sneak through a blizzard, then race a snowmobile down a mountain. You'll run across a desert, through a prison and through a desolate city, all the while merrily gunning down baddies with ruthless efficiency. While travelling through hostility, if you have time, admire the scenery. The graphics are very well done and only help to pull you into the world that Infinity Ward have created.

There are a few vehicle sections of the game which I would like to bring to light now. Vehicle portions seem to be mandatory in FPS games nowadays. Developers cannot seem to be able to get a character where they need him/her to be without throwing them into a car, a boat, a plane, or any type of motorised transport. Walking seems to be uncool in video games. That being said, the vehicle parts of Modern Warfare 2 are done very well. This is probably because they are over with very quickly. I won't go in to detail about all of them because that'll spoil the experience but the aforementioned snowmobile race is an exhilarating chase down a hillside, between hundreds of trees and over a slightly unrealistic jump.

A slight problem I have with the single player is the AI. Now this is a problem I noticed with Modern Warfare 1 and they don't seem to have altered, changed or improved it in the slightest. Friendly AI suffers from crass stupidity. This takes the form of your squad mates not moving. At all. Unless you advance first friendlies are content to stand and wait. Hostile AI is a bit different. If you present yourself as a target, however briefly, they're after you. They will ignore your team mates and focus on you intently. Both of these are, obviously, unrealistic in the extreme and I hoped that in the sequel Infinity Ward would've fixed it. Apparently not.

Still on the campaign but veering slightly towards multiplayer I must lament at the lack of co-op. Co-op in games is a really big favourite of mine and has been since my brother and I struggled through Gunstar Heroes on the Mega-Drive over 9000 times. I have read in a few places that the developers tried it but the feature just didn't seem to work. While I realise you can't have everything I have to wonder why it works in so many other games and not this one. There is a “Special Ops” mode which contains many different missions that you and a partner can undertake in co-op. There are 3 stars on offer for successfully completing the mission on Veteran difficulty, with 2 for Hardened and 1 for Normal. I do thank Infinity Ward for this feature but seriously....guys....co-op story seems a pretty small thing to ask. Pretty please?

Right. On to what made Modern Warfare such a monster. Full fledged multiplayer. This is...the same. It wasn't broken so they haven't fixed it. They've upgraded it slightly but not really changed anything. The basic game modes are all still there. Free-for-all, Team Deathmatch, Sabotage, Search and Destroy, all the favourites. The basic gameplay is still there. The class systems are still there. The variety of weapons and challenges are still there. Where they have upgraded is easy for all to see.

There are now far more attachments for your chosen killing tool. Thermal sights, heartbeat sensors and holographic sights are on offer for those who can unlock them. There are different perks to be unlocked. Bling allows two attachments to be added to your primary weapon, Commando allows greater melee distance and Marathon gives you unlimited sprint. All perks can also now become “Pro”. This gives an extra boost to said perk. For example, I have “Slight of Hand Pro”. This, like the original allows faster reloading but also gives me faster aiming down the sights of weapons. So you see what I mean about upgrades. The multiplayer is really like Modern Warfare 1.5. I do have one HUGE issue however. Why, oh why, can't my friends and I use Xbox Live's Party Chat when we want to play a game. It is allowed for a few of the larger playlists but for the commonly played ones it tells us we need to be in in game chat. This is a big downside. Not all of us want to listen to the idiots that frequent online games and party chat is a great way of avoiding them.

In conclusion and on the whole, a very good game. There are a few issues that I would take up with Infinity Ward, such as lack of co-op, the story only being 7 hours long on Hardened difficulty, and the inability to use party chat in game but on the whole, big thumbs up from me.

Please guys? Co-op. Please please?

Review By: Richard Daniels