I originally had a similar post on my other blog, but it got caught up in my delete
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released early November, and I originally had planned to get after the price had come down a fair bit. However one morning I awoke to some rather disturbing news relayed by one of my friends that Australia’s most hated individual (next to Sen. Stephen Conroy) South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson was making appealing the MA15+ rating classification of Modern Warfare 2 because of the contreversial “No Russian” singleplayer campaign mission.
To be perfectly honest the level of controversy surrounding “No Russian” is extremely over rated, and the political crackdown is highly undeserved (in my opinion). I have played the mission, and I even recorded it to show my friends – that it isn’t as bad as its made out to be. You can call me “Desensitized to violence” all you like, but the truth to the matter is that I’m actually not. I can barely sit through a SAW movie or something similar without twitching or looking away, but for some unknown reason I can play a video game of the same nature and not have a care in the world. Why? Because I’m able to distinguish the fact of reality over digital violence. Something Atkinson seems to think Australian adults can’t do.
But enough with the political BS… ON TO MODERN WARFARE 2!
Modern Warfare 2 is totally worth the one hundred aussie dollars I paid for it, and over the past two weeks I’ve been enjoying every cent of it. Modern Warfare 2 in short, for the better sentance is better than its predecessor Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I kid you not, think of everything you loved in COD4 made better. The single player is the probably the most epic game I’ve played recently, and I really have to give credit to Infinity Ward. They’ve made possibly one of the best Call of Duty experiences with this game, and every single second of the 6 hour campaign is just bleeding with awesomeness. (Yeah its a bit short, but shut up).
In a nutshell – Five years have passed since the events of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the world hasn’t changed one iota. A new terrorist that was the Lieutenant to Imran Zakhaev’s Russian Ultranationalist regime, is looking to finish the work that Zakhaev had started – to destroy the Western civilization superpower that is the United States of America. How? The single most heinous act to be commited, and left at the feet of an undercover United States CIA operative. With this act, and in the words of the new antagonist – it has made “Everyone in Russia cry for war”.
You play as two new characters on both British and American armed forces (just like in the previous game) fighting your way through various locations around the globe to hunt down Vladamir Makarov (Imran Zahkaev’s lieutenant). Throughout the campaign there are a lot of high explosive action sequences, situations that make you feel like as if everything is going to hell – and you’re being pulled through it with a noose around your neck.
The soundtrack is brilliantly composed by Hans Zimmer, who I had never heard of til I started playing Modern Warfare 2 – but don’t take my lack of knowledge about him in thinking the soundtrack is crap, because its far from. Every single piece of the music to Modern Warfare 2 is epic, and the best piece in my opinion would have to be the opening introduction cut-scene theme.
Now that’s just the singleplayer campaign… its defiantly not over yet – We’ve still got Spec Ops and the Multiplayer to cover.
Spec Ops is apparently a new game mode which is essentially a co-op environment that can be played with a friend, or on your little old lonesome. The Spec Ops mode takes a large portion of the singleplayer campaign situations, and turns them into co-operative challenge missions, as well as some of the missions from the original Modern Warfare such as “Ghillies in the Mist”. For each level of difficulty you complete a mission on, you’re awarded with a star that is used to unlock more co-operative missions for Spec Ops. I really recommend playing them on Veteran, even if it kicks your ass and you rage like I do – because at the end of the day, when you come back later to complete it later on and you BEAT it on Veteran, you can say that you’ve achieved something well earned.
Now as for the Multiplayer, you’re in for a treat. The multiplayer is a big part of the game, and it totally redefines Call of Duty multiplayer games. How?
Well lets start with the weapons and perks – in the original Modern Warfare, you could only choose a primary weapon with associated attachments, sidearm, special and three perks. In Modern Warfare 2 – each perk you start out with is the basic perk, and the more you use it or gain achievements with it, it levels up to the next stage – enhancing that particular perk’s abilities. Now as for the weapons, you’ve got your standard choice of firearms for your primary weapon (Assault rifles, SMG’s, Sniper Rifles, LMG’s, and a riotshield), but the sidearm has been replaced with Secondary Weapons. In the original Modern Warfare, you could only wield two different weapon types with the use of a perk called “Overkill” – You get to do this straight off the bat with MW2, and in my opinion the best combination is SMG + Shotgun (Specifically MP5K + SPAS12). Now on top of being able to select your special grenade type, you can choose what type of equipment you want in your default grenade slot. You get to choose from throwing knives, tactical insertion (custom spawn point – one use), semtex (sticky timed grenades), blast shields (increased explosive damage reduction), C4 and Claymores. They also included the ability to dual wield a particular weapon, which the ability is unlocked dependent on how much you use it. The new ability is called Akimbo, and can be applied to most shotguns and SMG’s. The way they’ve redefined it is just brilliant.
The next part of the multiplayer is the ability to set your own kill streak rewards via various unlock points – each time you get to a certain rank milestone, you’re awarded with one unlock point for your killstreaks. There are about 10 to 15 killstreak unlocks, included the famed Tactical Nuke (which a lot of people hate for some reason). Now you’re probably thinking that people just spam the nuke, well its not a simple case of OMGIMBALANCE. You actually need to get 25 STRAIGHT kills before you can get to use it, and getting it is no easy task. You can only select three killstreaks per loadout (custom class), but you can chop and change them as you please during intermissions and in the main MP menu.
Not only do you get killstreak rewards, but you also get deathstreak rewards. You get one special ability per how many straight deaths you get, and I’m going applaud Infinity Ward for sticking Martyrdom in there. I can’t remember how many times I raged at martydom users in COD4 – in Modern Warfare 2 its way more balanced, as it takes 5 straight deaths for one to drop, rather than EVERY death in COD4. Now that’s not the only deathstreak. You have painkillers (increased health for 10 secs upon spawn), Copycat (steal your enemies class for one life), and Final Stand (keep shooting with your secondary/pistol after someone kills you).
Basically, HEAPS of improvements have been made to the multiplayer – all the nasties from the original have been balanced out, and one thing I’ve noticed is that all the stuff in COD4 thats in Modern Warfare 2 that used to clog up my perk slots, has been reorganized so that you can have a far better loadout of arsenal.
With COD4 you had every gamemode available to you to play, but in MW2 – you unlock new gamemodes as you rank up – which is neat in my opinion.
Now I’m not going to say this game is perfect, because it isn’t. There are a number of technical issues related to the game – first and formost, the matchmaking system. It apparently chooses the best host available, but in about 20% of the games I’ve played I’ve had a really bad host but the rest of the time its fine. There could be some improvements to the voting system to include a “Vote to find new best host” as the game only does it when things get really bad.
One thing about the matchmaking system, is that its now running as a Steam dependent game making use of the Steam matchmaking system used in Left 4 Dead – as well as Valve Anti Cheat – The use of VAC is a plus in my book, because Punkbuster was so flawed – although I have one or two friends who’d start an argument to disagree.
The next thing on my hitlist is video issues in the singleplayer. In various missions where there are alot of high particle explosions, it lags oh so terribly. I’m running a GTX260 and it still lags -but just bare with it, as its only in a few areas in the game.
Minus its issues, its a seriously awesome game. I recommend everyone to buy it. On a closing note, I have to say Modern Warfare 2 IS better than Call of Duty 4.