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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 review

Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: First-Person Shooter (Contemporary)
Developer: Infinity Ward

Reader review by RecentElectronics

December 08, 2009

I don't claim to be a wizard with all types of armaments known to man. I don’t claim to have a vast knowledge of how combat tactics work either. That being said, I do understand numbers, human error, and other things of that nature. I bring this up because Modern Warfare seems to have a grasp on how numbers 1 and 2; it falls flat on its face with number 3.

MW2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the most highly anticipated sequel for anything ever made. The anticipation this game has garnered is more than all the world's coke fiends waiting for their next fix, Nerds waiting for a Batman/Superman live action movie, and Christians waiting for the Second Coming combined. Was the game worth the paltry 2 year wait? Well let's dive right on in shall we.

Now I really do like First Person Shooters. I my humble opinion, they are the most engaging of all of the game genres out there. That being said, I had to approach Modern Warfare 2 with a lot of skepticism to prove to some folks that I don’t just hate on games to hate on them. CoD4 had a lot of really profound and amazing moments in it too, so this game had a lot to live up to. Sadly, MW2 does not live up to the hype of being bigger than the Beatles.

The game starts off on the American side of conflict, and you play Private First Class Joseph "Gets Killed in Mission Three" Allen of the US Army Ranger Corps. He is hand picked by Lieutenant General Nofirstname "But Ends up Being the Bad Guy" Shepard, an Army General who wants you to go join a terrorist group. You also play as the British SAS folks again. Since the previous game, Soap Mactavish (a new fragrance from Herbal Essences) got promoted to Captain and has a new pupil named Sergeant Gary "Roach" Sanderson. You also play as another private, but the game kind of just tacked him on it seems. Just so you know, all but one of these names don't matter, because all but that one name gets killed like a bitch.

I would continue bitching about how the game loves to kill off every protagonist, and you not being able to gain any emotional attachment to said protagonist because the game is over faster than a sneeze, but I won't.

What really pissed me off about this game was the fact that the AI was super human. I have never seen AI able to blind fire headshot someone before, nor have I seen AI that was able to see behind it, when it was so clearly focused on someone else it was firing at. This brings me to my previous statement, I know numbers and I know human error. I know that in the numbers game, if you have a finite amount of grenades, your enemy should have too. Just like in CoD4, your enemies never seem to run out of them. Try to hide in a place longer than a second, and they will toss 2 to 5 grenades at you and they all land right at your feet. I know human error too. Have you ever been able to blind fire a gun, give off no muzzle flash, and kill your opponent the split second after he steps out of cover? If you answer yes, you are a liar.

Below is an advanced computer model example of a firefight in MW2, with the two enemy strategies represented in glorious detail.

The narrative is right up there with Hollywood movies, but in a game that is supposed to be the most realistic shooter ever made, that is not a good thing. I'll admit the outlandish things that happened at parts of the game were at least done in a way that didn't suck. That is really more of a nitpick than anything else. Again the killing of nearly every protagonist was a bit phoned in, and the fact that the stealth mission from the SAS side of the house is way more enjoyable than the Army Ranger side makes their deaths even more of a "meh" moment.

So Aimbotting AI aside, how is the game you ask. I would answer you it isn't bad, but there are a lot of things that could have been done way better. How about next time, don’t make the US Army look like a Tom Clancy novel gone awry. Maybe think about vacuum physics before having an air shockwave take out the International Space Station. Maybe think about renaming the mission that you walk through an airport something other than the darkest pun in the history of mankind (No Russian, think about it...).

Now did I like the game? Yes, I had a lot of frustrating fun with it. I have already beaten the realism horse into the ground, but I really do wish game companies wouldn't lie to us about these kind of things.

Music was by Hans Zimmer. Oh yeah, it has a sexy soundtrack.

I have yet to play a full game of multiplayer, as the dedicated server support on the console version is pretty terrible. I can only imagine what the PC folks have to deal with, not having any dedicated servers, and having to play with hackers and the like. I will give my opinion on that when I get to it.

In conclusion, I do recommend MW2. It is not a terrible game by any stretch. Just don’t go into it thinking it is going to be the most realistic game ever made. Because it isn't.

David M. Hubbard
Recent Electronics
He's Totally Realistic

Rating: 8/10

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