It’s November 2009 and that means it is time for the annual part of a soap opera called Call of Duty series. Just kidding, after two long years of waiting for the sequel to one of the best multiplayer games in history Infinity Ward teamed up with Activision to bring us once more their crown jewel. Does it shine brightly this year? Or is just an old diamond polished enough to look like new? One thing is certain – it didn’t come without sacrifices.
“We’re going in deep and we’re going in hard”
“Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2” picks up where the last part took off. It’s been 5 years now since the accident with nuclear warheads launched by Zakhaev on the eastern coast of USA and the reality looks completely different than one would think. Power shift in the Russian government allowed the ultranationalists to take control of the country crowning Zakhaev the title of national hero and martyr. On top of that, one of his followers and lieutenant in his ranks – Vladimir Makarov is running rampant and striking numerous terrorist attacks on civilians across the globe. Our good old friend “Soap” is now a member of international unit called TF 141 and with a help of a charismatic “Ghost” and fresh in ranks “Roach” along with some American soldiers from various units tries to stop Makarov before his actions will go out of control.
That much I can tell without spoiling the story for anyone who haven’t played/seen the trailers so far. Across the whole game we will take control of different soldiers, mostly playing as Roach, and embark on yet another epic pursuit after a bad guy through many different locations all around the world. The single player experience is the same as in every Call of Duty – intense, fast paced, made as an action movie and ridiculously short. It takes around 4-5 hours to finish the game depending on your difficulty setting which is pretty much standard for CoD games nowadays and shouldn’t surprise anyone. The story is well written and will keep you interested in the game through all experience providing with both explosions, epic firefights, emotion and movie like turning points. There are however few bad things about it. The battles are often very chaotic and you will need to think and act fast as often you’ll find yourself being shot down or killed by grenade just because you failed to spot that one guy who was hiding behind a corner. It seems also as if the developers sacrificed some portion of the storyline for more fighting – for most of the game you’ll find yourself rushing through levels killing people not even thinking or wondering what the hell is going on. The last part that I didn’t like about SP is the fact that game is pretty much limited in terms of movement. There is always one way to the current objective and you can’t experiment with different approaches simply because there’s none, you have to follow the given path and hope you will be able to blast through the enemies – I am well aware of the fact that it was like this for the past 5 installments but one would think that after such time they would try to improve that aspect of the game.
“That’s the last mag, make it count”
It is now a tradition that with every new Call of Duty comes the new and improved multiplayer for which millions of players await and which I will discuss in a moment. This time however, IW decided to throw a bonus to their game providing us with a mode called “Spec Ops”. What in a blue hell is that you would ask – well it’s something people were asking and what wasn’t brought to the original single player campaign, co-op. In this mode player can embark solo on new set of missions or with a help of friend. There are 5 different sections of challenges waiting for players with the total of 23 different missions waiting to be finished. None of the missions are related to the storyline, it’s just a set of challenges to test your skills against computer on three different difficulty settings. Missions stretch from simple point defense, through past unnoticed and snowmobile races to missions like assault where you need to work really hard together reaching a destination – all in all, a really great addition to the game.
Now for the main course – the multiplayer, something that everyone was looking for and at the same time one thing that brought so many controversy in the past weeks that nobody could expect. The whole game changed and multi changed along with it. There is no longer a distinction between hardcore and normal mode, the “old school” mode is gone and to our gaming pleasure we now have access to many new game types. TDM, Sabotage, Search and Destroy, Domination, FFA are all back, in addition to them we now have modes like Hardcore TDM, 3rd Person Tactical (we no longer have FPP view, TPP view is used which very much reminds of Gears of War way of showing the things), Flag Runner (a CTF type of gameplay) and many more that are unlocked as we progress through game – something for everyone. Not only the game types were changed, the game evolved in terms of weapons, perks, killstreaks as well. People who like me, were bored with old types of weapons in MW will be very pleased to see guns like: AA12, FN-Scar, Striker, Fal 12, Famas and many others in game. Not only we have new guns but also there are 14 new attachments that will make the fighting so much more enjoyable. Completely new to the series are two major things – customizable killstreaks (15 different ones waiting to be unlocked and used – maximum of 3 can be set) and deathstreaks. Deathstreaks are activated once you will die enough times in a row without a kill to help you get back into action (martyrdom being one of them, no longer a standard perk) and will be deactivated once you will score a kill so you can’t overuse them. Last but not least – perks are back and refreshed. As before perks are divided into 3 categories each allowing player to use different set of skills, what’s new now is the fact that each perk has a “pro” version that activates once you meet requirements for it and gives two “abilities” for one perk that greatly enhance your combat capabilities. The ranking system is back now with 70 levels and 10 prestige classes to be unlocked through hours of gameplay.
For the dessert – IW.net and P2P gaming system. One thing that caused much controversy. Yes, the game is using the matchmaking system and there is no way of choosing a server since they are being set on players who are hosts but I must say it works incredibly smooth and so far haven’t encountered major lag issues. It is true that sometimes the game will start having lag spikes and people will be warping but when it comes to this and it is persistent and not a temporary inconvenience the game will run diagnostic and pick the new host – which is called host migration and so far ones that I’ve seen went pretty smoothly, under 15 seconds of game delay. The system of course is not perfect and far from it. Games start from lobbies when the minimum required players are matched and that alone can sometimes take a while. The matchmaking so far is not working as it should and you’ll often find yourself playing with people on 40-50lv while being on lv10 yourself. Having dedicated servers as hosts for games would naturally greatly improve the gameplay and halt the hackers (right now VAC doesn’t seem to be detecting hackers) but we know it won’t come to that from the simple reason of Activision trying to milk money from DLC’s – and those wouldn’t be popular if there would be dedicated servers running custom maps/modes. One last important thing – games are for 2 to 18 players max, so forget about having 20 or more people on the server but frankly speaking it works great for the current game and I wouldn’t see that as a problem.
“Soap? What sort of name is that?”
The newest installment in the Call of Duty franchise is rated M for Mature and there is a good reason for it – war never looked so beautiful and violent so far. Animation of soldiers bodies hitting the ground after being shot or them holding their faces when you happen to shoot head or even the animation when someone is using “last stand” (yes the NPCs use it now too and you will often find yourself being shot by an enemy soldier trying to crawl away) is brilliant and makes you feel as if u were on a real battlefield. Weapon models as well as models of NPCs are looking amazing and it’s a real shame you don’t have enough time to just witness how detailed they look. The surroundings are really nicely done and it’s a pleasure to watch as you blast a car away or just exchange fire in a restaurants where everything is flying around and parts of surrounding equipment are being devastated in a rain of heavy fire. Graphically Modern Warfare 2 is looking awesome and we could only hope for more open spaces and longer stages to be able to feast our eyes with graphics.
Music in game is created by Hans Zimmer himself, marking it his first game ever to which he composed and that statement alone should be more than enough to describe how perfectly done the music and sounds are in the game. The master provided us with a truly mesmerizing set of tracks that greatly enhance the adventure with the game making it far more enjoyable. To the old cast of actors giving their voices for the characters in game Lance Henriksen was added ensuring that the voice acting is standing on the high level and to further extend the feeling of watching an interactive action movie. Sounds of weapons and grenades are as always on the same top level making you feel that every piece of equipment you use acts and sounds like the one in real life. The only thing that I might say bad thing about is the fact that at some parts of American campaign the game is dropping framerates even on strong set ups but the problem itself is occurring maybe on 2 occasions and doesn’t last for too long.
“You have a blank check general”
With the release of Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward managed to split the community of PC gamers in half and brought many controversions along but in my eyes they managed yet again to come out of it victorious. When you read these words, Modern Warfare 2 has earned over 300 millions $ worldwide from initial sales and that’s just one week on the market which means MW2 is now the best selling game in history and managed to beat GTAIV record of opening. On top of that, MW2 is the second game that managed to climb into top 10 on xfire list with both single and multiplayer shortly after release – Modern Warfare being the first one.
There are already 2 DLC’s scheduled for every system containing most likely new maps for both Spec Ops and multi – will they come with price tag on PC, that I don’t know. I know however that Kotick set a ridiculously high price on the PC version – yes that’s that guy who hates players and is a CEO for Activision. Choice is yours ladies and gentleman, with quite some flaws in MP including no team switching, no clan support, no admin and not being able to choose the rules under which you play it is something that old fans of MW will definitely not like and find annoying. Also the solid fact that there is no dedicated/mod/custom map support is another flaw on the series.
It’s hard to pass a solid judgment on this game. On the one hand we have a game with great graphics and awesome music which comes in a pack of 3 in 1 – single player, spec ops, multiplayer – with variety of guns, perks and 14 beautiful maps. On the other hand we have flaws like storyline that at some points looks brilliant while during most of the time you will wonder what the hell is going on and problems with user created servers which not always live up to the expectations of players. The game is definitely not a masterpiece that we would expect from hands of people who created Call of Duty 4 and started the franchise in the first place. It’s also not a clan game at all so if you are looking solely into clan experience and clan battles you will be disappointed. However if you are looking forward to a game which you can play casually and have a blast with friends it’s definitely something you should consider getting, provided that you are prepared to spend 60 Euro on it - if not I advise waiting for the Battlefield Bad Company 2 as all signs on earth and sky say it will be a multiplayer that we all been waiting for.
