I’ve finally got around to reviewing Modern Warfare 2 after years of playing and accumulating over 1500 hours of game play which has given me over 150,000 kills, a quad snipe with one bullet, and over 10 nukes, three of which I actually got the same day as I wrote this review. Anyway Modern Warfare 2 is a First Person action shooter based around a theoretical war started by an individual known as Makarov, in which you are lead around the world in an attempt to hunt him down.
Yet again as usual I’ve pasted a YouTube video of some of Modern Warfare 2’s music at the bottom so press the play button and continue reading.
For this review i’ll focus most of my attention on the multiplayer side of the game considering 90% of most players game-time is online, although i’ll begin with the story line.
I believe to anyone who hasn’t played Modern Warfare 1’s single player, the storyline in Mw2 could be very confusing especially the sections which change characters and other characters who die throughout it. It lacks a certain chain of events or an un-revealing of events at the end to understand the story fully. There are also scenes throughout the game which could be disturbing for some people but gives you the option to skip it after the games installed with no penalty. I also found the game to be a little slow on occasion and felt it lacked a difference in environment and weapons after having the scar for a good 30 mins.
The Spec Ops mode I really enjoyed, being able to team up with a friend to progress through a series of increasingly difficult missions and being able to set yourself in-game challenges such as pistols only or the fastest time wins. They were well thought out very well especially the stealth missions which were always good fun especially when you went loud. There was also a very large variety between the game modes having to shoot your way through troops with lasers to driving a snow-mobile through enemy troops to the finish line, and the favourite of all time, the snow stealth missions.
Now the multiplayer side of the game is commonly the most played having almost 5,000 players online around the world before Modern Warfare 3 came out. However finding and starting a game with these players takes quite a long time to get right considering that they could be hosting from a different country which would give you lag or that it just doesn’t want to find other players based on their experience and map packs.
Once you’ve entered a game without lag however the aim is to eliminate all the opponents on the other team in any way possible, although some unspoken rules generally apply discussed more below. There’s a large variety of weapons, grenades and special equipment to gain access to and to utilize against your enemies for a slight advantage or a free kill. An example being the claymore which your able to place in strategic locations for an enemy to trip up and gain a free kill from. The maps are generally well designed and are easy to navigate although there are a few poorly designed ones which cause a team to be spawn camped if they are unlucky.
One of the reasons I love this game to bits is the killstreak system which you must kill enemies without dying to unlock, with the ultimate prize being a Tactical Nuke which ends the game and causes your team to win to match. There are many other killstreaks such as predator missile, harrier, stealth bomber, ac130, emp and many more which make the game interesting and gives the player a reason to stay alive, unlike other games such as halo and counter strike. Another great feature I found in the game was the killcam which shows the final kill to to every player in the game and also lets players attempt a fantastic shot which everyone will watch. Throwing knives, 360’s and qs’s are commonly seen as the final kills and generally make the best kills although there have been some brilliant other ones such as flash kills and triple claymore kills.
The game has an easy learning curve if you’ve only played a few first person shooters before and the difficulty mainly depends on the skill of other players and their weapon choices. To master the game however you need to put endless hours into developing your teamwork skills and tactics as well as learning to aim faster and improving your reaction times.
Below the review becomes more philosophical so read on with this in mind.
Now i’ve explained the game in detail there are some other small intricacies you should note. As mentioned above these unspoken rules during the game refer to the power ratio and shooting speed of guns which cause some to be much more powerful than others. I’ll give one example of an overpowered gun being the akimbo G18’s which when fired slaughter anything in front of the barrels in a good 120 degree angle. People are generally discouraged from and frowned upon when using these guns as they kill any person before they are even able to fire one shot into them. The reason for being so powerful I believe is to give new players a chance against the more pro players which is a good idea, except if a pro player uses them, which would cause them to be almost unbeatable in a close range battle. Infinity Ward could fix this by limiting the cheaper guns to a rank level such as 20, which if they pass this those guns are unable to be used anymore, until they prestige again.
The reason many other players from Australia don’t want to use them is fairness and equality for everyone in the game, I single out Australians because they (we) rarely use cheap weapons in team deathmatch games, on the other hand however Americans use every gun in the game with a particular focus on the cheap ones because their philosophy is to win the game no matter what cost. However who would want to play a game where both teams are standing in their base tubing over the map into the enemies base, that’s no fun. Or running around UMPing everyone who has harder to use guns or snipers. This is one of the most noted features I found to be annoying throughout the game alongside having a host from another county which is another massive disadvantage for all other players.
The host choosing code could easily be improved because more often than you might think every player in the game is one bar (300+ ms ping) while the host sits happily on four running around killing every who to them, appears to be not even moving or just very bad players. Through my experience playing the game the host is biased upon their relation to America, the closer they are, the more likely that they will be host even if the above situation is true. This becomes very frustrating for other players especially if the host won’t leave or the game doesn’t detect if everyone’s lagging.
The game’s single player is sufficiently good to play through although it does lack change in scenery and guns and the story line is fairly confusing if you haven’t played the modern warfare series games before. The spec ops game mode is brilliant especially with a friend, there is a vast change in environments game styles and weapons which give an unlimited amount of fun and let you complete missions any way you like.
The multiplayer is why this games really bought having a fair few players still on it after Modern Warfare 3 was released although you may run into frequent lag spikes, a bad host or cheap players it will still provide a hugely fun and brilliant gaming experience.
Feel free to leave a comment below.
Here’s the final score out of 100%:
Story: 90%
Game-play: 100%
Graphics: 90%
Sound/Music: 90%
Fun Rating: 95%
Addict-ability: 95%
Total: 93.3%
Legend:
0% – 24% = Hopeless Game, Definitely not worth buying! if you have it sell it now while its worth something!
25% – 49% = Terrible Game, This game will not prove to be very enjoyable, and may only be played once and forgotten.
50% – 59% = Average Game, A very mediocre game that you may play occasionally to pass time but doesn’t prove to be very enjoyable.
60% – 69% = Nice Game, A game you would play once or twice to see how it is, but ultimately lacks replay-ability and immersion.
70% – 79% = Brilliant Game, This game would satisfy your gaming needs for a very long time but would eventually be forgotten over time.
80% – 89% = Fantastic Game, A very fun game that proves time and time again to be enjoyable and addictive.
90% – 99% = Amazing Game, Extremely Enjoyable and has lots of replay-ability content, as well as pushing the boundaries for future games.
100% = Epic Game, Go and buy 20 copies right now! (In-case there’s a nuclear war and they get destroyed)
