2 Idiot Gamers

Modern Warfare 2 is a tour-de-force of action.  It feels like they took a good Micheal Bay movie and grinded out a game.  There are huge set pieces of action that are so riveting that your palms will actually sweat.   The game plays like the first one, with some graphical improvements to the HUD.  The game is constantly warping you to the persona of various soldiers involved in various conflicts.  The story is a little incoherent, however the point is driven across really well.  War is hell, no one is a real hero, and everyone is at risk at any moment.  Unlike Halo where Master Chief is set up to be the good guy and champions a single handed battle against evil, the lines of good and evil, right and wrong are constantly being blurred here.  MW2 challenges you to look at this game as a comment on war.  It has the potential to strike plenty of meaningful conversations with those that have played it.  It is able to do this while delivering some amazing action and tension.

The missions vary from stealth to out right action.  It covers this range really well.  It has some issues with direction, it tries to be minimal in the way it leads the player along.  It wants you to learn and explore.  This works well, however it can be terribly punishing to the players.  Sometimes you take a route that leads to to a group of enemies that ends in instant death.  Other times you take the perfect path and run into one or two baddies.

Ambushed in Rio

An example of this is depicted in the picture above.  This is one of the great levels, you are forced to jockey back and forth between building.  You also have to  manage targets with the tactical advantage of higher ground, all the while dealing with a barrage of ground targets.  This mission alone took me plenty of tries to get through it.  Plenty of gibbing, till I filly manged the crowds making it easier to get through.  The use of check pointing through out the entire campaign makes the ease of this burden of a little easier.

The story plays out much like Red Dawn.  Eventually the US gets invading and saving the White House becomes a major mission.  The American soil fights also introduces one of the coolest weapons in your arsenal, the predator drone.  This is a great little added weapon.

Storming The Rock...err...The Gulag

The picture above is the start to my favorite mission in the game.  You are raiding the Russian Gulag to bust someone out.  It plays out a bit like the movie The Rock.  There is even a locker room set piece with elevated advantage.  I loved it.

Gonna hit the showers

Overall the campaign took me 6 hours and 35 minutes and netted 235 achievement points.  Short, however acceptable.   I still have two more pieces of content to sink my teeth into before I am acutally finished.  I fear the online play, not because of getting pwnd by some 12 year old, because of the known addictive nature of this experience.  If it is even remotely upgraded from MW1, I know I will be bit by that bug and never leave the TV.  Spec Ops mode looks interesting, waiting for a buddy to finish it up so we can play that together.  All in all the campaign alone is worth the cost of the game.  It is riveting game play, tight controls, decent story, and phenomenal action set pieces make this game absolutely worth it.

Liked:

Epic Action Set Pieces

Tight Control

HUD updated to always give you your goal.

Amazing Cinematic look and feel

Disliked:

Length – I would have liked an 8 – 10 hour campaign

Infinitely Spawning Enemies – Rio is brutal on the ground and suffers severely from this.

Inconsistent sense of urgency – some levels pull this off amazingly, other leave you wondering why they are barking in your ear.

In the Dark – Sometimes you feel like you are in the dark trying to accomplish a task, or getting to a specific door on a vehicle.

I will follow up with a Spec Ops/Online review shortly.

This review was based on a retail copy of the XBOX 360 version of the game, purchased by the reviewer.  Campaign has been completed by the reviewer on normal difficulty.  It is available on XBOX 360, PS3, and PC.

Yup, I'm a bad ass.

I know, I know, it is a rather blatant headline; after all it is our first post, have to get readers some how. And the answer to the question, it is an overwhelming “NO”.  And anyone who believes that is a fool.  These are digital characters, in a digital world, performing digital actions.  The most responsible of new’s sources, FOX, recently tried stating that MW2 is training terrorists in an interview with slashgamer.  All because of one level.  For those of you who haven’t played it and do not want a level and plot points spoiled, please stop reading now.

***Spoiler Start***

After a rather quick start to the game, one of your many personalities in the game is recruited by the CIA to be an operative that gets close to the antagonist in the the game, Makarov.  By the fourth mission in the game you are standing next to Makarov getting ready to commit a rather horrific act.  Now I have to say this mission is eluded to within the first 2 minutes of firing up the game.  And not only does it prompt you once stating you can skip this, it prompts you *TWICE*.  So you are warned ahead of time.  This is actually a pretty impactful mission of the game.  It is similar to the start of Modern Warfare where you witness the assassination at the beginning from the eyes of the mark.  Only in this mission you play the role of the trigger man and instead of one mark, it is an airport full of civilians.  I have to say, I did not shoot one civilian.  It seemed even hard to pull the trigger then.  Perhaps I am not a cold hearted killed that the media has led me to believe I am.  The game unfortunately does not offer you choice,  you cannot just kill your comrades and call it a game.  Instead, you walk along and witness the horrific slaughtering of hundreds of civilians, then eventually get a bullet in the head for it.

This catalyst of the terrorist attack leads to the other huge tipping point for the media, the attack of the US, and the occupation of the White House.  The game even embraces the invasion with a snappy little joke -which I found odd- by naming the chapter that starts the invasion “WOLVERINES”.  I guess this is their attempt to integrate the fact that they are not the first to do this, so the media does not make it such a big deal.  Or it is an attempt at the similar humor to the Fight Against Grenade Spam advert that got yanked.  I love this attempt at black humor – or off the normal path humor.  This game is designed for adults, retailers seem to be doing a good job at policing the rating, and the ability to integrate this type of humor should be applauded.  I chuckled when I saw the introduction and this did a great job breaking some of the tension this game creates. For those who do not get the reference, give Patrick Swayze a nod and rent yourself some “Red Dawn” – do not wait for the remake.

All this being said, the game is violent, the game is punishing, the game is good.  It is far from a terrorist trainer.  It is a game.  And the people who play these games need to understand the differences between this, if they do not, they need help…or better parenting.  When I went to pick my copy of the game up at a midnight launch, I saw plenty of dads and moms with their teenage kids picking up the game.  The father/son combo in front of me seemed really stable and adjusted.  The dad knew what was going on.  He even told him you can play it a little tonight, not to late though, you still have school tomorrow.  It seems to me that if more people took this role in raising their kids, taking an interest in the games, these kids would be able to adjust and discuss the happenings of this game with their parents, making a healthier family overall.  If the crappy mainstream media would pull their heads out of their asses and promote embracing what their kids do, rather then doing what I did with the subject we would have a better society and a more acceptance to games, specifically these types of games, that challenge our perspective of our world.

*As soon as I get the transcript or video of the interview I will post and/or link it in this article.

And here is the crappy FOX “fair and balanced” journalism – Unfortunately Jim from slashgamer gets a little off track in the beginning.  I am assuming based on the appalling lack of preparedness in the hate-monger news caster.