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If you somehow managed to miss Infinity Wards’ Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare when it was released back in ’07, then you may not know that the game was pretty bad ass. While the game had a somewhat short single player, in line with most common day games in the FPS genre, it was a blast and felt like an awesome action packed movie experience that had you on the edge of your seat the entire time. The sequel, Modern Warfare 2, picks up 5 years after the story of CoD4 and is even more thrill filled then you would expect.
Modern Warfare 2 is the first ever direct sequel of a Call of Duty game so far and it does it great. The story is not an epic master piece along the lines of Mass Effect or anything like that, but it does its job very well at keeping the games pace up and keeping the action flowing. There is not a lot I can say about the story without giving away spoilers, but it consists of quite a few memorable moments and unexpected plot twists. The campaign takes place after the fall of Zakhaev. Now Zakhaev is seen as a hero in Russia and has his own statue in Red Square. One of his former officers, Vladimir Makarov, has taken over where he left off and begins causing trouble in Europe. While trying to take him down many revelations and plot twists occur which have you fighting in several different locations, including Washington D.C., Russia, Brazil, and parts of the Middle East.; so you can expect a bit of variety in the missions. While many missions do consist of going from cover to cover firing at enemies, there are stealth and vehicle parts to missions as well as breaching and several other things to keep missions from getting stale. The gameplay remains almost identical to CoD4 with changes in equipment, level design, and weapons. If you’ve played that then you know what to expect. If you haven't, why not?
The multiplayer is where this game’s strong suit lies. If you are not into multiplayer then you may want to reconsider making a full priced purchase for the single player alone. If you are into multiplayer, expect to waste massive amounts of time online unlocking titles, emblems, leveling up, and getting awesome knife kills.
New to the multiplayer is the Co-Op Special Ops Mode. This mode consists of missions from parts of the single player game broken into levels for multi player. You will not be playing a campaign, but instead doing objectives like defending a point, racing through an area as fast as possible, stealth missions, eliminating all enemies, or simply getting from point a to point b alive. One really cool thing about this mode is that some missions are not taken from MW2's single player, but come from CoD4 or are just specifically made for Special Ops. This mode can be played with 2 people online or split screen. If you are a completionist or an achievement whore, beating all of these missions on veteran will take some time, skill, and a good partner. While there is no co-op story mode you will be having a lot of fun in the Special Ops, either by yourself or even more so with a buddy.
Now the main focus of the series to me and most gamers since CoD4 has become the online multiplayer. While there are several online shooters on the 360, none of them have held my attention as long as CoD4 or CoD: WaW. Halo has a pretty solid multiplayer, but apart from these two series there isn't really anything that stands out. Modern Warfare 2 does its job of making the game one of the best experiences you will have online with some nice new additions and slight changes in the mechanics.
As you may remember from CoD4, the multiplayer classes could use perks like stopping power (make your bullets more powerful) and steady aim (better hipfire accuracy). In Modern Warfare 2, these perks return (most of them with name changes or in death streaks) with the ability to upgrade. Let’s say you are using Cold Blooded, which makes your character undetectable by UAV and Thermal scopes among other things, after bringing down enemy choppers, harriers, or AC-130's a set amount of times you will upgrade the perk to Cold Blooded Pro. The pro versions of perks all add something extra, in this case it makes it so that your name does not show up and the enemies’ crosshairs do not turn red when over your character. Each perk has a different way of leveling up and once it is leveled up that extra benefit you unlock stacks onto the previous. This really helps make each characters class more unique then in CoD4 when everyone used either stopping power/juggernaut for the second perk.
Along with the perks being different, you can now customize your guns even more. With more attachments to unlock and now with the Bling perk, the ability to use two attachments on the same gun, meaning the ability to have a silencer and a red dot sight at the same time. You are now also able to unlock many new things for almost every gun; you are now able to get silencers for sniper rifles and shotguns as well. You also now have the headshots challenges which unlock different camo prints for the guns, a feature that was left out of last year’s World at War. Along with the challenges for unlocking weapons, there are challenges which in the past gave you experience after completing them. These challenges now upon completion do more then give you XP as they also unlock titles and emblems which you can combine to give yourself something to stand out and prove that you have completed some of the harder challenges in the game. While these titles/emblems do not change the gameplay at all they add a lot to the replayability of the game and a sense of satisfaction.
The multiplayer maps in the game are much bigger than those found in WaW and CoD4. You are going to have a lot of ground to cover and as a team are going to have to work together if you do not want to be flanked. While there is also much variety in the maps, I have yet to find a map that stands out as say an SMG map or even a Sniper map. The levels are balanced enough to where you can kind of use any weapon class you want on the majority of them.
A long with the new maps we also have a few new gametypes with Capture the Flag (returning from WaW), Demolition, and third Person. Capture the Flag (CTF) is just as you would expect, with the normal variants of one flag CTF (where one team defends while the other attacks), or Multi-Flag (both teams try to capture). In Demolition you play up to three rounds trying to defend or plant bombs at two different sites. In order to win the round you must destroy both sites or defend at least one plant site until time runs out. Everyone has a bomb on them and anyone can plant at anytime, though if you are going up against a good defensive team and are not using team work this can be very difficult. Once the round has ended you will switch sides and the first to two round wins, wins the game. The last new gametype is in third Person, which is the same gametypes, just from a different perspective. In this mode you cannot zoom in at all unless using a sniper rifle and you will die a lot more. The third person modes seem to be much faster paced then regular first person games as it doesn't seem to require as much accuracy.
While multiplayer has added more depth and more reason to come back, it does have one thing I consider a fault, others may not. That is of course the shotguns. In previous CoD titles shotguns were considered a primary weapon class, for some reason in MW2 they decided to put shotguns in the secondary weapon class, meaning you can use a shotgun instead of a pistol. Also being in the secondary class, like pistols, you have the ability to dual wield these guns once you unlock "akimbo". With the power of the shotguns and lack of a need to aim, they seem to be extremely over powered and in some instances ruin the game. How the heck does someone dual wield a shotgun without having any kick or any lack of accuracy or negative effects? I do not know, but it happens in MW2 and it is the one thing that I would consider a real issue with the multiplayer, it's almost to the point where the Shotgun akimbo classes have become the new MP40 from CoD:WaW.
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9.5
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With very few complaints about the game and the massively addicting multiplayer, I am going to go ahead and say this is one of the best games to spend your money on this year. The fact that you can get more than 30 hours out of the multiplayer without becoming tired of it, really makes it worth the money. That is not even including the great single player or Special Ops modes. Although the single player is somewhat short, you are really buying this for the multiplayer and your money has been well spent.
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