Originally posted on 15/11/09
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - PS3 Game Review
Modern Warfare 2 is utterly sublime. Granted i've only had it since Friday but... it is utterly without equal on the FPS market today. While the single player campaign is criminally short at 4 hours, it's a 4 hour long interactive movie. Spec Ops mode adds variety and while it's responsible for the campaign being so short, it's worth it. Granted it does fall down a bit in multiplayer, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the 4.7 million people who bought this game on launch day were utterly justified in their purchase. Even the sad-acts who went at midnight.
Single player: Picking up from where COD4 left off, the fake war still rages on, even if there's new faces fighting it. A lot had been said of Vladimir Makarov before the game, someone who looks like a cross between Matt Bellamy and a Bourne move villain, but he barely features. No, the real enemy in this game is where Infinity Ward decided to go ultra realistic and make the American the bad guy. And they actually name the place you start in this time! Afghanistan. Shooting ragheads who haven't even changed their clothes since COD4. Mr. Makarov is a rather clever chap mind you, as he manages to frame you as responsible for slaughtering Moscow airport, which makes Russia invade America. Full-scale. They decimate the place. There's something about the game being in a place that resembles somewhere that you live (if you live in North Virginia in the ridiculously huge houses depicted here) that cranks the immersion up to eleven. It draws you in. It sinks your claws into you and actually makes you care about Americans, which let's face it, is saying something.
Never fear, because you're not always a Yank defending their flag, Soap is back! And he speaks this time! In a tone vaguely reminiscent of MaaacMillaaan and his brilliant one-liners, with a haircut so bad you realise why the armed forces gives everyone crew cuts. Of course, these missions where you follow Soap around are the best. From a snowy mountain base in Kazakhstan, to an oil-rig off the Russian east coast, to storming a Gulag to get the non-dead Captain Price, complete with beard, out. Your man (Roach) unfortunately still doesn't speak mind you, but it fits, seeing as you're lost for words throughout most of it anyway. Oh, and the rest of TF141 (the faction you're fighting with) are all utter nut jobs, especially Ga- uh.... Ghost. Who is in no way associated with Gaz from COD4. At all.
Sadly, your time as Roach is brought to a premature end by the prick American General Sheppard, who is evil. He wants revenge for the nuke that went off in COD4, and he's stopping at nothing to get it, in a way which you know America would try if they thought they could pull it off. That just adds to the immersion, the fact that what you're playing in could happen. Back to America, and back to Washington DC. Which has had the shit bombed out it. The Treasury has bits missing, you shoot the top floor out of the Department of Justice, and you storm the White House. Even though getting in there was disappointing, ie you don't go through the front door all guns blazing, rather go up the caved in roof, it's the iconic locations which make the game stick. That and the eerie sight of Washington in darkness (this was after Captain Price blew up the ISS btw) and dodging raining helicopters in said darkness is just... breathtaking. Utterly without fault and peerless in the FPS genre.
After Sheppard kills Roach and Gaz (again) Captain Price and Captain MacTavish become wanted for a lovely array of crimes. Notably, treason, global destruction and grand terror. Or something like that. But do they sit idily by and let Sheppard take over the world? DO they jiggery! The two of them manage to escape an aeroplane graveyard whilst fighting both the Russians and the Yanks, with help from Nikolai from COD4 and Jackass, and then after having a wee radio chat with Vlad find out where Sheppard is hiding. This is where the COD4 SAS element of gameplay comes in, as the two of them infilitrate the mountain base on their own and manage to get through it all alive. THAT is just how goddam good these two are. Granted you do catch Sheppard, he stabs Soap and you end up killing him anwyay, just as Nikolai gets you the hell out of there and the credits roll, and afterwards you continue to stare at the screen in disbelief. The fact that there's still a war raging, Makarov is still out there and Soap and Price are both wanted men sets us up beautifully for COD8 in two years, where Modern Warfare 3 will surely obliterate even this titles record-breaking sales.
Modern Warfare 2 has a storyline that quite possibly beats BioShock for the best story i've ever seen in a game, it is a graphical improvement over COD4 and the physics in-game are much improved also. Try shooting glass, most fun part of the game. The story sets up a 3rd game superbly, and this also seems like a campaign i'll re-play several times. Get it. Get it now
No comments:
Post a Comment