Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

Modern Warfare 2 is the follow-up to Infinity Ward's seminal Modern Warfare of two years ago. Coming hot on the heels of Activision developed World at War, Modern Warfare 2 brings us back to the future for some more of that soapy sneaky shooting action we loved back in the day.

The first Modern Warfare was a hard act to follow as evidenced by the lukewarm reception of World at War. Who better to do it than Infinity Ward? Following a great act doesn't necessarily mean improving upon it however.

The story of MW2 is quite convoluted and outrageously hard to follow, especially if you didn't play the first story. While the first one made good use of the disparate characters to tell one cohesive story, this time it seems that IW tried to tell three different stories at once. Sure they all sort of tie in, but not in any sort of way that's easy to care about. Also there are some scenes that feel as if they were just put there to try and one-up MW which just leaves you wondering why that happened.

The gameplay is far more intense than the predecessor and the scripted events really help to sell the desperation of the various situations. There always seemed to be something going on at which I wanted to look. Control is tight and immediately familiar making providing the double edge of making the game feel like an extension rather than a sequel.

For most though, all the shine is coming from the multiplayer. This stands as the biggest change to the game. CoD4 and World at War vets will find all the modes immediately accessible and familiar while glorying in the new perks and a larger variety of kill everyone, grab the thing modes. A welcome newcomer is the Spec Ops mode where you and a friend cooperatively complete some mission ripped from the game. It's quite fun to go through an area with a friend that you took solo the first time around and see how your friends go about laying waste to everything wearing red.

Overall, I'm a bit disappointed by the heavy-handedness of the story mode and would have preferred a more natural story flow. Also, it seems weird to me that about half-way through the story *MILD SPOILER* a different bad guy pops up and suddenly everyone is no longer mad at the original bad guy. And no one seems interested in him anymore. *SPOILER OVER* Situations like that that are clear sequel setups anger me.

The multiplayer is something that even the most jaded players can enjoy though, providing some decent justification for the rest of the box.

If I had to give it a number, I think I'd say 8.5ish.

Played on Xbox 360. Beat story mode on Hardened difficulty.

Post Apocalyptia is the New World War II

It had occurred to me rather recently that with development houses (with the exception being Activision) that World War II is beginning to fall by the way-side. Not a moment too soon I might add. At a certain point one begins to think that, although the Nazis are pretty much universally considered evil, after 15 years of nonstop, save France; blow up the U-Boat; can I really force myself to care about the fate of Marseilles when people are trying to convince me to be frightened by nukes people are pointing at me now?

This line of thought is not lost on the development community however as WWII seems to be getting systematically replaced with the future remnants of WWIII. As much as I enjoy the idea of nuclear warfare, until the clock really strikes I sort of don't want all of my games to be about everything being all destroyed. Sure it affords us opportunities to shoot mutants (and sometimes the Nazi zombie as if we hadn't had enough living ones), but I'm starting to think there could be more creative excuses for why that dog is bigger than me.

Having said all that, I have to concede that there aren't really that many scenarios that lend themselves to video games well. Modern Warfare, as fantastic as it is, only escaped public outcry because it called Iraq something different (Autostrad if you're interested). Remember Seven Days in Fallujah? What about Superman Returns? (I didn't mean to bring that one up. Don't be mad.) The point is that if we're not in space (New Mumbasa counts), or in hell, the only place we can go and shoot up some shit is post-apocalyptia.

If you'd like my opinion (and I know you do) video games will be stuck in these places until developers stop listening to Glen Beck and start listening to their own artistic inner selves. If you think Fallujah makes a good setting, make that game. I'll probably buy it just because there aren't any Nazis (and as it turns out no nukes either).