The sequel to the original Modern Warfare was one of the most anticipated games in the year of 2009, and received and all time high of $550 million dollars worldwide in the first five days alone in profits. Such high records and sale levels must point towards the conclusion that it’s a great game, but this didn’t exactly turn out to be even one of the best games. I’ll begin reviewing this game with its single player campaign.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 included the standard single player campaign which began five years after Modern Warfare ended. It included four different difficulty levels, and lasted on average as little as 5-8 hours. The story line is rather basic, and simply goes on in a war between the Russians as always, as well as a new terrorist group being led by Vladmir Makarov. It features several different missions, each with their own locations such as a destroyed, invaded Washington D.C., mountain bases, and even regular Favelas. They also vary in action, with some being stealth, some wild vehicle chases, and of course the standard gun shooting. The graphics have a decent touch of detail into them as well. However, the story line is not very enticing since it doesn’t always stick to one main objective until the end, but yet randomly has extremely inappropriate scenes and missions that have no need to be played according to the campaign. One of these missions called ‘No Russian’, features an undercover C.I.A. agent in a terrorist group gunning down thousands of innocent civilians in an airport caused Russia to tear Modern Warfare 2 out of its store shelves. What is Infinity Ward trying to do, teach eight-ten year old kids who play this game that it’s okay to enter an airport, and gun down thousands of people? Despite all of this, the game does get slightly emotional in other missions, which I can’t reveal for it will spoil the game for you. Overall, the campaign is quite a detailed, epicly varied single player mode, but has its reputation ruined by extremely unnecessary, and brutal missions.
Modern Warfare 2 also introduced a new game mode called Special Ops. This extremely addictive mode featured several short missions that can be played solo or co-op with a friend online. Each mission had its own difficulty level, and the better you complete one, the more stars you received, which then went to unlocking more levels. Just like the campaign, the Special Ops missions vary in location, and objective. From snowmobile racing to explosion packed co-op chopper gunner action, Spec Ops added alot more hours of fun to Modern Warfare 2.
And finally, probably the largest part of this game: Multi player. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 introduced several new weapons, perks and equipment, as well as customizable classes and killstreaks (A number of kills earned without dying). Sixteen new maps were added in various sizes and areas, and around a dozen game modes could be played. Multiplayer was fun, but yet could also be a terribly frustrating experience. The game allowed the player to select a main weapon, a secondary, three perks which later could be upgraded to better perks when a certain challenge was complete, and two pieces of equipment in five different classes. In each game, you earned experience points, which were used to level up. For each new level, you unlocked new guns and killstreaks. This seems like a fair combination for multiplayer, but several of the weapons and equipment the developer added were clearly stupid, uneeded and corrupted the game.
Let me begin with the the weapons. Infinity Ward overpowered all of their weapons, and some were made one hit kill in any hit. This made dying a task far to easy to be even close to realism. Instead of looking over this and helping fix this, Infinity Ward took an even worse step and added amazingly unbalanced weapons and perks. A few examples are the Model 1887s. Extremely overpowered shotguns unlocked by the highest ranked players that aren’t even modern- this goes against the game title. They are always one hit kill, and before you can even realize someone is there, you’d die of a shotgun that is far to powerful. There is also a perk named ‘One Man army’, where you can change classes whenever you want. This seemed like a handy tool, but obviously the developer didn’t intend for it to be abused for creating minefields with claymores, and for unlimited grenade launchers. Another terrible perk is called ‘Commando’, which allowed the player to knife the enemy from about five feet away in a second. The ‘tactical insertion’ equipment introduced an all time high level of boosting, where a player uses a flare to mark his next spawn location. This allowed cheaters to easily get free kills on one another to level up. There are also deathstreaks, where you receive boosts after dying without any kills which are too powerful. I understand this is meant to help you out, but sometimes it’s just too unfair for other players. The worst death streak is ‘Pain Killer’, where your health increases by two or three times for ten seconds after spawning. Expect even more unfair moments in the game.
All of the most overpowered weapons and perks are usually the easiest to get, but the hardest to fight against. Infinity ward made the huge mistake of handing out overpowered weapons as well as ridiculous perks, but barely any way to fight back at them. While there are ways to stop these unfair perks/weapons, they take up to many slots of space while the actual unbalanced weapon barely takes any. Not only does the game’s content have issues, the game itself does, too! The spawn system is AWFUL, and one can easily spawnkill over and over if he’s in the right spot.
Overall, Modern Warfare 2 is an unbalanced multi player experience, and has an epic yet slightly corrupt singleplayer. Still,Special Ops slightly fixes these two issues. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 receives 3 stars for just not thinking everything through, and rushing to start earning unearned money!