Tuesday 24 November 2009

Modern Warfare 2 - Videogame Review (X-Box 360)


The game on everyones lips at the moment is Modern Warfare 2, the wait is finally over; here are my thoughts on it! The game is good, probably even great, and is made up of 3 distinct parts.

Firstly there is the single player campaign. I have played through this on Normal, Hardened, and Veteran mode so have a good feel for what it's like. The plot carries on from the first game, in fact the introduction credits have scenes from the previous game playing behind them. It's 5 years later and...stuff is happening? This stuff involves an international terrorist Makalov, plus a invasion of the USA by Russia. To be honest the story is a garbled mess and makes no sense which is a shame, even after multiple play through I'm not quite sure of the games events. What I do know is that Makalov was a student of the one armed bloke Soap killed in Modern Warfare, a man called Shepherd is in charge of the USA army, and that Soap and others make a big appearance.

The game is shorter than Call of Duty 4's single player. My first play through took just under 5 hours on Normal. Subsequent playthroughs on the higher difficulties took around 6 hours I think. The game looks fantastic, and the missions are quite varied and full of spectacles, mostly set pieces such as helicopters falling out the sky, buildings collapsing etc. There is the controversial airport massacre level, but in all honesty it's quite boring, and I skipped the level for my repeat playthroughs. There is nothing to rival the nuclear explosion of the first game, and nothing could replace the amazing slow motion ending of that game (it pointlessly tries, but of course fails).


The second part of the game is Special Ops mode. This is a collection of mini games involving lots of different challenges. There around 25 of these. They range from missions involving surviving waves of enemies, to defusing bombs in a set time, to snow mobile races down a mountain. They are fun, but quite hard, but a welcome addition. My only gripe is that some missions are co-op only, meaning I can't experience them.

Lastly is the team online modes. The longest replay value. It builds on everything good about Call of Duty 4's death matches, and improves it with more options. There are a variety of Kill Streaks to unlock, as well as Death Streaks (rewarded to players repeatedly dying). The maps are a similar size, but seem to feature more areas to hide. I didn't like the original as I joined it too late so couldn't get any fun out of it. This time I'm going to try and play daily to keep the map layouts fresh in my mind.

A great game then, I picked it up for £26, so damn worth what I paid for it.

SCORE:

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