Review: Modern Warfare 2

A lazy poke at the original.

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8.9

The Good

Several exotic locales * Tight and intense gameplay * Intelligent A.I. * Excellent finale * Improvements made to an already addictive and fun multiplayer package

The Bad

Single-player campaign recycles content from the first game * Lacks any noteworthy set-piece * Story is badly communicated * Special Operations mode is a gimmick

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When Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare rolled off the production line in 2007, it took the military shooter genre by storm. More than migrating the Call of Duty franchise to the world of contemporary warfare, Infinity Ward’s stellar production reinvents the experience of playing a military shooter, setting the standards for future efforts. Modern Warfare combined a tight and highly-intense gameplay with first-rate cinematics which invested the player’s emotions into its intricately crafted cast of characters, further marrying these elements with insanely varied missions which consisted of nail-biting set-pieces. The result was a single-player experience of epic proportions. On the other side of the balancing beam, Modern Warfare’s strong multiplayer suite introduced a neat bag of unique ideas never explored before in other shooters and broke the boundaries of the amount of content that developers were willing to offer for multiplayer. On its own, Modern Warfare was an absolutely stunning package. The only competition for this 2007 Game of the Year candidate, naturally, would be its sequel.

Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward’s only project since the first Modern Warfare, meaning that the developers enjoyed the luxury of time to make improvements and polish an already great product. The fruits of the labor show here as Modern Warfare 2 emerges as an even larger experience with 3 core modes of play. The single-player campaign picks up where the first game left off, while the multiplayer features a handful of significant improvements which increase the strategic depth of each match. New to Modern Warfare 2 is the arcade-inspired Special Operations mode that sports various one-off scenarios of increasing difficulties. When broken up into bullet points, the list does look impressive. When you actually pop the disc in, however, there’s going to be a sense of disappointment. Modern Warfare 2, while still a great game by itself, especially for those who have not played the first game before, represents a lack of effort to build on the immense success of the first game. Players of the first game would quickly realize that Modern Warfare 2 is at best a lazy poke at the original.

Let’s get started with the single-player campaign. Those who have played the first game before would immediately find themselves right at home with the war-torn world of Modern Warfare 2. Like its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2 tackles the struggle between the US and very realistic threat of terrorism. It builds on the plot from the original, picking up half a decade after you put a bullet through Imran Zakhaev, the antagonist in Modern Warfare. His right-hand man, Valdimir Makarov, however, isn’t quite fond of your heroics and sets in motion a series of contiguous terror acts which end up plunging the world into chaos. Adopting the traditional Call of Duty approach of giving you different perspectives of a war, Modern Warfare 2 switches your control between multiple characters, including returning character ‘Soap’ MacTavish, as you dig yourself in to protect the US from the invading Russian forces and hunt down Makarov on the other side of the globe.

This takes you on a tour to several exotic locales, from the busy streets of Rio de Janeiro to icy landscapes of Kazakhstan to the shadows of an isolated oil rig in the middle of the ocean. Each level introduces different facets of modern combat like urban operations, stealth missions, convoy escort, helicopter assaults, as well as high-speed chases across expansive spaces. What this essentially means is that each level requires a unique style of play. When combined with an intelligent A.I. that adapts to your every move and a bustling physics engine, the game culminates into a greatly intensifying affair which rarely pauses to breathe.

Having said that, you would be doing lots of stuffs here. The snowmobile getaway in the earlier part of the game is by far one the most memorable parts of the single-player experience. You start the level in a blanket of thick snow. It may seem like a barrier to your objective but the snow soon becomes your friend as you quickly realize that you have a silenced weapon with a heartbeat sensor. As you hug the surfaces of containers and grope your way through the snow, enemies get dropped down like mosquitoes flying into a pall of pesticide. You eventually reach a hangar where you need to retrieve an important enemy equipment. However, just as you and your partner are about to depart with the equipment, the enemy ambushes you and have you surrounded. You switch to Plan B and blow up the place, using the smoke and flames as cover to escape to some nearby huts. Hijacking enemy snowmobiles, both of you engage in a heart-thumping chase across the dangerous ice-capped cliffs dotted with coniferous trees. The mission arrives at its dramatic finish as your snowmobiles brush over from the edge of the mountain to the other end for extraction.

As you progress through the game, however, the excitement quickly wears off. You have been here – and you have done it before. Here comes the difficult part of reviewing this game. For most parts, Modern Warfare 2 is a lazy effort that is extremely stingy on originality, recycling much of the content from the first game and lacking any noteworthy set-piece. There’s the familiar shoot-from-helicopter level, and then there’s the accompany-armored-vehicle level. But just about everything IS shorter and dumbed down. Most of these levels quickly give way to the tried-and-tested formula of run and gun gameplay, and the entire game could have become a run-of-the-mill experience if not for the adaptable A.I. that takes full advantage of cover and does its best to flush you out from one and flank you. On the other hand, if you are new to the Modern Warfare series, you’re going to relish in all the havoc this game offers. Players new to Modern Warfare, nevertheless, miss out on many of the finer elements of the first game not seen here. Part of what made the original so outstanding was its ability to inject a high level of emotion in players because the set-pieces are all about creating slim chances to eliminate characters significant to the plot. The result was an immense feeling of satisfaction, knowing that you have changed the world in that one moment of brilliance. In comparison, the set-pieces here don’t carry much of a weight with them and there is this inescapable feeling that you are just tearing down the place and producing pools of blood for the sake of doing it. If you have played the first game before, you are going to be terribly disappointed at the single-player campaign because it no longer invests you in its tale as much as you’d like it to. If this is your first time playing Modern Warfare, however, you’re going to like it because it is still smarter, more intense, and ultimately, better than many other military shooters out there.

Perhaps another factor why it’s so hard to get invested in the story is because the tale here seems so haphazardly communicated to the players. On its own, the plot here is a strong piece of device that builds around the gameplay, but more often than not, it’s difficult to grasp what the game is driving at because it so heavily insists on telling its tale through line upon line of recorded dialogue during brief loading screens rather than building a cohesive experience with both gameplay and cinematics. This very much draws a disparate relationship between the gameplay and story such that it’s hard to actually care about the characters or even know what you’re actually fighting for. The result is a single-player campaign that severely lacks any form of emotional attachment. It isn’t until the final few missions that the game starts getting itself into the mould of the original, seamlessly transiting between cinematics and gameplay and getting you highly involved in the epic fight between good and evil. This quickly builds up into Modern Warfare 2’s grand finale which features a dark plot twist and an excellent cliffhanger that sets up a sequel. It’s obvious that Infinity Ward dedicated more effort and concentration towards the end of the game rather than the start and it’s a pity because the finale, while one of the best I have experienced, comes across as something all too sudden.

When the single-player campaign is all done and dry, there’s the debut mode called Special Operations. It’s a series of scenarios of increasing difficulties. The vast majority of scenarios can be played solo, but some require co-op play. The concept behind Special Operations is great. It extends replayability, and with 23 scenarios, each with 3 stars to earn, there’s a respectable amount of content going for this mode. The execution, however, is hugely lackadaisical. Like the single-player campaign, most of the scenarios are recycled, drawn directly from scenarios already present in the single-player campaign or from the first Modern Warfare. Objectives aren’t fresh either. Special Operations mode is another gimmicky way of saying, “Let’s play specific scenarios from Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 again!” If I had wanted to do that, why couldn’t I just replay missions from the single-player campaign?

The biggest part of Modern Warfare 2 yet comes in the form of competitive online multiplayer. There’s a great deal of focus on this mode and it shows. Modern Warfare 2 brings back the wildly successful multiplayer from the first game and adds in more content and mechanics to make the multiplayer component an even stronger package. One of the biggest improvements here comes in the form of customizable killstreaks. Modern Warfare 2 expands the options to include more varieties of killstreak bonuses, including a 25 killstreak bonus that allows you to call in a nuke that ends the match instantly. Other new killstreak bonuses include calling in a counter-UAV which blocks enemy radar, sending in a supply drop, as well as ordering a devastating Predator missile strike. All in all, there is a good mix of defensive and offensive bonuses, as well as those which allow you to top up your resources. However, you can only take with you 3 killstreak bonuses onto the battlefield so choosing the 3 which suit your style of play is important. Some bonuses also require you to chain more than 8 kills together, and if you swop in these high-level bonuses into one of your 3 choices, you’re going to have to sacrifice some of the more practical lower tiered bonuses. This plays to the tune of a risk-reward system, greatly altering the strategy of the player on the battlefield.

The perk system has also been tweaked to provide a better sense of achievement to the player. After using a perk for a period of time, the specific perk gets upgraded overtime, either making it stronger or giving it secondary abilities. This makes players stick to their perks longer rather than swooping out perks frequently. These perks eventually craft the type of character that a particular player uses, ensuring that there’s an expansive variety of soldiers with various skills and abilities on the battlefield.

Like in the first game, there are several multiplayer modes here. Besides the typical Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, there’s Headquarters, a territory control mode and Sabotage, a plant-the-bomb and defuse-the-bomb mode, just to name a few. Maps also offer a good mix of both open landscapes and close combat quarters. All in all, the multiplayer suite here retains all the bells and charms of the multiplayer of the first game to maintain that addictive and enjoyable feel.

Closing comments
Modern Warfare 2 is a difficult game to judge. It all really depends on whether you are new to the Modern Warfare franchise or a veteran of it – and ultimately, what you’re playing Modern Warfare 2 for. If you’re new to the franchise, the traditionally tight and intense gameplay serves as a great introduction. If you have played the original before, you would come out feeling that the single-player campaign could have been done better. If you are playing Modern Warfare 2 for its short 6.5 hours single-player campaign, there’s certain to be a sense of disappointment. If you’re going to ignore the single-player campaign entirely and just go for the multiplayer, then you’re going to be impressed because this is the addictive and fun multiplayer from the first game we all love with the addition of a few improvements that add another layer of strategy on the battlefield.