Monday, November 16, 2009

Updated Impressions: Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2

Who knew? Army guys blowing shit up = Php 17.5 B?

Modern Warfare 2 was a game I was totally expecting to be stellar, and apparently a lot of people felt the same way, having shifted an unbelievable 7 MILLION UNITS in a day or two. Man, just do the math: 7,000,000 units X an average price of say, 2,500 (a conservative estimate, as USD 60 = 2,880) = Php 17,500,000,000.00. Yes, Activision sold through 17 AND A HALF BILLION PESOS worth of Modern Warfare 2 on launch. WHAT THE FUCK, BUDDY? You could build a gigantic Philippine shopping complex with that kinda cash, right? I wonder what the final sales numbers are going to be.

Anyway, back to the game. My progress through the single player campaign has been slow, as I’m playing through on Veteran (forcing me to inch my way through the levels instead of blasting through Schwarzenegger style), but I’m done with a little more than 2/3 of the campaign and what I’ve seen has left me very impressed. Not as impressed as I was during my first playthrough of Uncharted 2, but it’s still fantastic. As always, the game’s plot makes little to no sense... but Infinity Ward is so good at getting you into that gung-ho army man mood that you don’t really care, and just roll with the atmosphere. Oorah!

That snowmobile segment just doesn't stop being fun.

Also, the Spec Ops mode is a very much appreciated addition to this year’s entry. Aside from the spectacular co-op multiplayer aspect (with 30 FPS splitscreen!), Spec Ops serves as a kind of de facto Arcade Mode, where you can shoot some dudes and have some fun without bothering with story; if you’ve played the arcade mode of TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (PS2, by now-defunct Free Radical Software) it works in exactly the same way. It’s challenging fun to work towards getting all 69 stars, and boosts the offline play value of this game considerably.

Filling fools with lead - never gets old.

Online has also been greatly improved: yeah, it still is, technically speaking, the same old shit from last time, but the maps are more visually varied, are better designed than the ones from Modern Warfare 1 (and especially World at War), and the game basically gives you awards and experience for everything you do now (even more so than the first game). They’ve also stolen the player card system from Street Fighter IV, which adds yet another thing to collect and obsess over. Another big plus: server disconnects have been made a thing of the past, as if your host encounters a problem MW2 pauses the game and migrates to a new one, with all aspects of the game (location, status, kills, streaks) retained in full. There’s plenty of stuff to unlock as expected (modes, weapon upgrades etc.) so you always feel like you’re being rewarded even if you just play a game or two. Speaking of playing a game or two, MW2 still has that dag-blasted “just one more game” element that will keep you up into the early hours of the morning. Again. So if you have important stuff to do, it’s probably a good idea to keep this on the back burner until you’re finished.

One thing I wish they would fix though is adjusting the rotation of maps depending on the number of players in the game session. For example, if you’re playing free for all with, say, six players, they should remove big, sprawling maps like Estate from the playlist because you end up having to run around for long periods of time looking for somebody to shoot, and you can’t just log out of the match because A) it’ll count as a loss and B) you’ll look like a quitting jerk even though you’re leaving for a legitimate reason. Small gripe though, no biggie.

No comments:

Post a Comment