1 Minute Review : Modern Warfare 2

A few years ago the FPS genre was really stale as all we were getting were world war 2 shooters however there was one developer who decided to try something different and set everything in a modern day time, that game was Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare and it turned out to be one of the best FPS games ever, flashforward to now and we have a sequel to that fantastic game so can it live up to its big brother.

Single Player
Now I'm not going to blab on about the storyline as this is the Call of Duty games weak point but i will say that the game is set 5 years after the events of Modern Warfare and very little as changed so much so you could copy and paste the storyline from Modern Warfare and just stick it in this game as they are very much the same.

As i said the storyline isn't it's strong point however what the Call of Duty games do best is its set pieces and we have a shed load of them here.
Kicking off after the first basic normal mission we are thrown straight into a icy tundra where you are given the task of infiltrating a base before escaping on snowmobiles in an all out chase sequence, it's not just arctic bases we have to contend with there are shoot outs in a shanty town, infiltrating a submarine with an interesting twist to it, trying to stay alive in an airfield while both sets of enemies are trying to kill each other and finally an epic over the top fire fight on American soil.

Like I've said there is a lot of interesting mission here with some fantastic set pieces however these are knitted together with some of the weakest strands of a storyline that it feels like you are playing a collection of set pieces and not through a storyline.

Multi Player
Like with COD4, Modern Warfare 2 strong point is it's multi player and we have so much to deal with it's a bit of an over kill.
First off we have the usual game modes from team deathmatch to headquarters and search and destroy but we have a few new additions like capture the flag and even a 3rd person mode where we can play all of the standard multi player stuff only this time we can see our character.

It's not the game modes that will that will cause your brain to melt it's the amount of customization that you have at your finger tips instead of them going for the much more easier approach like they have done they have given us so much that it boards on the insane.
The amount of challenges have been increased so much so that ever weapon, add-on etc has it's own challenge for us to earn XP.
It's not just the challenges that have increased there are much more weapons, attachments, perks and even kill streaks have be pumped up so much so you have over 15 to choose from instead of you using the standard few that COD4 gave us.

Now if you think that multi player ends with the standard fair your wrong as ever game these days have to have some king of extra co-op attachment and Modern Warfare 2 is no exception.
You and a friend can challenge yourselves with a selection of hand picked mission that will see you controlling an AC130 helping out your friend to get to en extraction point, to having a race on snowmobiles down to the standard killing wave after wave of enemies.

Overall
The single player side of Modern Warfare is full of fantastic set pieces and some really nice graphics however it's not a very long campaign and the storyline is so weak even a 5 year old could of wrote it, this is not to say that the campaign is bad it's not but so much could of been done with it oh and as you have noticed not once did i mention that there is one scene that can be a bit controversial the reason is the fact that the game just doesn't live up to it and it ends of shooting it's political load to quickly.

The multi player is the part that will bring people back to MW2 again and again however with the amount of challenges and extras it can cause a little bit of confusion and make you wonder what was wrong with how COD4 did the multi player.
There is one big thing that has not been fixed with multi player and will never be fixed is how stupid other people can be thus making it feel just like another FPS game.

Modern Warfare 2 is a really really great game however i was expecting a little more and i didn't think i would hate the multi player as quickly as i have, i know it will grow on me over time and that will show how well it can be but for now it just feels like the same thing from COD 4.

The biggest saving grace is SPEC-Ops mode and i hope that they release extra content for it as it would be a shame if they forget something that really does lift the game a little.

Rating
+ Fantastic set pieces in the single player mode
+ Graphics are the best in any COD game
+ Spec Ops is a brilliant addition to the Multi Player side
+ Multi Player can become addicted
- The single player storyline is very thin
- Single player campaign is very short
- Multi player can be frustrating because of the usual idiots
- To many challenges makes it a bit complicated
Score = 92%