Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues the great CoD tradition but some decisions by developer Infinity Ward or even publisher Activision are going to mar this game for a long time to come and some fans are not happy.
Ratings:
Graphics & Audio: 24/25,
Gameplay: 18/25,
Creativity 15/25,
Fun 18/25
Total: 75/100
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the PC is a great, almost fantastic game and the single player campaign would be worth buying the game in itself if it was only longer. The accolades stop there as the multiplayer fun is not all the game could have lived up to and is even a big disappointment to some diehard fans of the series.
I’ll first go over the single player campaign and other goodies you can do in the game alone and then get to the ranting and this goes for the PC version of the game. I enjoyed this almost as much as the first Modern Warfare but that game did set the bar quite high so this game had to come up with something even better.
You start off in your usual tutorial mission which is at some unmemorable military base where you shoot at cutouts of bad guys and miss the good little kids and innocent civilians. This, just like the previous Modern Warfare begins to show it is not like other first person shooters as the graphics and even bystanders look great.
Throughout the game you will notice leaves blowing around, snow twinkling in the sunlight, butterflies dancing among flowers and a host of other effects and real world happenings. The game has an intense feel from start to finish in single player, and especially multiplayer gaming but first the campaign and special ops missions.
The campaign is broken down into three acts to keep the chapters of the story straight for 18 total missions which will probably take less than ten hours to run through on medium difficulty. The higher difficulties seem to mean more accurate enemies so your chances of completing objectives is tougher but they don’t seem to add more bad guys or add any other difficulties which is just fine.
Going through the campaign on regular difficulty was hard enough and you have plenty of enemies with their own tricks on all the difficulty settings. Some enemies will play dead after being shot but not killed, others will cover in supposed terror only to open up when you have dismissed them and not taken them out.
I could go on but the AI is not a problem and you have plenty of variety in how characters in the game react and behave so they did a great job of continuing the great game from the previous with very good AI behavior. Your teammates are also a great help at times but they can also be somewhat of a burden as some missions just beg you to go off by yourself and they often attract more attention than you may want.
The higher difficulties mean more accurate AI which equates to going from guys shooting in your general direction to sharpshooters aiming at your head or chest every time. On the hardest difficulty setting, Veteran, this seems like the full time treatment but you do get the idea that there is some variation while playing.
On the higher difficulty you will spend more time choosing options and retrying tactics so it will of course take longer to complete and on the lowest difficulty, recruit, it will take even less time for average players. Modern Warfare 2 is a great playing game but the story and the plot of the missions at times leaves something to be desired.
I found the plot easy enough to follow, global war ending with betrayal, even though it is convoluted and skips around some but it does not make for a very good plotline for a first person shooter. I would have preferred they stay more on target with you having to accomplish goals across several battlefields much more like Modern Warfare and not add in missions like the airport killings or the two fast paced chase scenes.
While they did add the snowmobile scene and the white water rafting one for added fun and variety these just seemed a bit out of character for a first person shooter and more like part of an action adventure game. The airport killing scene is probably one you have heard but I will add my two cents as well, you play an undercover CIA agent trying to infiltrate a terrorist group and kill a bunch of civilians.
This is not that big a deal and for gamers just means more gunning to get to the end of the mission and not any real ethical dilemma. I think anyone making more of it other than a game should not worry so much, they do ask you when you start the campaign if you want to skip it even.
The single player campaign is fun and looks great with superb graphics and very realistic effects bordering on true life at times. Of course it’s a game and you can see that but there are things they have added, the aforementioned butterflies, birds, leaves and so much more that add to the realism.
It’s not really one texture, or color or thing in general but the entire look that gives the feel of realism that makes the game just fantastic graphically. Some effects could have been done better but some scenes just look fantastic and you want to admire them but often you just don’t have the time.
Audio is also very well done with very realistic sounds from the bullets hitting steel and going through to the little things like the crunch of snow as a trooper walks by while you crouch in a bush hoping you remain unseen. The games audio is again at a par with the previous Modern Warfare and so well done it is hard to find fault with either graphics or sound.
The campaign is fun and like I said well worth buying the game for if it cost a little less but we also have a set of missions called Special Ops. You have several missions where your objectives are set like stopping waves of enemies or protecting a man on the ground from an AC-130 gunship.
Some of the Special Ops missions require a second person so this is partly a coop player game but you can play more than half alone. When you get some of the first five missions accomplished on any of the difficulty settings this will unlock the next five for a total of 25 missions.
You’ll have three different difficulty levels for each of these and this adds some fun and added gameplay value but not enough to make this and the single player campaign worth the cost of this new release. The campaign with the Special Ops mode make for a fun time but this will probably pale after a few days of running and gunning so we will now look at the very mixed bag of the online multiplayer with a little in depth look at the technical aspects of the game.
The PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 was developed just like the console versions without any difference other than mouse support and a few other minor differences. Game servers are run from the host computer and not dedicated servers so there are huge differences in this game and its previous release.
Where this is important is understanding what a server and dedicated servers are and how it affects gameplay; a server is usually a dedicated computer that hosts a game and is the main system that people play through. For years servers were run by companies who develop games and also by groups who wish to charge members to be part of their group and host their own games.
These groups are usually called clans and rent dedicated server space from companies but the clans usually have their own computer server, they just rent the computer line to the company for the game. Of course your computer is also running the game but everyone else playing on any particular match would connect to this one computer that is solely for hosting the game.
Dedicated servers mean a computer with known good connection speeds and dedicated to hosting the game will be in charge of the gaming for that session but that’s not how Modern Warfare 2 works. When you connect to a game for multiplayer your game looks for others out on the internet through servers at Infinity Ward and connects to them to collect from the minimum to the maximum of players to start a game.
Once your game has found others they start comparing and find out who has the best connection or what is called lowest ping and that player becomes the host. It does not matter where in the world you are or how good a computer you have, what matters is how well your computer is connected with others at that time.
Ping is a slippery thing and matters on a lot more than just your computer; your internet service provider matters more and other factors like how your provider connects to the rest of the internet makes a lot of difference. So we have anyone from a guy down the block playing the game to someone on the other side of the world who could be hosting or running any particular multiplayer game in Modern Warfare 2.
Where this really counts is the fact that if that host drops out for any reason, he leaves for a date or to answer the phone or his router or internet service provider hiccups and drops his connection the game pauses. According to Infinity Ward the game should resume in five seconds after a pause to find a new host but in practice this will take a minimum of fifteen seconds at the very least.
All the other gamers computers who are not hosts would detect that they lost the host and correspond with each other to find a new host and compare pings then go into a five second pause to set that host up. This means a few seconds for the computers to talk to each other and decide who is going to be host while you watch a brown screen where a few seconds ago you were shooting it out with others.
After the pause and a new host is chosen the game will start up right where it left off and your back to gaming but this happens more often than I would have imagined. In practice this whole hosting from anyone’s computer is a bad idea and not one that is going to sit well with PC owners of the game.
I figure while playing Modern Warfare 2 for this review I lost the host about once every six games and a few times lost the connection myself completely to have to start finding a new game again. Connection problems abound here and I found I spent just as much time finding games as playing them because often for some reason the game would not continue with a new one when one would end but send everyone back to the multiplayer page to find a new game.
To connect to a game it will take longer and that is without problems from the Infinity Ward Network that starts the connections because I know I have had problems and had to wait just to start the multiplayer gaming. Others have also complained about having to wait as long as ten minutes to connect to the Infinity Ward Network before being able to play online.
Add to this the host dropping out in the middle of a game, I’ve had three in one ten minute game, as well as not having any choice in finding games near you or with particular aspects like lower ping or larger clans. That brings up another problem that Infinity Ward chose to not deal with by using this individually hosted system, the games are limited to 18 players maximum so that means you’re playing with a maximum of 9 players on a side.
The multiplayer gaming felt more like a gang who got together to shoot it out on the streets of a city than warfare with armies or platoons of soldiers. I like the feeling of open warfare and having the ability to snipe from cover as well as shooting it out with squads of people and not just a squad and a small squad at that.
The multiplayer is fun, don’t get me wrong, when you can connect and not have the host go bye bye it is fantastic but the main problem here is if and when. If you get connected quickly and get into a game quickly and when no one decides to leave who is also hosting the game the multiplayer is great.
Graphics are wonderful and gaming is just fantastic with realistic audio as well as effects and ballistics that are just the start. Being able to shoot through corrugated sheet metal to hit the guy you just saw turn into that building means cover is harder to find.
The game has very well laid out maps for smaller multiplayer gaming but smaller is also a keyword here, the games are small and I would have preferred a bigger map with more players as well as the smaller ones. You have a great variety of game types from the common deathmatch and capture the flag to new types with bombs in play and many more.
Modern Warfare also has the rank system that rewards players who are good or just persistent to stay in the game and level up with more game types, more weapons and other perks. You have perks like faster reloading, faster sprint or even unlimited sprint you can give to character load outs for truly customizable gameplay.
There is a lot here for multiplayer gaming and it would have all been more than worthwhile if the developer had just stuck with dedicated servers but as it is anyone interested in hard core multiplayer gaming with Modern Warfare 2 is out of luck. I can see tournaments and other events not having near the appeal as they did with other games as long as they are hosted through the regular games system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is truly a mixed bag with some serious but short single player gaming and some mix and match multiplayer fun. If you’re serious about clan play and online multiplayer gaming this is one game that will have to change before people take it seriously.
On the other hand Modern Warfare does include enough that it has done very well in sales and will continue to hold enough attention that gamers will have something to hold onto until the next release. Time will only tell if the next iteration of Call of Duty will cater to the company making a profit and keeping console owners happier or if PC gamers will get their wish of dedicated servers.