Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Redux
A week or so ago I made a Facebook update stating that I’d completed the much talked about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and that I was rather dissappointed with it. To quote “Just completed MW2. Took me 5.3 hours. Value for money? I think not.”
Well, it seemed to provoke something of a strong defensive reaction from those that liked the game. So now that I’ve had time to mull things over and play some of the Spec Ops and multiplayer, I thought it was about time I more fully explained my thoughts.
The first thing to note is I played the PC version of the game so all my opinions are based on that experience. This is probably in contrast to the vast majority of people that played the game (or at least those that actually bought it). Nevertheless, I think a fair number of my comments will still stand up for the console versions as well.
Also, I’m not going to explain anything about the game. There are millions of reviews and blogs that have already done that. If you don’t know what it is, go read elsewhere.
The crux of my disappointment, then, is that while Call Of Duty is now largely considered a multiplayer game, reviews I’d read before buying it said the single player was so good it was worth buying just for that (all the talk of PC multiplayer being nobbled didn’t really bother me as I had no particular intention of doing a lot of MP gaming). However, I found this to be far from the case. Thus why I was so peeved.
What didn’t I like about the single player campaign? Well, pretty much everything. For a start, the story was utter horse shit. Utterly unconvincing, unengaging, and generic. Oh sure, there was enough going on to give the action a setting and it certainly kept you guessing but within a few missions I’d pretty much given up caring and was just mindlessly moving from one level to the next. Well, apart from THAT level, which was merely a despicable piece of calculated marketing; ‘hey, you know how all those games that get band get loads of press coverage? Well why don’t we do a scene that get’s everyone talking in the same way? Instant free advertising!’ Note, not compelling story telling.
One of the reasons the story fell so flat on its face was the fact that so many of the characters you play die. How the hell am I supposed to care about the people I’m playing if I only get to do three missions with them before they die? Of course, you can see why Infinity Ward (IW) did it. One of the most memorable sections of the first Modern Warfare was your character being killed in a nuclear explosion. It was a truly epic moment. So IW simply had to throw in a similar set piece in the new game. Unfortunately, not only did it feel a bit old the first time (because the first game had already tried that one) by the time it happens a second time you’re postitively sick of the trick. As Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame so eloquently puts it. “It’s a rather a dim attempt to capture the same shock and awe, and that’s the thing about shock, once you’re doing it every five minutes, it just stops being special”
There’s plenty of other topics I could touch on, like the ridiculous ease of the game and it’s linearity but I can’t be bothered, frankly. No, my final complaint is that of the length of the game. Five point three hours! WTF! That’s without rushing, playing the game for the first time on normal difficulty. That is unacceptable for a full price game. Were the game based on a brand new graphics engine, or if it introduced some significant new game mechanic (and, of course, if the story were more compelling) then maybe I could accept it but this is a game that is essentially just MW1 with a bit of spit and polish and a new single player campaign. For that campaign to be so short just doesn’t stack up for me.
Okay, so that’s why I got narked.
Having played some of the Spec Ops and some multiplayer, I accept that these are fun and if you were to play a lot of the latter then you get your money’s worth but, personally I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect there to be a modicum of value based on the single player alone.