Reviews for Five Bucks - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

You know something? I love the Call of Duty Franchise. It's not a stretch for me to say that it's one of my favorite FPS franchises ever. And the first Modern Warfare gave me an FPS Boner. So much so, that I refused to accept World at War as a Call of Duty game. "We've moved past WWII! WaW is just a fucking Modern Warfare Clone!" I kept saying. But hey, I picked it up anyway and played the hell outta that game. It set yet another bar to be topped by the next game.

So when I heard about Modern Warfare 2 a year ago, you can see how I expected great things from the game. And you know what? It delivered! ... at first.


The Story

Okay, so the basic story behind Modern Warfare 2 is that Five Years after (Do companies have fetishes for Odd-Numbered Time spans?) the events of the first Modern Warfare, shit has gotten bad. I mean really bad. The badguys you fought last time? Yeah, they're running Russia now. Zakiev? The dude you killed in 'All Ghillied Up'? Yeah, he's a national hero to the Russkies. And guess what? It sucks. I dunno HOW that happened, but the plot demands it, so who am I to question the (il)logic of the plot? Oh yeah.

Not only can this Mutha Fucka survive a bullet to the fucking HEART, but he gets a statue to boot!

You're an Army Ranger at first, which is a nice change from the previous installment where you started off as the Fuckin' New Guy in the SAS. Here you go through the tutorial missions and - Okay, you know what? Fuck it.

This story sucks. It sucks BALLS. Now, granted, it DOES have that grand, overthetop, action-movie feel. But that's the problem! The first Modern Warfare had a simple story; Russian Terrorists want to nuke the bastards in the West and Joint Operations between the Americans, Soap MacTavish, and Captain "Badass" Price. It feels like a movie that could actually happen. Everything was secretive, and covered up later on in between missions through clever news bulletins. This new one.... It's just so wrong.

Don't get me wrong here, I enjoyed the story my first time through. There were plenty of References I got and enjoyed thoroughly, especially the mission "Wolverines!", where the Russian Army invades US Soil.

And we don't nuke 'em.

Let's just point out all of the plot holes in this thing the devs called a story.

1. A lone American is found dead, at the scene of a massacre in Russia where he participated in shooting innocent civilians. This means that it was America behind the WHOOOOLE THING! Wait, what?
2. The Ultra-Nationalists that were lead by Zakiev have taken control over Russia, despite having lost the war in the first Modern Warfare.
3. The Russian Military launches a military invasion on US Soil, which pushes the US forces back onto the defensive.
4. Before that, those Commie Bastards hijacked our Satellites and used them against us (Where's Jeff Goldblum when you need 'im?)
5. Price, who we saw die in the first game, comes back (Much to my excitement and pleasure)
6. The entire war was started by a US General who lost 30,000 men in the first game due to the Nuclear Explosion in the Middle East. Why did he start the war? He started it to make people Patriotic enough to fight, so that he could... start a war? The hell?
7. Price's brilliant decision to end the fighting in the US is to launch a Nuke, or at least an EMP bomb.

Need I say more?

Okay, so maybe I'm focusing a little too much on the bad this time around. The game IS fun the first go-around, like I said, but after that, the Story isn't as captivating as it was. Which I think is it's major flaw. And it DOES have it's cool moments in the story. Example; the entire Russian Invasion - while idiotic - is absolutely awesome to play through. It does have it's annoying moments, but for the most part, it's my favorite section of the story. It's well told despite it's stupidity. They kind of made it believable, in a way.


The Gameplay

"Point and Shoot" is the main idea of any FPS game. This one is no different. Hooray! Nothing new!

Actually, yeah, there is some new things this time around. The singleplayer is still the same thing as usual for the most part, but the multiplayer is something else entirely. The kill streaks are updated, where you get more than just UAV, Airstrike, and Helicopter streaks. Now you get plenty to choose from, and I DO mean choose from. They even give you a Nuke to use if you get 25 Kills in a row. It's an interesting change, and almost welcome.

I say almost because one thing an FPS should always be in Multiplayer is balanced. Now, the first MW got away with the Create-a-Class because it was new. It made the game imbalanced, but not as much as these Kill Streaks. Everyone got the same kill streaks, everyone had the same weapons, and were allowed to pick between perks. These perks were the same no matter who used 'em. A guy with Juggernaut had the same Health as the newbie with the same perk. Despite being imbalanced, the imbalances actually balanced out to put everyone on a relatively equal footing.

Not so in this game. Part of the new features, while still cool and a bit on the RPG side (Who's complaining? I love RPGs), besides the mutiple kill streaks that you can customize, are Perks that level up. Say, for instance, you have the Commando perk, right? The guy next to you probably has Commando too. The problem is, you have Commando, he has "Commando: Pro". He gets an extra bonus to his Commando perk. It's a cool idea in theory, and a welcome one!... In theory. In practice, it's a pain in the ass.

The hilarious thing is that despite the odds being stacked in the favor of you dying (They even give you fucking DEATHSTREAKS, as if to say, "Hey, you're fucking terrible at this game. Let's help you out a bit!") it's remarkably easy to get kills in this game. I, myself, am okay at the game. I usually end up with more Kills than deaths in any Online FPS, but I swear, I end almost every game with at most, at most, 1 more kill than I do deaths.

Expect to see this. A lot.

On the opposite side of multiplayer is the singleplayer game. One thing this game does to change it up is add both Vehicle Segments to the missions similar to the AC-130 mission from the previous installment of the game and even two or three where you're actually controlling where the vehicle goes. It's a fresh breath for the MW series, even if it's been done in other Call of Duty games. But that's still not what I liked about the singleplayer game.

This game actually focuses a bit more on stealth at times, specifically in two missions. One of which is your now-standard-sniping mission that we had in All Ghillied Up, only this time in Snow and not near as hard. The other has you sneaking around an enemy base without alerting any soldiers (You don't HAVE to, but it's damn near impossible to just slug your way through the base without sneaking at all on the harder difficulties). They're a lot of fun and have interesting gameplay elements that are included in the multiplayer, like the Heartbeat Sensor (which is a lifesaver for Snipers everywhere).

Glitches and bugs still plague the game, though. Multiplayer is riddled with people who're ready and willing to exploit any glitch and any trick-jump to gain the advantage, furthering their obsessive need to have the best Kill/Death ratio in existence. Seriously, nobody is interested in just having fun anymore with these games, and it's fucking annoying! Half of everyone I've ever encountered online are Snobbish, Elitist gamers who believe that the only thing worth doing in the game is killing everything and ignoring the "Team" part of "Team Deathmatch". They all think they're fucking Rambo and end up getting killed way too fucking early in the game.

omg fukkin haeturz!

Just stop. It's sad. It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

And don't even get me started on how lazy it is to just put in missions from the game and make them "Special Ops Mode" is just insulting. It's fun, but it's fucking insulting at how fucking lazy it is.


The Graphics

I wasn't blown away by these graphics. They were on the same level as the first Modern Warfare, which was damn good, but I didn't see anything really spectacular that got my attention like the first one did. In fact, I was MUCH more impressed by Red Faction than I was with this game!

It's still photo-realistic, It's still damn good, the sound is still pretty good (With the exception of a few of the guns), and it's just STILL THE SAME. If you came all over your tighty whities because of the first Modern Warfare, then this'll get a less-enthusiastic-but-still-satisfying feeling from you. Though why you'd have THAT reaction to a fucking video game instead of, say, this

Every Nerd's Dream

Is beyond me

All in all, Call of Duty: Modern Wafare 2 feels like a rehashing of the original game. It's story is SHIT, the Multiplayer is broken as HELL, the Spec Ops mode is a fun distraction that's lazy, and it's just... Mediocre. The Fan Boys are gonna flame and the haters are gonna love me for the negativity. But I'm in the middle here. I WANTED to love this game. I WANTED to be a Fanboy. But with how high the bar's been set by Both COD4 and World at War, this game just falls way too short. I give it a 6 out of 10 (6/10).