Disclaimer: This game was provided by Activision Blizzard.

Talk about nostalgic.  The first Modern Warfare was one of the earliest games I ever reviewed and remains among my top five reviewed games to date.   Infinity Ward had huge shoes to fill, so let’s see how the long-anticipated sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare holds up.

Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision Blizzard
Genre: First person shooter
Console(s): Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii, Nintendo DS

The verdict: Infinity Ward has refined and polished their Modern Warfare formula to a shine, easily making it one of the best games of the year and one of the best shooters of this generation.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare set records, redefined multiplayer for the Call of Duty series, and signified a shift away from the well-trodden WWII timeframe.  Naturally when Modern Warfare 2 was announced the bar was set extremely high as shooter fans were eager to see what Infinity Ward could possibly do to top their previous opus.  Rather than attempt to reinvent the game for the sake of originality, Infinity Ward took what worked so well in their first game and fine tuned it and polished it.  Single player is more diverse and multiplayer is more balanced and offers even more rewards than its predecessor did.  As a result, Modern Warfare 2 is an absolute must-have for any shooter or online fan.

Five years later…

The single player campaign takes place five years after the events of the first game.  Although the SAS and Marines defeated Imran Zakhaev, his Ultranationalist party has seized control of Russia, and his former protégé Vladimir Makarov has taken the reins left by his leader.  When Makarov dupes the international community into believing the United States was responsible for a terrorist act in a Russian airport, all hell breaks loose as Russian forces invade Washington D.C.  As the Army Rangers race to defend the nation’s capitol, the elite counterterrorism unit Task Force 141 under Captain “Soap” MacTavish must find evidence linking Makarov to the crime.

Snowmobiles, sniping, and good old fashioned gunfights
Modern Warfare 2 takes the same intuitive and easy-to-master controls from the first game, gives them a few updates, and adapts them to a litany of new situations and locales.  Infinity Ward has worked an amazing number of different situations into this game and they all feel polished.  One level will have you tearing through guerrilla fighter resistance in South America to capture a target, while another will have you crawling around a Russian base in snow-covered Kazakhstan using your camouflage to hide as you stealthily pick off Russian patrols with your sniper rifle.  There’s a frantic snowmobile chase to get to an extraction point and a harrowing race through a decrepit prison while you use a riot shield to protect yourself from constant machine gun fire.  The game transitions seamlessly between stealthy infiltration gameplay and all out war between your Army Rangers unit and Russians attempting to drive you out of Washington D.C.  As a result Modern Warfare 2 never lets you get bored, and you’ll find yourself eagerly anticipating what type of challenge you’ll have next.

Certain elements go a long way in making the campaign feel dynamic, such as having more than one way to survive particular scenarios.  This is especially apparent in the Washington D.C. levels, where you’ll need to liberate suburban houses from dug-in Russians.  Will you run in through the front door with guns blazing, or will you try to undercut the Russians by sneaking in through the garage?  You’ll also have some high-tech backup; in one of the D.C. levels you’ll guide and protect an armored assault vehicle and you’ll be able to signal where you want it to fire and subsequently watch the machinegun decimate any hapless enemies in the area.  There’s also a guided Predator drone missile that can be navigated from the air to target a desired area; it’s immeasurably satisfying to see smoke rise through the air when you lower the predator computer after hitting your targets.

The only real issue to be had with the campaign is that at certain points the difficulty curve skyrockets.  Usually you’ll be able to move along without problems as long as you don’t try and circle strafe around a wide open area, but a few specific moments feature a lot of hidden enemies that will target you and only you the moment you stand up to try and fire.  This only happens a few times throughout the campaign, but when it did I usually died five or six times before finally clearing through the kill zone.

Scripted events are also present in Modern Warfare 2, and they’re as harrowing as they were in the first game…the first few times.  Modern Warfare 2 uses them a little too excessively; it’s cool the first time Roach falls to the ground and slowly recovers from an explosion, but when it happens several times it just starts getting intrusive.  Even with moments like this the game is also extremely short; you’ll be able to finish it in less than five hours, and there’s no reason to play it again unless you want to try out a harder difficulty setting.  Admittedly the ending is a truly epic finale, but it just felt like it ended too soon.

Mission accepted

Fortunately, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Special Ops mode, which is a cooperative mode featuring mission-based gameplay.  Most of these missions can be played alone or with a friend either locally or online, and there’s great variety in mission objectives.  Different scenarios range from holding off waves of enemies to searching areas and eliminating enemies while not shooting civilians.  You get stars based on how well you do on the missions (such as completion time or how many civilians got caught in your crossfire) and what the difficulty was.  More stars will let you unlock more missions.  Special Ops is a ton of fun whether you’re alone or playing with a friend, and adds up to several more hours of gameplay.

Controversy in a videogame?

Let’s take a brief intermission to discuss the infamous “No Russian” mission that set off the controversy bells everywhere.  For the uninitiated there’s a mission where you and several Russian terrorists move slowly through an airport gunning down every civilian you see, as well as a number of police and SWAT officers.  This feels like reaching for the low hanging fruit, but all things considered this isn’t that bad in terms of controversy.  You have the option of skipping it, you don’t have to attack any civilians and just hang back, and you’re an undercover American operative.  It certainly is very shocking, but in a way that really makes you aware that the game stems from the consequences of this grisly mission.  Even if you’re just an observer, it gives you a very in-depth view on what people are capable of.

Searching for matches…

Infinity Ward opted to keep the fundamentals of the revolutionary Call of Duty 4 multiplayer intact, which is perfectly fine.  However, they updated it in a lot of ways that will make Call of Duty 4 fans like me very appreciative. You still gain experience points and level up as you participate in multiplayer game modes, which include Free-for-all, Team Deathmatch, Domination, and many others.  The game also maintains killstreaks, rewards for getting a certain number of kills without dying.   There are a whopping 15 killstreak rewards that can be unlocked and you can customize which three you can use during the game.  Rewards range from a Counter-UAV for four kills to a Harrier Airstrike for seven kills, and you can even be a chopper gunner for 11 kills.  The grand finale is a Tactical Nuke for a 25 kill streak, which automatically ends the game with you as the victor.

Modern Warfare 2 also introduces death streaks, which give you a reward for multiple deaths if you’re having a bad game.  For instance, Painkiller requires three deaths without a kill to trigger and will give you a significant health boost.  The class system has also been beefed up and given some appreciative changes; primary weapons now include basic weapons like assault rifles and machineguns, and something like a shotgun, a sniper rifle, or even an RPG can be used as a secondary weapon.  This offers a lot more versatility in terms of strategy and with a greater variety of perks there is a huge amount of customization available. It’s also much more balanced this time around; Martyrdom has been made into a death streak reward and the infamous Juggernaut is no longer a perk, meaning there’s no “cookie cutter” build 70% of the players will be using.

Even moreso than its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2 also hands out rewards like candy.  You get experience bonuses based on just about anything you can do.  You’ll get a bonus for coming back after a streak of deaths and another bonus for killing a player who was just one kill short of a killstreak.  There are logos and emblems you can unlock for your Modern Warfare 2 profile, and challenges have much higher tiers.  Perks can be upgraded to “Pro” versions by completing their challenge, and this isn’t even everything.  Modern Warfare 2 just keeps giving the more you play, and Infinity Ward has managed to make Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer even more immersive by building on what worked.

Debriefing

Modern Warfare 2 lives up to all the hype that was surrounding it.  Single player, cooperative, and multiplayer are all a blast to partake in and any complaints I’ve made generally don’t hamper the fun you’ll have using predator drones, racing snowmobiles, and calling in your first Harrier airstrike in multiplayer.  Every shooter fan should put Modern Warfare 2 on their holiday wish list if they haven’t done so already.