Unconventional Updates

Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.

First up I’d like to talk about Special Ops. Special Ops adds a whole new dimension to the game. If there was anything wrong with Call of Duty 4 then it would have to be the unbelievably short campaign, and Modern Warfare 2 continues this trend. That said, the campaign is anything but bad. I would guess that the reason for the length would be the amount of time they took up paying attention to each detail because just like CoD4, each level is brilliantly crafted and designed to be immersive. The voice acting is great, the dialogue isn’t cheesy, the story is engaging and it retains that filmlike quality. But it eventually ends, which is where Special Ops comes in. Whilst Special Ops was considered more an extra, I see it as where the game really is. Special Ops contains a load of extra missions for you to complete on your own or with a friend and it really adds to the replayability factor of the game, making it less of a game played only for its multiplayer value.

Within Special Ops there are a variety of game modes. One of which stretches the whole FPS genre slightly with a race. Racing snowmobiles to be exact, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. It is by no means a polished competitor to specialised racing games, rather it is a simple matter of accelerate, brake and reverse. It is more akin to go-kart racing that racing racing. Which in my opinion where the fun really is. Other modes involve the simple task of releasing that murderer we all have within us and just killing wave after wave of enemies. Or sneaking past enemy lines without being detected. And of course the dreaded escort missions. Why any developer thinks escort missions are a good idea is completely beyond me, they are freaking irritating.

As for general gameplay, several tweaks have been made to the overall feel of combat. A graphically realistic yet irritating and scientifically unsound watered down blood effect is used when hurt, replacing the old red around the sides look of CoD4 and 5. As Sandmonkey said at the time “Why would you have blood on your eyes?”, a good question, and why does it fade? Personally, I find it very annoying as it distorts your field of view, which makes it very difficult when surrounded on a hard level when your vision is constantly blurred. On a good note, Last Stand has been replaced with Final Stand, which varies from gametype to gametype. In Co-op, you first collapse and you are given a pistol to shoot bad guys whilst crawling around. This lasts until you’re shot again, at which time you lose the pistol and you crawl around very slowly waiting to be revived by your partner. You cannot die in Special Ops unless both participants are in final stand or the one in final stand is left for two minutes to bleed on the ground. In head-to-head game types final stand involves collapsing and crawling as usual, but you can use your primary weapon to fend off attackers, albeit with very slow aiming. If you survive in this state for a certain amount of time, you just get back up and resume fighting rather than dying. I think this is a good upgrade. The addition of crawling and the use of a weapon other than a pistol that you probably didn’t have two seconds ago actually makes the last stand make more sense, at least to me anyway.

If you have a (real) console or a PC then you would be stupid to buy another game over this one. If you are a PC user you should know about the lack of dedicated servers which means you will be the victims of some really really painful connections. Oh and you’re capped at 8 vs 8, which is nice. But still, the rest makes it worth it.

Renegade

As many of you are already aware, I am eagerly awaiting this game. Almost as much as the Halo fanboys anxiously awaited Halo 3. New footage at the E3 presentation doesn’t show anything particularly new. The footage starts off with the main character climbing up a wall of ice and into an enemy base. Halfway up the character reaches a platform and we see that his ice-picks can be used as weapons, suggestive that like Left 4 Dead, Modern Warfare will have melee weapons.

The presentation also shows how the on screen radar has been moved to the weapon for more realism, which is always good. Although the best part of the presentation was the last half. The awesome part where you get to drive vehicles and shoot. Then again, saying all that, I’ve got to that too me the game doesn’t look all too different from the first instalment. This isn’t a bad thing in anyway considering how epic the first instalment was. Anyway, watch the presentation and make your own mind up.

 
I watched the Modern Warfare II trailer again today. And then I watched it again. And I thought about how awesome Call of Duty 4 was, and since Infinity Ward are doing it again this year there is a big chance this will be even more awesome. But there it one problem. I think they may have caught Bungie-itus.

Bungie-itus is something I’ve diagnosed and it is derived from Bungie’s own antics. Where they have amassed such a massive mindless fanbase that they know that they can generate mass hype from releasing a 20 second video. Bungie took it all the way for their first teaser for Halo 3:ODST. They first of all generated hype at E3 2008 for a new sneak peek at their upcoming game, only to be suddenly cancelled last minute by Microsoft to the disappointment of millions of Halo fanboys. Then about a month after E3 they release a 24-hour countdown on their website. “Counting down to what?” says the world. And what are all of those cryptic messages? Keep it clean? What’s that all about? Then at the end of it, we can all download a 70MB video that shows us approximately 15 seconds of nothing. But still, somehow, people are so hyped they could explode.

I saw this trailer, along with the last one, and I can see an aspect of bungie-itus in it. All I see in the trailer is Call of Duty 4…but with vehicles. Not that they aren’t about 6 years late for that. There were vehicles in war games back in Battlefield 1942, its nothing too revolutionary. But this trailer does not get me any more hyped for the game. Only annoyed that they wasted my time with something that as far as I could see could have come straight out of CoD4. There wasn’t even any actual gameplay footage behind the gun.

I think Infinity Ward have realised that teasing the fans is the way to go, instead of actually showing them what their game can actually do. I hope other developers don’t follow Bungie’s example.

Renegade