PLATFORM: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (version reviewed)
DEVELOPER: Infinity Ward
PUBLISHER: Activision

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a radical game. I don’t only mean that in the yoof-speak sense, I also mean that in the big-boy revolutionary sense. Here was a game that took the established Call of Duty framework and gave it a complete overhaul, giving the series a new time setting, a new graphics engine, a good story and a new rewards system for its multiplayer mode. In short, CoD 4 was, and still is, a great first person shooter. Now, Infinity Ward have released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (their de-emphasis, not mine), which definitely delivers on the title’s promise of being ‘one more’ than the last one.

Infinity Ward has done very little to the game engine. Apart from the occasional graphical tweak and the introduction of new weapons like the riot shield and weapon modifications like the Heartbeat Sensor, Modern Warfare 2 handles nearly identically to its predecessor – which is to say it plays brilliantly. It still delivers the prettiest war porn current-generation plastic can provide, the controls are still pitch perfect (even on the console versions) and the gaming experience is still visceral and meaty. It’s mildly disappointing that very little has changed since the first Modern Warfare game, but as lazy writers are wont to write, ‘why fix what ain’t broke?’ Ultimately, the Modern Warfare 2 engine exists to serve as a platform for interactive warfare, perhaps set in the modern era, and it does this in three areas.

Look at all the Modern (Picture: Infinity Ward)

The single player campaign takes the story from the CoD 4, adds five years and a whole bucket of crazy. Relations are tense between America and Russia, to the point where one incident sparks an invasion of America by the Russian army. Like past Call of Duty games, you’ll be fighting the war on two fronts: in the multinational Task Force 141, headed up by ‘Soap’ McTavish from the first Modern Warfare game, and in the US Marines. Now, before I go on, I should state that the campaign is a great experience; it often replicates the tight scripting and action that helped make the CoD 4 campaign so memorable, not to mention everything else that comes with the game engine.

However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the single player campaign in Modern Warfare 2 isn’t as satisfying as CoD 4’s campaign. That game set a really high benchmark that this one just can’t reach, no matter how hard it tries.

Part of this has to do with the level design. Past Call of Duty games have managed to hide the fact that they’re essentially linear hallway shooters set in partially open worlds, where the aim is to pass an invisible trigger point to progress further into the mission. This time around, Infinity Ward hasn’t done such a great job in level design. Too often, there are missions where enemies will endlessly swarm around you until you pass some arbitrary trigger point. I’m sure they were going for ‘intense’ but all I got was ‘frustration’ from the swarming enemies and seemingly random checkpoints.

But what feels most off about the Modern Warfare 2 is the story. CoD 4’s story was well told: It had some memorable characters (which is quite a feat for any video game, let alone an action one) and it managed to be thrilling whilst still feeling plausible. This time around the story feels a little too batshit crazy to be plausible or even compelling. It feels like it’s trying too hard to replicate the greatness of CoD 4’s story by throwing in even more ‘bombshell’ moments. In some regards, it succeeds; there is one mission set in a Russian airport that is extremely uncomfortable, if not downright disturbing.

But other than these occasional moments, the story feels a little too Tom Clancy for my liking: it’s compelling enough but it’s all rather silly and incomprehensible, which isn’t helped by the grand leaps in logic and plot holes larger than the US military’s budget. And don’t get me started on the horrible twist at the end, which would have M. Night Shyamalan throwing popcorn at his screen in confusion, frustration and mild jealousy.

War. War never changes. (Picture: Giant Bomb)

Of course, if you want to get straight to the shooting without the meddlesome story, then perhaps you would like the Special Ops mode, a new feature to the Call of Duty series inspired by the ‘Mile High Club’ epilogue from CoD 4. In lieu of a proper co-op campaign mode like in Call of Duty: World at War, Special Ops allows up to two players to partake in a number of scenarios set in the environments from the campaign proper, including snowmobile races, stealth missions and the standard ‘survive x amount of enemies’ mode every modern game seems to be legally required to include.

The most interesting Spec Ops missions are the ones where one player is on the ground like normal while the other is somewhere else helping their partner - for instance, in an AC130 gunship raining black and white death from above in a scenario almost identical to the mission in CoD 4 featuring the same gimmick. These missions are a neat little distraction, a briefly entertaining way to spend a couple of hours with a friend. But really, it’s a sideshow compared to the real star of the game: the multiplayer mode.

Competitive multiplayer is where most people will be spending their time. Like the rest of the game, very little has been done to this already robust mode since CoD 4. The aim is still to shoot down the enemy. There are still the same modes from the original, including the free-form ones like Team Deathmatch and Free For All as well as more objective based ones like Headquarters and Domination, and many more in between. However, the maps are completely new, taking place in slums and construction sites, in the snow and in the middle of the desert. There isn’t a single CoD 4 map to be found – until Activision release them as paid downloadable content.

Ye Olde Warfare Modern...e (Picture: Destructoid)

The character customisation aspect also remains mostly unchanged. You can still create up to five custom classes made up of whatever weapons and perks (bonuses you carry in to battle) you think you’ll need for the various scenarios you’ll face. For close quarters combat you might want to equip an assault rifle, a shotgun and perks, which allow you to reload faster and swing your knife further. Or if you wanted to take out enemies from afar, you might want the class with the sniper rifle with silencer attachment and perks to make you invisible to the enemy radar. It’s up to you. An addition to Modern Warfare 2 is the ability to also customise your kill streaks (rewards for killing enemies without dying). In CoD 4, kill streaks were restricted to a UAV radar (3 kills), an airstrike (5) and an attack chopper (7). In Modern Warfare 2, you can choose three kill streaks to take in to matches, including new ones like the UAV jammer, a supply crate which can contain ammo or a one-use kill streak, an AC130 gunship or, if you get twenty five kills without dying you can unlock the tactical nuke which blows up the whole map and ends the game.

The rewards system has also seen a bit of adjusting. If you think CoD 4 was generous in doling out rewards, Modern Warfare 2 takes that system and...uh...adds one! You’re constantly being rewarded for anything and everything. Use your gun to kill x amount of enemies: Experience points! Use the same gun but with an attachment to kill the same amount of enemies: MOAR POINTS!!! (sic) You’re even rewarded for dying this time around in the form of ‘death streaks’ – perks you’ll only receive after dying a certain amount of times, such as temporarily increased health or the ability to drop a grenade when you die. Even the use of perks is rewarded; use a perk enough and you’re rewarded with the Pro version, which unlocks a complementary bonus on top of the existing one.

It’s this borderline-diabolical rewards system, combined with RPG-like elements on top of a solid-yet-accessible shooter mechanic and well-crafted maps, that makes the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer one of the best online experiences available today. These tweaks and balances have made Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer mode a more rewarding experience than its predecessor’s, especially in the experience points it hands out.

If there’s one fault with the multiplayer mode, it’s how the matchmaking system handles Australian players. The game has a nasty habit of frequently throwing us Australians into American-hosted matches, which can result in some pretty annoying lag. The game does its best to compensate for this, but unless you’re lucky enough to land in an Australian-hosted match (a rare event in my time with the multiplayer), you’re going to have a diminished experience. And although the game does a great job at quickly putting you into a game if you are by yourself, if you are in a small party of fellow players the wait to get in to a match can get agonisingly long.

War! Huh! What is it good for? (Picture: Capsule Computers)

Modern Warfare 2 is one hell of a solid action game. It looks great, it plays better, it’s filled with intense moments and it possesses one of the best multiplayer experiences in current-generation gaming. However, these are exactly the same things that made CoD 4 so great. This mimicking is far from bad – after all, CoD 4 is a great game – but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Infinity Ward tried too hard to produce another CoD 4; and as a result, it’s produced what is unmistakably a safe sequel – Russian airports notwithstanding. Though there is a new game mode and new weapons alongside the standard array of tweaks, balances and whatnot, the gameplay experience is essentially identical between Modern Warfares 1 and 2. Although this could be a good thing – when Modern Warfare 2 tries to one-up its predecessor, like in the story, it doesn’t end too well.

In short, Modern Warfare 2 may be a victim of the impossibly high expectations set by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. If you’ve never played the original, you’re going to have a blast. If, on the other hand, you have played through it, you’re still going to have a blast. Just don’t expect the revolutionary leap forward that CoD 4 delivered; rather, expect an experience that’s ‘one more’ than the last one.

8 out of 10

Second opinion: Liam

Coming into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I didn’t have as high expectations as others. I figured with the gripping and explosive single player campaign and highly entertaining multiplayer of the original, there wasn’t much to be improved upon. While it’s true that a lot of the game remains unchanged, Modern Warfare 2 does manage to deliver an exciting campaign that is unashamedly ‘blockbuster’.

While the plot is full of holes and a lot is left unexplained, it is filled with countless moments of awe and awesome, and never really slows down. It can be incredibly hard to stop playing once you’ve started. I enjoyed the plot, didn’t really find it too crazy to follow, and actually felt motivated to kill the bad guy(s). I would rather this blockbuster experience than one at the movies.

One minor issue I noticed is the developers have, for whatever reason, removed the ability to lean around corners, which was present in the first game. While new toys such as the riot shield provide new strategies, this omitted skill is still sorely missed.

Overall, Modern Warfare 2 is either a fantastic and meaty package or a short-lived thrill ride around the world, depending on whether you chose to focus on the multiplayer and single player or just the single player. I recommended the game to action fans, shooter fans, fans of the first game and really… fans of gaming in general. If anything can make this medium mainstream, this is it. But whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

[Images: Infinity Ward, Giant Bomb, Destructoid, Capsule Computers]