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Anyone getting heavy into it yet? I've played a bit here and there but I'm waiting for X-Mas so when my son gets his 360 from Santa I can play it(I've already bought it). Love the multi-player and the killstreak and deathstreak bonuses. Love the single-player, way too short though. I think most of all I love the co-op mode. Even enjoying some of the glitches (unlimited care package drops, etc.). Any thoughts?

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Sabin: Kefka! Wait!
Kefka: Wait he says! Do I look like a waiter?

I'll flat out say it: I despise this game with every fiber of my being. At it's very core, it's a standard shooter with almost no deviation to the usual formulas used to make games these days. I don't see the point in shelling out 70$ to play a game that is, at best, mediocre.

Firstly, the campaign can be beaten within the span of four hours. That, in and of itself, is embarrassing. There is exactly four hours worth of linear maps, standardized weapons, uninspired locations and outright idiotic enemies. (ruined Washington, again? Really? Oh, and of course, the Russians! Well, at least it isn't the Germans again.) The enemy A.I. leaves much to be desired in that, even on it's most difficult setting, basic concepts like moving away when under fire or ducking behind a solid object when a grenade lands nearby to them, must seem like rocket science. And, of course, true to the Halo-clone theme, our hero can stand there and take all the abuse in the world, so long as he remembers to crouch or tuck away after the tenth or eleventh bullet in his skull.

Every weapon in it's class (sub-automatic, automatic, etc) handles exactly as all the others with little to no variation, offering very little variety in the gameplay experience and worse, it then has the nerve to tout realism.

But that's not what the game is about! Surely the multiplayer experience will compensate for this otherwise suck-storm of blandness, no? No. Firstly, this is a an identical port of the previous Modern Warfare matchmaking system; it assigns ranks based on experience earned through playing matches, then ignores said ranks when collecting party members and leaves teams either vastly unbalanced or outright does not find games for you to play at all. Worse, if you're playing on a PC, you no longer have the option to host or connect to a dedicated server! The official reason, of course, was to prevent cheating online and to "experience the game as was designed", but what this really does is prevent third-party modders from tinkering with the game and grossly diminishes the potential of what can be done.

Ah, and let's not forget my personal favorite: Killstreaks! Yes, let's reward the player who achieves more kills than the others at intervals with overpowered skills, items or weapons that will allow him to, gasp, get more kills without doing any of the work! Hey, let's send in a helicopter or just drop a tactical nuke! So what if the newer, less experienced players barely get a chance to pick up on the rather steep learning curve or adapt to the otherwise clunky, uncomfortable control scheme! And while we're at it, let's give them perks, too! Really ties in with that realism bit we keep bragging about!

The only reward a player should ever get for achieving a massive amount of kills is an announcer screaming "MONSTER KILL." Period.



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Okay, but there was a goat!

I mostly agree with DF, but don't utterly hate the game like it was Leona Lewis. Instead I find it to be nothing special. For me, from what I played it's just pretty generic, and it's all been done before. I don't do console multi-player so that's not important to me, and as far as I know the single player would be acceptable. Not earth-shattering, not the greatest game ever made, and not a epic feat of Shakespearean storytelling. Just a notable, generic console FPS.

And that's fine really. Generic is okay because it means it's straightforward in single player and sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered. Simple, no-brains brain spilling stress relief in the form of dead or deader aliens/russians/mutants/zombies.

Ah, but not even that is so simple. They have to remove the health bars now and put in the blood-screen and grey-screen of impending doom thing. Maybe I'm spoiled by games that don't want you to be a sniper but whatever happened to just a plain old crosshair that got bigger or smaller? Maybe had some zoom? Everything's got a friggin' red dot or iron sights that block off the screen these days.

Multiplayer however these days is never straightforward. Not just because people take it too seriously but as DF notes, this game seems to have an overwhelming hatred for puny human life and dumps hapless Newbies on one team and a group of robotic 14 year olds who played it every hour they were active of every day since launch, using their quad core minds to be able to use grenade launchers like sniper rifles and shotguns like scalpels.

I'd say I'd wait for a cheap pre-owned copy to play it on my PS3 rather than my brother's Xbox but judging by CoD4 still being £20-30 preowned and up to £45 new, I don't see it happening soon. Hell, I don't even see CoD4 soon based on that...

This post has been edited by Del S on 28th November 2009 09:20

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I'm glad there's a topic for this on here. I was seriously debating picking this up after playing CoD4 through, finally, and despite having a rant about how much I couldn't be bothered with another game of its type about a year ago, I've been completely flummoxed by how good it is.

I was hoping that MW2 would be the same thing but with more amazingly good ideas and constantly changing level structure, but from the sounds of it I don't think I'll bother. In short, I'm writing to say thanks, and also put in a recommendation that you should try out CoD4 Del. I found it to be a perplexingly good game.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

i was going to get it, but then i remembered that i have Uncharted 2, and to me that's MUCH better

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

Excuses excuses... So what if you're a newbie and the higher ranks own you?... That's the way it goes with MW2's multiplayer and it sounds to me like we have a few quitters in here. It makes sense for a newbie to get his behind destroyed by someone who for example has already reached Level 70 and has moved on to Prestige Mode thus UNLOCKING new abillities, in this case perks. If you want to be able to stand up against the higher ranks you're going to have to train and get killed a few times and most importantly you have to customize your character with the weapon you like the most so you can put up a good fight before you learn other player's tendencies and gain some map knowledge.

Overall MW2 is a great game and I think FPS fans enjoy this game because even though the game seems like a hard and complex game to handle MW2 is actualy a simple straight forward game that features a multiplayer mode that those of us who enjoy the challenge of taking on the tougher opponent for the sake of getting better with each new battle will most certainly fall in love with it, otherwise stick to Halo 3 or Gears of War 2.

Single player lasts an hour on Recruit difficulty. Now Hardened and Veteran are whole other story. And what's this about needing 12 bullets to kill someone? Let's play Hardcore and will see how many bullets it takes.

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PS3 tag: TipoDLuffy

"...quite possibly the greatest game ever made"

Quote (SaffireWeapon @ 29th November 2009 02:32)

Excuses excuses... So what if you're a newbie and the higher ranks own you?... That's the way it goes with MW2's multiplayer and it sounds to me like we have a few quitters in here. It makes sense for a newbie to get his behind destroyed by someone who for example has already reached Level 70 and has moved on to Prestige Mode thus UNLOCKING new abillities, in this case perks. If you want to be able to stand up against the higher ranks you're going to have to train and get killed a few times and most importantly you have to customize your character with the weapon you like the most so you can put up a good fight before you learn other player's tendencies and gain some map knowledge.

Overall MW2 is a great game and I think FPS fans enjoy this game because even though the game seems like a hard and complex game to handle MW2 is actualy a simple straight forward game that features a multiplayer mode that those of us who enjoy the challenge of taking on the tougher opponent for the sake of getting better with each new battle will most certainly fall in love with it, otherwise stick to Halo 3 or Gears of War 2.

Single player lasts an hour on Recruit difficulty. Now Hardened and Veteran are whole other story. And what's this about needing 12 bullets to kill someone? Let's play Hardcore and will see how many bullets it takes.

Excuse me, what? Certainly you've disregarded the vast majority of what has been said in favor of some other argument, because you're absolutely missing the point.

Not all of us have the time or the patience to log in countless hours into a video game to merit the "unlockable perks" that separate the high-ranking players from the average ones, or the 'newbies'. On top of that, a game that rewards the best players and keeps newcomers from playing on an even field is an unapproachable game and that, my friend, does not make for a solid multiplayer experience. Admittedly, every game has a learning curve and involves some getting ones' head blown up a few times before a solid handle on the gameplay can be achieved, but on this scale it is just outright unreasonable. The perks, killstreak and deathstreak rewards essentially do the fighting for you. As for the weapons, I implore you to re-read my initial post concerning the lack of variation.

You mean to tell me that this is a challenging FPS? Auto-aim and the wonders of, my friend. The bane of any and all console shooters! Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid FPS fan. I just enjoy ones that are innovative and fun over redundant. If this game is your idea of a great shooter, you clearly haven't been playing very many of them.

I stand by my statement some time ago that if you've played one Call of Duty, you've played them all.

This post has been edited by Dragon_Fire on 29th November 2009 09:32

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (SaffireWeapon @ 29th November 2009 07:32)

Excuses excuses... So what if you're a newbie and the higher ranks own you?... That's the way it goes with MW2's multiplayer and it sounds to me like we have a few quitters in here. It makes sense for a newbie to get his behind destroyed by someone who for example has already reached Level 70 and has moved on to Prestige Mode thus UNLOCKING new abillities, in this case perks. If you want to be able to stand up against the higher ranks you're going to have to train and get killed a few times and most importantly you have to customize your character with the weapon you like the most so you can put up a good fight before you learn other player's tendencies and gain some map knowledge.

The problem is not with higher ranks killing lower ranks, that'll happen in any game. Players who have played the game longer, know the maps, good with weapons, etc. will have an advantage over people that are new. What ISN'T fair is those people being rewarded for the fact that they're better. I played my brother at CoD4 on the 360 and got my ass kicked because:

a) I didn't know any of the weapons, maps, the interface, anything.
b) After a few minutes, he had a killstreak. Airstrike. What the bins, seriously? If there's bonuses, they should be small, like 10% better accuracy, reduced recoil. Nothing that gives you a clear advantage over the rest.
c) The controls are kinda sucky compared to PC. I maintain I would've beaten him with a keyboard + mouse.

After a few months, anyone entering multiplayer online for the first time is going to get destroyed. This is not a casual game. It would get ridiculously frustrating. I have no problem fighting an occasional battle against people that are better than me. But as soon as they get ONE killstreak, I might as well give up. it's a vicious circle that rewards the strong and punishes the weak. That's not how multiplayer should work.

I agree completely with Dragon_Fire here. My kills may be Ludicrous, but that doesn't mean I should get an instagib rifle when everyone else has an assault rifle. I may have killed a survivor with my Hunter, but that doesn't mean my hunter now defies gravity and can pick up survivors and drop them from the sky.

It's called "unbalanced".

This post has been edited by footbigmike on 29th November 2009 09:47

To tell the truth I'm not really a FPS fan, and believe that maybe bigfootmike and DragonFire have played more FPS than I have so their points are valid and credible. What they speak of are truly some of the game's negatives and I can't say nothing against it. I did play Modern Warfare 1 and quite frankly MW2 is basically just as the tittle says, Modern Warfare v2.0. The game feels exactly like the first one, then again why fix something than is not broken? Hardcore FPS gamers might find more satisfaction in other FPS that are most likely to be found on a PC, games such as Crysis (which I regret to never have come to any console, excited that the second one will) and Unreal Tournament 3, a game I did play and enjoy more than any other FPS I've ever played. For me MW2 is perfect, I'm a casual FPS gamer and the must level up element gives MW2 an RPG feel to it.

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PS3 tag: TipoDLuffy

"...quite possibly the greatest game ever made"

I almost picked this game up. I've played COD games before and liked them, but what I was really looking for was the multiplayer experience. I'm not really a fan of the FPS genre and having played various FPS multiplayers I need some sort of variety to make it worth my while. I just didn't see that in the new COD and, like DF, wasn't going to shell out money for it.

I love the GTA4 multiplayer and I think a big reason for that is the vehicles. I also like just being able to run around blowing stuff up without any real kind of objective, just kind of messing around. The kid at Gamestop recommended Battlefield: Bad Company to me when I told him this, and that I didn't want MW2 for the above reasons. It's a greatest hits, so at $15 it was the perfect price. It is an FPS but you can also climb into tanks, helicopters, etc. (which you can do in Modern Warfare singleplayer apparently but not multiplayer, which makes no sense to me having it in one and not the other). Also, Bad Company has this neat concept called destructible environment, where you can blow up buildings to eliminate enemy cover and roll over trees with a tank and stuff. That's the kind of chaotic feel that makes multiplayer fun for me, because even if I'm having a bad game I can just run around and destroy things. Bad Company 2 comes out soon and I'd suggest checking it out for anyone who likes COD but feels let down by the latest installment.

Okay, I got round to playing it through. A friend gave me a loan for a few days so I had to make it count!

I can't comment on the multiplayer because I don't play anything online anymore, for various reasons, but I can say that the co-op stuff is average. It's nice to have the option of playing it with a friend and some of the missions are interesting. The only problem is that the screen gets unnecessarily cramped on split-screen and the graphics take a nose-dive. I don't mind bad graphics, but in this case it's sometimes hard to see the targets. Going back to playing Gears 2 after an hour was a huge relief actually.

As for the campaign, well, it's not as good as CoD4 but there's a lot in it to enjoy and some really good new ideas. An example would the slow-motion bits. There are rooms with hostages in them for you to rescue. You plant a bomb on the door, then, once it explodes, your character automatically goes into the room in slow-motion and you have to shoot the soldiers without killing the hostages. I don't know if it's been done before anywhere but, regardless, it's really effective. Another good new idea is when an EMP knocks out all the lights and electronics of a city. The fighting changes to a silent, dark world where your squad has to sneak through the destroyed city with no radio or lights at all. There are ideas from CoD4 which have been blatantly repeated but that's a good thing in my opinion. The problem with the gameplay was there wasn't the same hugely varied level structure as CoD4. Some of it was broken up nicely, but most of the time it was firefight after firefight and at some points I found it a bit too repetitive.

The major downer was the plot, which, unlike CoD4, made no sense whatsoever. It's like the German, Austrian and Turkish armies pouring much of their effort into finding Gavrilo Princip after the outbreak of WW1. It's a totally pointless exercise when there's an ARMY ON YOUR DOORSTEP! When so much blood has been spilt it doesn't matter who caused it. Still, I liked the characters when they stayed alive, and I did care about one death in particular, but not the other six or however many it was.

Basically, I would recommend it to someone who enjoyed the CoD4 story and wants to see it continue. It is worth it. It's definitely a short game but that means you can complete it in one borrowing or rental. I personally wouldn't buy it, but then I don't buy any games unless they're cheap, so if you're not a boring old man like me then take that advice with a pinch of salt.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

I'm only throwing in my two cents here because my roommates as well as my floormates down the hall are hopelessly addicted to this game. Almost disturbingly so; I could, at most times of the day, walk out of my gunshot-ridden apartment into a completely different one just to watch a new person play MW2.

And rightfully so, I might add, because the game is just that: terribly addicting.

I'm not really a fan of console FPS to begin with, so I feel like my opinion immediately falls under the "biased" column, but I simply can't quite get into MW2. I'm not adamantly opposed to it like Dragon Fire is over here, but I think a lot of his points really ring true for me.

The single player seems to be heinously short (although such has never been a selling point for me for FPS games), and the setting really doesn't do anything for me to begin with. I'm definitely missing something about this whole "modern day battle." I've always been at least somewhat drawn to WW2 shooters simply because it enriched the fantasy experience of the FPS, so for some reason the comical mob of such games never bothered me that much. I, for one, really enjoyed CoD5... dare I say moreso than MW1 or 2. So it might not be a lack of originality that bothers me, per say, but just the concept as a whole that I can't relate to. Which is ironic, I know. Then again, I much prefer entertainment experiences to take me out of this world rather than keep me entrenched in the alleged glory of it.

And no matter how many times I sit down with this game, I can't eke out a sufficient amount of fun out of it to really get it to stick. To be comparative, I have a good deal more fun playing split-screen Halo 3 than I do playing MW2. Now, consider the fact that I am pretty open about my distaste of Halo 3, and you have an idea about how big a statement that is.

But even if I just don't "get it" or it doesn't "appeal to me," I really can't deny the charm of MW2. Somehow, someway, this otherwise mediocre experience is just about the most addicting shooter I've seen come along in a while. And that, honestly, is probably justified because the quality of the game on a technical level is just superb. And if ain't broke don't fix it... I definitely can't tell a difference between the first MW and the second.

I will say that leveling up in an FPS to give an "RPG feel," as someone wrote, is a pretty stupid idea. If I want to play an RPG--and believe me, I don't--I'd play an RPG. If I want to shoot some guns at some people... well, I just want to shoot some guns at some people. Customization is one thing, but MW2's customization is something I don't quite have the patience for. But, again, great move by the producers to add something that exponentiates the addictiveness.

And as for the learning curve, I'd have to say that's not the problem. Sure, it's frustrating to go up against all these hardcore MW2 guys who can really open up a can on you, but isn't that every competitive game? As a FPS and a Fighting game fan, a steep learning curve is something I fully expect from any game... even if there are tactical nukes, I suppose.

I didn't expect such a long post but it seems that I'm more passionate than I expected. Either way, I guess I'm back where I started: MW2 is easily one of the most addicting and well-made FPS of this gaming era. That being said, it always manages to leave a sour taste in my mouth. I'll keep giving it a try though, for the sake of my sanity of being engulfed in it 24/7.

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

I have one comment on what seems to be a recurring theme in posts throughout this thread, namely, that high level players will dominate lower level ones in multiplayer, through customization, etc. Wasn't that the whole point of the Prestige rank? That, when someone is maxed out, they have an incentive to go back to level 1 with the addition of a medal and bragging rights. It sounds like it hasn't been very effective from what people here have said about MW and MW2.

Hey, if you guys are are on PSN my gamertag is PsychlonezAWD, I am one of the Founding members of the RAGE Clan, we are currently recruiting actually, KDR now super important, Ability to follow direction, and know the maps is key. MSG me on there and i will add you as a friend and hopefully we get a chance to merc some suckas together.