Modern Warfare 2 is a great improvement to its prequel. It has its up’s and down’s, however, there are more good things to say about it than bad things. The main reason would be that the campaign, while as short-lived as its predecessors, is way better when it comes to the gameplay. Lots of new things have been added, giving new twists and feelings to the game! The downside of the game is the lack of dedicated servers. MW2 uses P2P (Peer-to-peer) hosting, which is really unstable and can detract from the overall experience.
The most notable thing is that you operate vehicles more frequently in MW2’s campaign. Moreover, tons of new weapons and attachments have been added, removing the feeling of constantly using the same weapon, which we found in the first game. Another plus? No more recycled enemy voices from CoD2! Brand new Russian, American and Arab voices have been added for each faction respectively (which can also be found in multiplayer).
The story is a bit twitchy. It often hops from one scenario to the other, forcing you to pay attention to the game from multiple angles. For some, it can be stressful. For others, it can cause confusion, but the plot is still interesting. The characters feel more credible thanks to lots of new animations and facial expressions. Speaking of that, MW2 doesn’t require a beefy computer to run it. It’s pretty acceptable, and at maximum settings it looks beautiful. You might sometimes come across clipping issues, hopefully some of them will be fixed in future patches.
MW2 also has a new gameplay mode called Spec-Ops, which allows you to complete different challenges in different maps. You can play this mode either in singleplayer, or with someone else on your Steam buddy list.
Now let’s get to the multiplayer. It feels a lot similar to the first game, but this isn’t necessarily bad. The gameplay however, can be stressful because of sprayers and campers. I myself never encountered a sprayer or camper-free game. Moreover, the chosen host always left the game and we had to sit about 30 seconds for the game to choose a new one and transfer the packets to him. This is really annoying, and I myself, like many others, do hope that Infinity Ward reinstates dedicated servers.
Leaving that aside, tons and I really mean TONS of new perks, challenges, game modes and weapons have been added. There is also this UI that lets you choose titles and display icons you’ve earned in-game. This doesn’t contribute in any way to the gameplay but lets you brag about the achievements you’ve earned. The level cap has also been raised from 55 to 70, which makes sense because it would be annoying to unlock 2-3 things each level. Each time you kill an enemy, you get various bonuses (such as head-shots, double-kills, triple-kills etc.). You also have this new ability to spend special points you unlock as you level to add killstreak abilities such as Harrier strikes or the classic UAV radar. As I’ve mentioned before, tons of new perks, attachments, game modes, challenges etc. have been added giving you more customization options and a varied gameplay, reason enough to come back once you get bored of it
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Overall, the short campaign offered (despite the promises made by Infinity Ward claiming that it will be longer) and the lack of dedicated servers, and the classic nuisances such as sprayers and campers will detract from the overall experience, but at core, Modern Warfare 2 is a great game that will hopefully be improved in future patches.




