It’s almost been three months since the release of Infinity Ward’s record-breaking game Modern Warfare 2. Now that we are all sober, I would like to assess the current state of the game truthfully.
Obviously the single player nor Spec Ops mode have not changed, the single player boasts a thrilling, action-packed ride with an interesting story, which, however, moves in a direction of its own. While I wanted to know what was happening and why, the game makes this hard due to a hiccup in the story’s pacing and some plot holes. The game’s single player is not as well packaged as Call of duty 4’s but definitely contains a lot more action and fantastic set pieces. It came across my mind that Infinity Ward thought of the set pieces then put a story line in after. However, the single player is worth playing and still a fantastic experience.
There have been mixed feelings about the online. The game boasts its unparalleled online experience, which the media praises the game for, but there are many problems with it as well. The online is perhaps too large, with too many weapons and perks, the game is slightly unbalanced. Call of Duty 4 contained a perfect balance in the online mode which is why it was played so much, even due to some frustrations, the game was at the time, one of the top online experiences. Now we have a game which extends Modern Warfare, but maybe a bit too much, which brings me to some issues with the online.
-Noobtuber’s. We all know them, we all hate them (unless you are them). Was a problem in the first Modern Warfare and it’s still a problem now. A large number of people’s main strategy is to choose a gun with a grenade launcher attachment and use that. It’s not common for triple kills to happen while wielding this weapon and is extremely powerful. I really do not think you should be able to spawn with this.
-Campers, the game is filled with them, partly due to the maps and kill streaks encouraging this. MW2 is more of a reflex shooter, who sees who first, which is why camping is so effective. I can agree with this from experience but it boring for some players to camp, including me, its made as a run and gunner shooter but now filled with a huge amount of players camping. There are ways to counter it, by choosing a ninja like class, but this makes you vulnerable to other players.
-The Akimbo Shotguns, the one we all hate. These shotguns are not only very powerful, but have incredible range. I have had countless ‘WTF’ moments on my killcam from these shotguns. Players tend to use Marathon and run around the map killing anything that moves in one hit, once again a huge percentage of players use this strategy which does work exceptionally well on certain maps. This is a very obvious problem as they have been patches to decrease the power of the shotguns, which makes this problem slightly less annoying.
-The community. As shallow as this sounds, it’s a valid point. MW2 being the hugely popular game it is has been the home of many abusive and plain annoying people. To explain, there are large amounts of people who either, gloat a lot over killing you then starting abusing your mother or young boys around the age of 10 playing with Riot shields trying to start arguments. We all know this exists in all multiplayer games but a general consensus is that this game is worse then the average online game. Even though there is a mute button (praise the mute button!) the game makes it hard for players to chat amongst each other to play tactically. However, it works well in a party with your friends.
-The last thing I will talk about is the glitches, the large selection of glitches (full list here via gamerglitch.com) we have available to us is rather astonishing. I am very surprised by the amount of exploits in the game, to name a few, the ice skating glitch, the 0th prestige glitch and the javelin glitch. To give Infinity Ward some credit, the worst do get patches; however, between that time, all hell breaks loose and new controllers are needed.
If it sounds like I’m bashing the game, I am not, I am trying to analyze the state of the game, especially online. Even though I only did only list the negative parts of the online, we all know the fantastic things the game has to offer which to me is pointless listing since most know this. I think that new players should be aware of these since they sometimes are incredibly annoying. However, these can be overlooked by playing with friends and quitting games with glitching going on. Getting that nuke is always worth makes up for it as well.
