The biggest video game release of the year is finally here. Modern Warfare 2. And we've finally got around to reviewing this mammoth piece of gaming meat! Joey Davidson and myself, Erik Norris, have broken the game down into its three separate components - single player, multiplayer, Spec Ops - applying scores to each and giving a final overall score for the entire product. This review is massive. That's a warning. You could grow a full beard while reading it. So to help you out (cause we are always here for you) we've included links right here at the beginning of the review to each of the separate sections in the off chance you don't give a shit about the game's story. So without further ado, Modern Warfare 2...

Multiplayer Review

Spec Ops Review

Single Player

Joey:  I really found the single player campaign in Modern Warfare 2 to be a bit of a disappointment.  And I know you agree with a lot of my points, Erik, but most of my hang-ups are with the length, pacing and level of intensity.  Too short, bad direction and way too much intensity.  Without downtime, intense moments just don't seem intense when there's barely any quiet time to compare them to.  Think of Modern Warfare 1, glorious moments of pacing there.

Erik: I agree. Modern Warfare 2's single player reeked of Call of Duty 2 syndrome. It was just action action action until the ending credits, without any sense of story structure. It was all climax for five hours.

Joey: You need an arc!  Downtime!  It just wasn't there...

Erik: Yea, exactly! None of that was present. I was also disappointed that for the first time in the Call of Duty series Infinity Ward had a chance to inject some character into the troops you are controlling and working alongside. But alas, they completely dropped the ball in that area, as well. Outside of Soap, who you played as in the first Modern Warfare, there was no character development whatsoever.

Joey: I might be venturing into spoiler city, so skip this bit if you haven't played... but you do also spend time with Price towards the end, which I did think was pretty rewarding. Too bad it's so short and so amped up that you don't get that former commander feel from him. You're playing as Soap at this point, so a reunion with Price should have been extremely badass. IW only took the time to have Price say, "Just like old times, eh?"... and that was it. But that's it for spoilers...

But how about the story itself, the actual plot, what did you think?

Erik: Firstly, the game is only 5-6 hours long and it took the guys at IW roughly two of those hours to find a footing on how they wanted to develop the game's narrative. While missions are loosely tied together with pre-mission briefings, the whole story seemed rather scatter-shot. The "fight comes home" sections that I thought would have been a huge part of the game were pretty much throw away with no sense up build-up leading into them. But the missions controlling "Roach" of the British Task Force 141 were rather enjoyable and by far the best aspects of the story. But like I mentioned before, I really had no attachment to any of the characters by the time the story wrapped rather abruptly with a number of dangling plot threads that scream "sequel bait." Let me just put it this way: The only emotional attached I had to this game's story was when I saw the "Tacos To Go" stand destroyed during one of the American missions and thought about how heart broken I would be if Taco Bell closed.

Joey: God damnit...But you're right! There should have been much, much more attention paid to the levels on American soil. It's just like Halo 2, you know?  When the fight came home to Earth, people immediately said they wanted more. There wasn't enough Earth time. A few things about the home front in MW2's campaign...

The whole section was filled with fantastic set pieces.  The suburban houses, the strip mall, the White House!  All of those things hit home, for Americans at least.  And it was very, very cool to fight in these settings.

But in these massive war scenes, this title didn't do much to reel in that Call of Duty feeling.  That feeling that you're one piece of something much bigger.  Think back to the first CoD and the first time we landed on the beaches of Normandy in the game; seeing all those guys storming the shore was an amazing feeling.  You had a connection to everyone within and the moment felt huge.  Here I am in MW2 defending my own homeland and the moment felt small with some nice vignettes.  It's almost as if their epic scope focused in on one or two pieces instead of the whole picture.

 

Erik: Agreed. I think this all goes back to terrible pacing leading up to the Home Front missions. You go from being in the icy mountains of Kazakhstan with the British 141 to a loading screen showing a full scale invasion of America that you never get to actually watch outside of wire-frame models during the mission briefing. Then you're magically cruising through Suburbia in a tank shooting Russians. If this moment had some better build-up I would have been saying "oh shit!," not "..oh.."

 

Joey: But I really don't want to detract anything from Infinity Ward's ideas and set pieces.  Both were justified and certifiably great, it's just that the execution felt like a misstep. Give me three more hours of game time with some character connecting moments and transitional downtime, and the single player campaign would have been fantastic.

Of note: Kudos to IW for introducing new game-play elements all the way until the end of the game... though the actual ending was cheesy poop balls.  Officially.

Erik: Well said. Infinity Ward knows how to deliver on scripted events, they just now need to get a bit tighter with their story-telling on all future titles (which we'll obviously be seeing). But as it stands, Modern Warfare 2's single player campaign is pretty much a bust.