Zero Punctuation: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

[TheRealCJ]

So, in summary: Single player, silly and short. Just like the first Call of Duty, you'll encounter situations where you're getting killed many times trying to move 5 yards. Multiplayer, much better than single player. You'll probably buy it anyway if you're an easily impressed graphics addict.

Well, I'll say one thing about MW2, it certainly lived up to its expectations.

Er... the first Call of Duty was a pretty decent WWII shooter. Back when having a WWII shooter meant something.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Huh.

Reviewing Call of Duty without the multiplayer is like reviewing a Big Mac without mentioning what the meat tastes like.

That may be the dumbest thing I've read today.

Call of Duty has ALWAYS been story first, multiplayer second. The problem is that the HALO fantards discovered that COD4's multiplayer was pretty good, and suddenly it's the latter first.

 

[Evil Tim]

actually, the first one wasnt launched, it was detonated from the ground. and the second one was, i dont know, too high? or maybe it shorted out the counter nuke weaponry when it went up

There's a launch near the end of the first game [seen in 2's intro] with the whole countdown to impact deal. Trouble is, MAD is based on an essentially launch-on-launch response to strategic nuclear deployments, so a whole lot of missiles would have been coming back the other way. Sure, in that instance the order might have got out that the SAS were trying to do something about it, but in 2 it's not even authorised.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Why THE FUCK does Yahtzee not play the multiplayer sections of these games? Its a first person shooter and seriously, removing a bunch of ai's brain fluid through a .44 caliber hole in their face gets old after a while, you gotta move on to beating the shit out of some twelve year old in Germany. He did this with Halo 3 as well; yes the singleplayer was lacking but come on, you can't say you have reviewed something if you skip more than half of the game. Also, I would like to point out that the multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2 is the single best example of first person shooting that I can point out. Its polished, its entertaining, the rpg-level-up elements add replay value out the wazoo, and its just a lot of fun.

I'm with him, multiplayer, in a story-driven game, should be an afterthought.

there's all this whining of "Oh, MW2 was a multiplayer game, who cares if the story mode isn't very good, it's a multiplayer game.

FUCK. NO.

When a game is a sequel to a game with a compelling story and single player mode, it's supposed to be a single player fucking game.

You don't go to a sequel of a action movie with the thought "Well, the Sex scene in the first movie was pretty popular, so I'm going to go in expecting a 90 minute hardcore porn film."

Infinity Ward fucked up. Period. In their effort to appeal to the ritalin-popping halo multiplayer crowd, they forgot their core fanbase.

 

[..sigh..]

Yatzhi, you Australian monkey, Is this all you have to say about this game!? I wish he would read these threads and respond, or maybe someone else should force feed him what people think of his work. Shallow, empty, unfulfilling and no longer funny. As little as this matters, I will no longer watch your pathetic attempts to re institute yourself to the pedestal that you were on with Youtube. Sellout

 

[sneakypenguin]

Edit: PLEASE tell me that no one has bought this for the multiplayer, since it's going to be exactly the same as MW1...

snip

I actually bought a new xbox after a year absence from gaming just to play MP on this game. MW1 was the last game I played so I had to get this one for the new stuff/balance.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Huh.

Reviewing Call of Duty without the multiplayer is like reviewing a Big Mac without mentioning what the meat tastes like.

That may be the dumbest thing I've read today.

Call of Duty has ALWAYS been story first, multiplayer second. The problem is that the HALO fantards discovered that COD4's multiplayer was pretty good, and suddenly it's the latter first.

I'm not sure if you remember this but COD1 for the PC had a huge MP following and COD2 was #1 on XBL for a while when it first came out. Come to think of it it seems to be primarily a duel purpose game. Single play to prep you for MP then MP for replay value.

 

[Evil Tim]

I'm not sure if you remember this but COD1 for the PC had a huge MP following and COD2 was #1 on XBL for a while when it first came out. Come to think of it it seems to be primarily a duel purpose game. Single play to prep you for MP then MP for replay value.

Not really, no. The trailers, box blurbs and so on always emphasised the singleplayer aspect; CoD1's only mention of multiplayer on the box is essentially 'or I guess you could do this' before going back to talking about 'intense battlefield moments' and so on. 2's image captions don't even mention the game has multiplayer, let alone show what it looks like.

Also, how on earth does singleplayer prep you for multiplayer aside from giving you a chance to learn the PPsH is ridiculous? They're nothing alike in gameplay terms.

 

[The Big Eye]

The campaign of the first Modern Warfare was fairly short. Short doesn't have to be bad.

Spoiler

That said, killing the bloody player character three-quarters of the way through the game peeved/ticked/angered me off no end. Seriously, what need has Shepard for all this wealth and power he's scheming for? All he needs is his trusty damn respawn-negating gun.

 

[Evil Tim]

He's right, that's kinda how CoD works. They are MP games. Get familiar with the guns and the feel of the game, and then move onto the multiplayer. Fair enough if you don't dig on multiplayer, but I'd say people probably shouldn't hang so much shit on call of duty's single player. It's not really made for that.

I own every CoD game aside from the Wii ones. Singleplayer was not an afterthought in the early ones and has been obviously scaled back in terms of effort as the series went on. Most likely this was to free up budget for the inevitable balance patches that multiplayer requires, and licensing a billion million weapons for the 4 / 6 unlock systems.

 

[FROGGEman2]

Finally someone agrees with me!

 

[TheRealCJ]

Huh.

Reviewing Call of Duty without the multiplayer is like reviewing a Big Mac without mentioning what the meat tastes like.

That may be the dumbest thing I've read today.

Call of Duty has ALWAYS been story first, multiplayer second. The problem is that the HALO fantards discovered that COD4's multiplayer was pretty good, and suddenly it's the latter first.

I'm not sure if you remember this but COD1 for the PC had a huge MP following and COD2 was #1 on XBL for a while when it first came out. Come to think of it it seems to be primarily a duel purpose game. Single play to prep you for MP then MP for replay value.

I'll give you that.

But I also remember when COD 1/2 came out, I didn't play the multiplayer for MONTHS. I still haven't played COD4 Multiplayer, and I've had the game for a good 20 months at this point. I've played through the story mode maybe a dozen times, because it's just that good.

When you need multiplayer, not only to hold up the game, but to justify it's existance, why not just make it a multiplayer game, like Team Fortress or Unreal Tournament?

 

[Evil Tim]

I'm left wondering why they didn't kill the other two and had Roach and Ghost going after Shepherd? Soap and Price we all liked and got to know in CoD4 first. That would have been a huge Tear Jerker and had much more of an impact.

But Ghost is rather obviously someone else, so that only really leaves Roach.

Spoiler

Don't think we don't know it's you under that mask Gaz, you fucking revenant.

 

[tmichc]

I, like others, was worried that maybe Yahtzee was losing his edge. However, this video happily dispels these worries.

I agree with him on everything he brought up in his video (particularly the blood jelly and the unnecessary PC deaths on the Russian house level). That and the deaths of the TF141 Characters were particularly annoying, especially as I'd gotten to like Ghost.

One thing that he failed to bring up, which surprised me, was the last level (the whole 'kill the bad guy after you've fallen off the side of a waterfall' level). Was it just me, or did this feel like an extended Quick Time Event? I got so bored of it that whenever it told me to press E (I have it on PC), I just continuously tapped the button whilst reading a magazine article on the upcoming Splinter Cell: Conviction.

And at least Soap was a character I could enjoy playing as this time, even if he didn't use the line "short controlled bursts" (a reference to Dog Soldiers for those that remember him in that). Loved the 'Solid Soap' thing as well!

I don't play the multiplayer either, for the very simple fact that I dislike the lack of overall objective (which is something I look to the Battlefield series for, particularly BF2142 - whose Titan mode is everything I look for in multiplayer), and IW managed to screw the pooch on MP for the PC gamers anyway.

So, I can well understand why he'd avoid it. Though the Spec Ops missions are a nice add-on, and it did surprise me that IW didn't decide to have a Co-op main campaign (like every other game out there these days).

Just my thoughts...

 

[mikecoulter]

I must have died 60 times on one level as the enemy completely surrounded me from where it kept the checkpoint. Annoying to say the least. I managed to overcome this by swift hiding...

 

[Evil Tim]

Yeah maybe... But i do think that it was not entirely a budget thing (activision and infinity ward are zillionaires for fuck's sake)... Just a focus change. Also what does 4/6 mean?

4 and 6 [Modern Warfare 1 and 2] are the only games in the series that have to care about licensing weapon names, since WW2 weapons seem to be regarded as public domain.