MW2 PC Review

[Onionpaste]

Friend is letting me borrow their Steam account so I can give MW2 a whirl. I will let you guys know how everything turns out, and if it's possibly even worth buying or not. Stay tuned for updates.

~~~MY REVIEW~~~

Single Player

In true Infinity Ward style, the single player is pretty amazing, but at the same time, short compared to other games of the same type. You see some new faces, some old, and of course, a certain someone comes back from (what was assumed to be) the dead, just like in every other Call of Duty game made by IW. I sat down to play it, and 7 hours later, I got up again because I was finished. This was on Veteran difficulty, and in my opinion, it was overall easier than CoD4, which was both good and bad. Was good because I got to get all those nice Steam achievements without bashing my face against my desk, but not so good because it doesn't really live up to the "You will not survive." description. Given the fact that the Call of Duty series is built off of Multiplayer, and that I consider the Single Player to be a warmup for online play, I would give this section an 8/10

Multiplayer

I won't be covering the obvious lack of features that Infinity Ward has stripped from the game in this section. I will simply be covering the Multiplayer quality as I see it. If you want my opinion on those, you can view my old rants, or look into the next section, titled "About the Bullshit."

Guns

Anyway, where was I? There are a few noticeable changes in the way that weapons and perks work in MW2. First off, you have a few new sections of guns:

As a primary weapon, you are allowed to choose assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, sniper rifles, and a bulletproof, plexiglass riot shield. Each section has some old favorites, as well as some new additions which are fun to play around with.

As a secondary weapon, you are not restricted to only a pistol. You have a choice between a standard semi-automatic pistol, machine pistol, shotgun, and an explosive launcher.

Semi-autos are the same as they always have been, with the addition of a 6 round magnum revolver, which is accessible at a low level, while the Desert Eagle is the king once you can acquire it.

Machine pistols are small, fast firing weapons - you have choices like a TMP (think Counter-Strike), Glock 18, and what appears to be a 3 round burst Beretta. Shotguns are self-explanatory, there have been some new additions which are fun to play with, like a DAO-12 lookalike for you BF2 players, as well as a magazine-fed, fully automatic shotgun. Launchers incorporate things like Stinger and Javelin missiles, as well as a handheld grenade launcher.

Gun Attachments

Weapon attachments are more diverse in MW2 as well. You can get a perk which allows you to attach 2 things to your primary weapon, instead of just one, and almost all weapons can be silenced now (even sniper rifles and LMGs, which is a little ridiculous). They did away with the Deep Impact perk, and instead made it a weapon attachment, in the form of Full Metal Jacket bullets (ignoring the fact that since hollow points are against the Geneva Conventions, all bullets in military warfare are FMJs anyway). You also have options like a thermal scope, which behaves much like a sniper scope (obscures the entire screen except what you see through the scope), though it doesn't have as much zoom. Through it, everything is in grayscale, with enemies highlighted as a bright white figure. Helps when exposing enemy snipers in grass, and enemies through smoke. Weapon attachments are unlocked through completing challenges, which aren't all necessarily "kill X enemies with Y weapon to unlock Z attachment for it." Some require you to kill them with a certain attachment used in a certain way. For example, the option to get a larger magazine capacity requires that you kill X number of people through a wall, with the FMJ attachment.

Riot Shield

Since the riot shield kind of deserves its own section, I'll put it here. It's a transparent plexiglass shield which you hold in front of you, and takes up your primary weapon slot. With it equipped, even if you aren't holding it, you move at an extremely slow rate, and your character model looks much like someone in a bomb squad outfit. When it isn't in your hands, it's on your back, which is fun because it actually continues to block shots that hit you from behind. When you crouch, it covers your entire front, and the only way for people to kill you is to either throw an explosive or somehow flank you to your unprotected backside. You can carry a sidearm with a riot shield, but in order to use it you must switch weapons, which removes your front side protection.

Maps

The maps in Multiplayer seem a little simple compared to what they used to be. Most of them seem to be 2 sides separated by a bit in the middle, much like Showdown in CoD4. However, there are some maps that are truly amazing, like Wasteland, and I run around with a sniper getting a 2:1 ratio on my first day, giddy with happiness.

Game modes

There are all the old favorites, though sadly, the lack of dedicated servers severely reduces the number of hardcore / non-hardcore combinations that you have access to.


About the Bullshit

I'm sure most of you are probably reading this review to see what I think about some of the retarded changes that Infinity Ward made to the game, Multiplayer specifically. Well, here they are:

No dedicated servers

Since there are a few issues with this, I'm going to put subsections in here which cover them all (there's only 2 for now but I will put more as I think of them):

Lag in P2P

Surprisingly, so far I have had little issue with lag, given that it's a horrible connection system. I think part of this is that I have a good connection, and thus, I'm often chosen to host games, which means that I have sub-10ms ping, though everyone else in the game usually has < 100 ms as well. It is not nearly as bad as I had originally expected, and I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised. There IS the occasional game where the host just sucks, and there are some other glitches involved in matchmaking and stuff, but they're not very common - IW patched their netcode in the first week, I hear, and fixed many of the problems people were having.

Hacking

Just like lack of lag, hacking is not as rampant as I had originally expected. I'm sure there are hackers out there, but I have yet to see one who is just so blatantly hacking that I leave the game. Most are subtle enough that they could probably just pass for being really good, and I guess I can settle for that, since they wouldn't get caught on an admined server anyway. Plus, it's satisfying when you kill them =)

Don't get me wrong...

I still think the lack of dedicated servers makes it much less fun than it could be... But I also think that the lag / hacking implications of no dedi's are not nearly as bad as the doomsday people are saying. Again, don't get me wrong - I intensely dislike the fact that you can't join your favorite server when you want to, and see familiars.

No lean

Though it's not game breaking, the lack of lean in this game is frustrating. It's playable without it though, and I think the worst that will happen is that playstyle will have to change to adjust to it. Still a stupid change though.

No console

Again, really frustrating to have a lack of console. There are, however, console-enabling hacks online, though I'm not sure if they trip VAC or not. If you've played PC games, you know what a console is, and you know what lack of one means, so I'm really not going to cover this further.


Overall

Personally, I think that the bullshit issues are a blemish on an otherwise fantastic game. The single player is short, but amazing. The multiplayer is well balanced and the maps, while somewhat repetitive, are still good. I'm still unsure about whether I want to buy this game, because I want to see some feedback first to see if there's anyone else who might want to buy it as well. Overall, I would probably give it a 7-7.5 / 10, when all things are considered. Those few blemishes are the difference from it being a good game, and it being a great game.



DranoK / LiQUiD: Can you change the title of this from the forum-view? I changed it in the thread but it doesn't get reflected in the actual forum. Feel free to delete this message once you take care of that. Thank you!

[Colonel Lance]

Bump for review update

[DranoK]

We still won't be playing it :P

[Onionpaste]

I didn't expect you to, but I thought I'd do this anyway just so you guys could get an idea =P

[DranoK]

Made it FP, anyway :)

[Onionpaste]

I saw that, didn't expect it personally but thanks =P

[DranoK]

It's well-written and in-depth :)

[Onionpaste]

I didn't want to leave anything out =D