This past Christmas I was sorely lacking on computer games. And anyone who knows me can agree, when I lack the sweet sweet heroin release of hours spent blasting my opponents into bloody giblets, I get... Well, let's just say, a bit cranky. So after various failures such as Torchlight and the like, I went and got Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Now, this game has been out for, oh, a few months now, I think. But it still cost me $60 to get it on xmas. Which, is just crazy for a computer game. CRAZY. I mean, usually they are $50 or less, it's just, like, a requirement for PC games or something. Unless you get a special edition or something. And wtf is up with special editions nowadays? $60+ spent on maps or figurines and extra special looking attire in the video game is one thing, I mean, I don't NEED that stuff to play the game and enjoy it, it's just, well, fluff, I'd call it. And I proudly admit to being a geek, but come on, figurines, maps of the game world and special costumes? When I reach that level of geekiness, I am going to apply for membership to MENSA or something, so I can at least have a cool aspect to my nerddom.
Let's take Dragon Age: Origins for example, and I know I'm going off-topic here, but hey it's an RPG and a game so it's sort of along the same lines here. They released a "special edition" of it that gave you some downloadable content when the game was first released. I doin't know why they couldn't have included this content WITH the original game, or just released it as an "additional adventure" later on... Oh wait, I know, GREED. That's why they released it as downloadable content at game launch. In any case, I have two problems with the extra content. One, the original special edition price was like, I don't know, maybe $10 more than the plain old version when it first came out, and when you try to add it on after you've bought the original version, it's an extra $22. Second, you have to activate and buy the content through Electronic Arts game interface and using their account. Which is both a pain in the ass, and forced me to recover my old EA account pw (I didn't even know I had one). Then, after going through all that crap, I have to buy "points" to spend in-game on the extra content. I can't just buy the appropriate content (there were actually 2 different ones) and have it install, OH NO SIRREE BOB. I had to buy points at the site, then go back to the game and "buy" the content with the points I just bought. And you can't buy the points in one lump sum, either. I had to purchase points in 3 separate purchases to add up to the points I needed to get both the content packages. And then, as if making me jump through flaming hoops wasn't enough, I can't even play the additional content in offline mode, NO... I HAVE to be connected to the EA servers with my newly renewed EA account JUST to have access to the extra content when I play. Utterly ridiculous, and I think Electronic Arts should DIAF.
Luckily, Modern Warfare 2 has no such requirements, or at least, I didn't run into any. You do need to be online to play the multiplayer portion of the game, but that's just a given since if you aren't online, your only friends are Patches, the slightly messy blow up doll, and your growing collection of World of Warcraft miniatures, assuming you don't have the luxury of imaginary friends. Before I get into the multiplayer aspect, let me just outline the single player portion of it, which is blessedly brief and gives you a quick insight into how the multiplayer aspect works. First, when I say brief, I mean it took me about two or three days of playing it straight through, with a trainer on so I could cheat, to finish the campaign. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME. I'm an adult, if I want to cheat at my single player games in the privacy of mom's basement while I fondle my dear friend Patches, that is my business and has no impact on you. So butt out or I'll sic Patches on you, and she can be a violent bitch when she's protecting her man-meat. The campaign can be a lot of fun if you like dying and viewing the game constantly through a haze of red, since the screen turns bloody red when you get shot. I played it on the hardest setting and cheated like a crackhoe, so I got the, erm "full" experience of the game. I won't give away any details of the campaign, because I know fighting a fully armed modern battle tank with a broken 1940's-era swiss army knife can be a thrilling experience, but I will say this much. I've played two of these games now, and refreshingly, they follow the same characters almost, but I'd like to see the main character actually walk away from the fight. I know in war people get injured and all, but in the last mission, he nearly died on a bridge that was about to give way and drop him into a crevasse, and I don't mean nearly died as in, he got off the bridge in time by running away, I mean, he got shot multiple times, fell, managed to shoot the bad guy with a pistol, and was finally dragged off the decaying bridge by his teammates while probably falling into a coma. And in this one he doesn't exactly redeem my faith in his combat training. Maybe on the easy setting, he comes out of it with nothing more than a splinter, but on the hard version, well, if he lived at all I'd be surprised.
That having been said, the multiplayer aspect of the game can be quite addicting. It is a first person shooter, so if your fast twitch reflexes are decent and you can see fairly well (my reflexes are great but I can't see bean at more than a foot from my nose), you'll have fun racing around shooting stuff and sticking semtex to your enemies and watching them dance around in fear trying to get the explosives off before they go BOOOM. Which, is hilariously funny and if real people didn't die when they went BOOM I'd do it in real life, but my violent tendencies are more than satisfied by this computer game. And no, mom's not currently chilling out in the large freezer in the garage. I am very non-violent and if you continue to persist in your accusations I AM GOING TO KILL YOU. Erm. Figuratively speaking of course. (innocent grin) There are levels to go through to get the various perks and such in the game, but the perks are not required to kill the higher-level people, and though there are 70 levels in the game, you can make them pretty fast just by wandering around the game maps and blasting the shit out of your enemies. They tend to breeze by pretty fast, sometimes without you even knowing it, and if any of my readers (if I have any) are familiar with the "grinding" aspect of games with levels, there was only one such instance of it that I ran into here. That was when i was waiting to get the mini-Uzi, a gun I loved from the first game, and once I got it I proceeded to shoot the crap out of everyone around me. Team-mates included since, as I may have mentioned, my vision isn't that great and sometimes I have a hard time telling friends from enemies in the game. Which, is not only why I am not a soldier, but also why I have so few friends. Erm. Well, in any case, the multiplayer is really the reason to buy this game and it will eat up hours of your spare time, if you have any to spare.
So, all in all, great multiplayer, decent single player, pretty passable graphics (they are good enough where I can't complain about them, so they must be okay, right?), sound is good, and... and... well, I don't have a rating system or anything, but Patches is getting lonely over there in the corner, you know what I'm saying?
ADDENDUM: No review of Modern Warfare 2 would be complete without mentioning the new server system. IWNet, Infinity Ward's (the game's publisher) system of servers or whatever, has some pretty major flaws. First off, half the time, it can't find a game for you to join. Second, sometimes it will add you to a full server, which, will then kick you out, then, the automated search feature will rejoin you to the same server, and then because it's still full, you'll get kicked out again, and so on. Also, occasionally during play the action will cease while the game tries to find a new host. So everything freezes while the game searches and downloads everything to the new host, then gameplay resumes. Also, with this system, the lag can get pretty bad at times. I was running down a long open area towards about 3 guys, and all of a sudden I jumped backwards about 30 feet, which is indicative of lagging, so I stopped, waiting for the lag to clear. However, the guys firing at me continued to fire, and I expected to die. But I didn't. So I strolled forward and as they kept firing, the lag was making their bullets miss, so I used my knife to kill all three of them. Why my knife still worked through the lag, I have no idea. But there it is. Pretty funny at the time, though. The server issues do put a damper on the fun though, a lot of players will just quit when the lag starts. These young kids nowadays, they have no patience. You want to know about lag, back in '95 while I was on IRC, we had lag so bad, I left a chat room where nobody was answering, came back in, started talking with a friend, and then saw MYSELF come in, say "Hello?" wait a moment, during which time, I said hi back to myself. I suppose if I had seen myself the first time I'd have created a paradox and destroyed the universe or something. Then i saw myself say "Hello?" again, and then I saw myself say "Any bodeeee hooooooooommmmme?" And then I left. I did not come back a second time, that would have just been weird. But that, now that was lag.
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