Modern Warfare 2: A Very Late Random Goldfish Review

Most media reviews happen upon release of said media – movies, books, TV shows, video games.  They represent an elitist and snobby perspective on the subject – someone who is paid to critically review the intellectual property, drawing on vast expertise.  The critic also has to finish the product and write the review and get on to the next product asap to make his/her bosses happy.  So not only are professional reviews overcritical from a layperson’s perspective, they are based on a method of consumption that most common folks don’t use.

For example, when I play a video game that is 15 hours long, it takes me around a month.  A video game reviewer will finish the game in a day or two. This makes the experience fundamentally different – repetitious components of the game for the reviewer will serve only as an annoyance, whereas for me repetition serves as a guidepost and helpful reminder of where we left off (see Creed, Assassin’s).  A book may take me several weeks to read, whereas a NY Times reviewer may finish it in one sitting.  Furthermore, I haven’t read every book in the genre, so a book’s similarity to another title doesn’t upset the balance of the universe like it does for a NY Times book reviewer. Nerds.

Anyway, that is the premise for reviews at Josh Being Josh. Real people reviewing things. Maybe several months after things come out. And that’s more authentic and more Random, if not Very Late. Some reviews will be done with my bff Goldfish, ergo the Random Goldfish Reviews. If you aren’t bored out of your mind by now, here is the first one.

Modern Warfare 2: A Very Late Random Goldfish Review

My platinum plaques and status is whack if I’m not the baddest… Eminem, Till I Collapse

Truer words. The song (top 5  of the decade) is perfect for the launch trailer for Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the true Halo Killer. Lots of games aspired to kill Mr. Halo, but none of them lived up to their self-billing. Then Infinity Ward took their Call of Duty split franchise (it’s complicated) from World War 2 to a modern-day setting. Mr. Halo became Mr. #2, and we all know who # 2 works for. Modern Warfare has been #1 for a while now, and the sequel might well be the most anticipated video game of all time.

But Modern Warfare 2‘s platinum plaques and status is whack if it isn’t the baddest. Does the game live up to the unprecedented hype? Keep reading “below the fold”. Pretty Please.

Hecks yes it does.  If I was an ice cream vendor and if I told you instead of getting one kind of ice cream, that for the same price I’d give you three kinds of ice cream, would you say yes to this? Especially if it was 3 different but equally delicious kinds of ice cream. That is what we in the biz might call a good return on investment. Now imagine the ice cream had big guns inside of it, and you ate said ice cream while shooting Neo-Commies with the guns inside of your ice cream while base-jumping from the Empire State Building and landing on the White House lawn with your m4 about to put some freedom bullets into the Russians. And your ice cream has a big American flag sticking out of it. That is Modern Warfare 2. Freedom bullets For The Win. 

Aggregate Score: 90 out of 100.

One more disclaimer, which brings our grand total to 6-ish.  Normally Goldfish and I blend our reviews together in a way that each loses itspersonality and charm and instead is some sort of unholy union of components that might be typically found in a dumpster. But Goldfish’s review this time was so good as a stand-alone novella. So I’m going to give you his review and then mine. There is a lot of content here, so you might want to use the water closet and get some fresh coffee before starting. Or re-starting. Or continuing. Whatever, it’s go time.

Modern Warfare 2: Frat Guy Ascendith (Golfishus Rexus)

Modern Warfare 2 (henceforth called MW:2…even though that makes me want to load my MadCat with PPCs and a few racks of LRM20s) (Ed. Note – dork.) was a bestseller before it was even announced, a game-of-the-year contender before even one unshaven programmer began updating its engine.  Which is why I can’t imagine why JBJ insisted I chime in on this review…we all knew it’d get a 9/10 on the review sites and a healthy and marketable metacritic score.

And likely, it should have.  The first Modern Warfare had a compelling story and one of the most invigorating and action-packed multiplayer experiences to date.  It would take a chimp to ruin the formula developed in the first title.  Well, at least the simians weren’t making most of the game.

Graphics:

This installment looks pretty fantastic.  Environments are more interactive and destructive, particle effects are copious and attractive looking, and the new engine really pulls off some decent draw distances with heavy details.

That said, the game slowed to a crawl for me several times on the 360…most notably during large outdoor maps.  In single player that’s an annoyance, in multiplayer it’s damn infuriating.  That’s the only reason the tweens kept me to a 0 kills 15 deaths score I had. (Ed. Note – I had no such crawl, sounds like a personal problem.)

Game play:

The gameplay is a three-legged stool, with multi-player, spec ops and single-player.

Multi-player is fantastic, and though I continue to rail against the bastardization of RPG elements into ever other conceivable genre, MW:2 does it just as seamlessly as in the first installment…with just the right amount of progression and reward to balance out the reaming I receive on a regular basis while playing online.  It still irks me that if I talk with excitement about getting rank 2 fireball next level I’m some sort of social leper…but you jerks can talk with joy about getting a red-dot scope on your SCAR without even blushing. (Ed. Note – I just shot your mage with my scoped out SCAR before his fireball spell cooled down. You’re a dork and you just got pwnd.)

The unexpected jewel of this game is its coop mode, which pits two against various scenarios from sniping to defending.  The missions are difficult enough that I felt justified in making JBJ go read up on SWAT team lingo so we could communicate efficiently while playing …it’s too bad Ava is apparently adverse to the sounds of fragmentation grenades and automatic rifle fire, as JBJ had to play with the sounds down and without making any noises. (Ed. Note – untrue – she’s a modern warrior, we’re just making her master hand-to-hand combat before introducing weapons.  It’s like doing long-division before getting a calculator.)

The tense and challenging game play of coop leads me to the malformed and nearly vestigial leg of this stool…the single player campaign.  It’s sad to say, that a series that has had such unexpectedly decent storytelling (for shooters) as COD came out with this campaign.  The writers took every compelling moment from MW:1 and decided the only way to innovate on it was to repeat each element half a dozen times.  The campaign even failed to win any points with me by making references to “The Red Dawn”; any 80’s child can tell you that when that movie can’t bring a smile to your face something’s very wrong.  The only thing that might have made this mediocre experience bearable would have been an option to play it cooperatively…at least then I’d have been able to laugh it off with a friend as the Soviets start their invasion of the US on the East Coast (there really ARE other set pieces you can use, game designers).

Badassness:

Pretty darn badass.

Mush! Mush! Mush!

Presentation:

The game looks quite good, even on the 360.  Waypoints and objectives are clearly marked.  The sounds have been tweaked and mastered to a level that makes every weapon distinctive, and the audio is completely immersive (which is good…because for every ambush spot you choose, there’s a damned double shottie kid sneaking in from an alternate route).  (Ed. Note – my Counterstrike name used to be Shottie 2 Hottie, lol.) I can also say that this is one of the first soundtracks I’ve paid attention to in a shooter…and that’s saying something.  Turns out it was done by Zimmer…while he may not be your cup of tea, you’ve got to give it to the developers for paying attention to something that is normally an afterthought.

I do wish many of the levels were developed with a bit more color, and that different enemies had distinctive silhouettes.  The number of times I shot my British SAS team mates makes that whole Tillman affair understandable.

Online:

Coop and multiplayer.  Prepare yourself for foul mouthed younglings and you’ll be ready to dip your toes in.  Matchmaking is better than in the first installment, and I seem to have had fewer games fall apart when the host leaves.  I still recommend taking it in small doses…much like the single servings of Dreyer’s Slow Churned Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream which I’m eating now. (Ed. Note – two things. First, I didn’t want to call you out on the ice cream serving, but neither you nor I have eaten anything less than the entire gallon in our lives. Moderation and ice cream don’t go together. Second, the ice cream analogy is a bit of foreshadowing…)

Learning Curve:

The game progresses well, and once you haul yourself over the wall of learning the layout of the maps and the dynamic spawning system you’ll be right in the flow.

Much like Kris Kross, this game makes you want to jump, jump.

Modern Warfare 2: My Ice Cream Brings All the Boys to the Yard (Josh Being Josh)

The game is a first person shooter and I strongly believe the FPS genre works best in a modern context. Historic FPSs (like the landfill of World War 2 games) are cool because of the setting, but the guns really suck. Futuristic FPSs (like Halo) are cool because of the guns, but the environments have to work twice as hard to be believable but also fantastical. Most of the time, the futuristic games become boring and the historic games become too much work. Ergo the “in the near future” works really well – you can show off futuristic technology but still ground it with what people see on CNN. The modern warfare setting has meaning, context, and relevance, which I guess are three things that mean the same thing. And you shoot stuff with the same guns your military and cop friends might use, if they were loaded with disposable cash money.

The game has 3 modes, to come back to ice cream. The campaign, multiplayer, and all-new standalone co-op.  Each delicious in its own right.

Multiplayer. The chocolate ice cream. Precisely like the first game, with a few minor tweaks here and there. It has a leveling mechanic similar to an RPG – you unlock titles, weapons, perks, attachments, etc…  and the best “just another round” addictive properties of anything this side of Diablo. Or Borderlands, to be more modern. They’ve optimized the “noob experience”, meaning anyone can jump in and play. You’re still going to get pwnd for the first few weeks, but it feels more fun and balanced. But it doesn’t do this by nerfing the hardcores, either. Everyone likes it, or at least they should.

Co-Op. The Blue Bell Peppermint ice cream. You think it might be good and give it a whirl, and it is so amazing that you may never eat any other ice cream ever again. For-Nev-Er. These are a series of 20+ stand-alone 2-person missions, like novellas with guns. Some have you securing and holding an objective, others have you blowing stuff up, still others have you running like crazy. The best part is grabbing a friend and doing these together. Goldfish’s favorite is a level where one player is running on the ground to an extraction point while the other player hovers above in a Black Hawk helo, dropping .50s to cover him. There are also sniper missions, run n’ gun missions, etc… This mode is the only part of Modern Warfare 2 that is fundamentally different from MW1, but it is amazing. I might use that word too frequently, but Goldfish is parsimonious in his praise, so when he texted me with the word “awesome”, which is a first in our almost decade of gaming, I knew we were on to something special.

Hardest. Level. Ever.

Campaign. The crazy stuff Ben and/or Jerry come up with, like Triple Blue Chocolate Captain American Swirl Reindeer Droppings. (If they haven’t made that flavor yet, first!110101. To any lawyers out there – can I claim intellectual property rights if they do?) Let me address the main complaint against this mode. The intellectual elite of video games say it is too short. Nonsense. That’s like saying a book is too short. There is no too short or too long; there is the right length. The game is 6-8 hours, but would you really want a few extra hours of less-than-optimal content?  Remember the Library in Halo 1? It was too long by two hours. The MW2 ampaign is a great length. The other snobbish complaint is the lack of a coherent plot. Rubbish. You know what a great plot is? One where I shoot the hell out of Commies and then blow stuff up. I was thinking about which of the levels was my favorite – the snow mobile chase, the Gulag, taking back Whiskey Hotel (think a very important building with the initials “WH” ). They are all awesome. The campaign shocks, and then it awes.

The Granulars

Graphics:

How can a game run this buttery smooth when everything on the map is blowing up? I have no idea, but it is awesome. Everything about the game is beautiful – the guns, the character models, the lighting/shadows, the incredible set pieces, the explosions, etc… In fact, I’d like to sing MW2 a little song.  You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true. I saw your face in a crowded place and I don’t know what to do. I just made that song up.

The only thing, and I mean only, that I can nitpick at is that the White House doesn’t look precisely like the one from the West Wing – the Resolute Desk looks fine, but the chair behind it looks like an $89 chair from Office Depot. So I get to crash $500 million Predator Drones but President Bartlet Obama can’t sit in comfort? Plus the press room looks different than when CJ Cregg rocked the ‘House. But the nerd in me digresses…

Gameplay:

Great shooting mechanics, good physics, great levels of difficulty – the hardness steps up appropriately. It is a fast-paced wild ride. The control scheme is the best in the genre. The only complaint possible here is that the quick-time events have different button triggers – some use the right and left bumpers, some use the right joystick, some use a face button. This really isn’t a big deal, tho.

Badassness:

For all the reasons already mentioned. This is the most underrated component in video game reviews. We play games because they are badass, ergo badassness deserves its own category. I’m all about misusing latin words today.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, HUH!

Presentation:

Stellar presentation, from the loading menus to the sayings that pop up after you get killed. Which will happen quite a bit.

Online:

Fantastic multiplayer, sublime co-op. The definitive Xbox 360 online experience.

Learning Curve:

Decent learning curve. The only frustrating thing is being shot from angles you aren’t aware of. I guess this makes it more realistic, but sometimes it means that you memorize the map to get through a section, which seems bassackwards. This is especially true of the Rio levels.

Innovation:

Two of the three game modes don’t innovate . The one that does, really stands out.

Tilt:

The tilt catetory is to be able to weight the total score to what seems appropriate. Sometimes games are more than the sum of their parts, and sometimes they are less. Tilt helps balance things out. MW2 gets 9.

Aggregate:

The game of ’09 might be the game of ’10 as well, if you count the sustainability of multiplayer and co-op modes. There is only one way I know to sum up the game.

Till the roof comes up

Till the lights go out

Till my legs give out

Can’t shut my mouth

Till the smoke clears out

And my fire burn out

Imma rip this mess

Till my bone collapse

- Nate Dogg, Till I Collapse

Pics from here, here, here, here, and here.

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