Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Campaign Only)

WAR. UH. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN'. SAY IT AGAIN!

Last month, the highly anticipated Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 slammed headfirst onto the shelves, awaiting the grubby hands of the hardcore and casual alike. A new edition of a Call of Duty game typically delivers what fans want, and in this case, much more.

In Infinity Ward’s latest installment of their Call of Duty franchise, you again assume multiple roles, first beginning your violent journey as U.S. Army Ranger Joseph Allen, instructing new recruits how to fire a weapon in Afghanistan. This, and a quick time trial serves as your tutorial and difficulty gauge. After replaying the time trial a few times to freshen up on my first-person shooter skills, I headed off into the campaign under the Normal difficulty setting.

You begin game proper taking an Afghan municipality from a group of terrorists, where you do so well that General Sheppard enlists you into his elite counter-terrorist unit, Task Force 141. Meanwhile, veteran members Gary “Roach” Sanderson and “Soap” MacTavish are retrieving a important piece of tech from a downed satellite. Allen’s first mission, as part of a CIA spec ops assignment, involves becoming one of Russian terrorist Vladimir Makarov’s right hand men.

You, Makarov, and two other of his closest buddies proceed to commit one of the most heinous acts ever put forth in a video game. Armed with automatic rifles, your new friends mow down hundreds of unarmed civilians and TSA agents in a Russian airport. Fortunately, you are only required to keep up with Makarov, not necessarily pull the trigger on the innocents. But as you watch others crawl for their lives, behind benches and coffee counters, and as you listen to the screams of terror you are enabling, you really feel quite the emotional impact of such an event. Once the act of terror as been completed, it’s revealed Makarov knows you are an American and kills you at the scene. The Russian government finds you, believes the U.S. was in support of this massacre, and subsequently launches a full scale invasion upon the East Coast, evading U.S. early detection systems. As Army Ranger Ramirez you trek the streets of the Virginian suburbs and Washington, D.C., battling the invading Russians. As Task Force 141 operative Roach you seek to find Makarov and expose him as the true mastermind behind the Russian airport slayings.

This guy is a douche. Like, biggest-douche-in-the-universe douche.

Never before have I played an action war title that felt so real. Maybe it has been a long time since I played what the industry has had to offer for war games, sticking close to futuristic titles like Halo and Half Life, but there was something peculiar about defending the front line in a shopping plaza of a Taco ToGo (Taco Bell), Burger Town (Burger King) and a sports bar and grill that looked an awful lot like TGI-Fridays. I swear, I felt as if I could have been fighting in front of a Publix, the place of my employment. The missions found out of the country didn’t strike as hard of a chord, but they were still bone shatteringly real, and the fire fights required some amount of tactics, instead of the usual run and gun of aforementioned titles. Maybe I'm just happy I'm not fighting the German's again, and in the 1940s.

Watching the Russian viciously attack the homeland made me actually angry, and I played the game with a vicious emotion. I really wanted to kill the attackers. They violated my territory, and I felt a strong tie to my task of defending what was ours, even though it was all in a virtual world. The same can be said for the task of finding and revealing that bastard Makarov.

The atmosphere and environments were top of the line. Everywhere I went, I was enthralled in the game. Nothing was so jarringly “video game” that it violated my experience. My only gripe would have to be how some of the homes you must venture into are a bit unrealistically spacey and large. My perception might be skewed, but houses, even those owned by the wealthy, aren’t usually like that. There is always an amount of clutter or tight spaces, even if it’s minimal.

The game play is something to behold. There is an even mix of “Holy shit, this is dumb” hard, where there’s a particular wall of enemies that you seem to repeatedly get trampled by, and “TAKE THAT” instances where you enact great moments of kick-assery. The game doesn’t stick to only gunplay, taking brief breaks to let you scale an ice mountain, drive a snow mobile, pilot a speed boat, and more. Some of my favorite sequences were breach and clear opportunities. You and your squad mates bust down the doors of a room, and, in bullet time, take out all the enclosed enemies. Another is using the remote controlled Predator drones, your rocket friends in the sky, to aim and fly into your biggest targets or simply a large foot team of opposing soldiers.

Shooting from the hip, what one typically does in every other first person shooter, is mostly ineffective. Instead, the game prefers you stop, aim, and fire, making for a more realistic war experience. You have to hunker down, in a trench, behind some wood, and strategically take out your foes.

Proper "hunkering down" pose.

The loading screens in-between missions were passive, because the story progressed while you waited, listening in on conversations and tactical strategies of your next task. Also, I was very pleased to see the missions progress without stopping to load the next environment in the middle of them. In game ambiance, and sound effects were brilliant. The score, main theme provided by Hollywood great Hans Zimmer, was incredible. The story, overall, was written quite cohesively and strung the campaign together nicely.

This installment of Infinity Ward’s favorite child was given so much gamer and media hype. I firmly believed it deserved every bit of it.

Oh and I’ve also heard good things about the multiplayer.