Modern Warfare 2 Review

All Modern Warfare 2 must be is a great shooter, and it delivers. This is the Call of Duty experience, deconstructed, reconsidered, and obsessively optimized over 15 uninterrupted years of iteration. I know once I’m taking part in a Black Ops game because it has offbeat arcade modes and the latest iteration of Nuketown. I know I’m taking part in a Modern Warfare game because the shooting is so finely tuned that I wish to take my Gunsmith build out to dinner. Infinity Ward has formally mastered the moment gratification of aiming down sights and deleting targets.

That goes an extended way, although some of Modern Warfare 2’s biggest swings, similar to revamped progression and a genre-bending campaign, are less elegant. It also suffers from an obtuse UI, fits of crashes, weird bugs, and the unexplained absence of primary options like stat tracking. However altogether, it’s a superb year for Call of Duty.

Gunplay

I said in 2019’s CoD review that Modern Warfare “sets the bar high for first-individual gun feel.” Consider Modern Warfare 2 the new bar. Ballistics are as soon as again physically simulated (not hitscan), however you would not know it from playing on regular 6v6 maps. On area maps with quick sightlines, weapons behave like lasers that immediately tag targets. Jump into a 64-player Ground War match and the identical guns accommodate to firefights spanning whole city blocks, requiring players to lead shots and account for bullet drop. It’s kind of wild how flexible and seamless the system is—even in the newest Battlefield, a series that’s dealt in simulated ballistics for 20 years, weapons are a little too slow up close.

Modern Warfare 2’s silky physics examine favorably in case you’ve been enjoying Vanguard for the past yr, or even better if you happen to’ve stuck with Cold War for the last two. I by no means quite got over Cold War’s noticeably sluggish hit detection; it’d take round 5-7 frames for level-blank shots to register in my tests. Under equally unscientific testing conditions (me counting frames in replays recorded at 60 fps), MW2’s latency is a far less noticeable 2-3 frames. It is not clear to me exactly what number of factors are at play here. It could be that Treyarch’s weapons appear slower because they are slower by design, but regardless, Infinity Ward’s interpretation is better.

As a counterbalance to Modern Warfare 2’s wicked-quick ballistics and time-to-kill, Infinity Ward has pumped the brakes on operators themselves. By way of movement, this is by far the slowest CoD in latest memory. Established traversal techniques like slide canceling and bunnyhopping, a lot to the dismay of CoD’s loudest fans(opens in new tab), have been deliberately abolished. The minimap, breaking with 15 years of tradition, no longer highlights enemies as red dots every time a shot is fired. Traditionalists will inform you these tweaks are bad for the series—that they “lower the skill gap” or encourage dishonorable camping—but this paints an incomplete picture.

By gluing our boots more firmly to the ground, Call of Duty has lastly created the house to be a more methodical, dare I say tactical, FPS. For the first time in years, it is actually a better concept to tread lightly, hold angles, and listen for footsteps than full-sprint down every straightaway and bunnyhop around corners. And allow me to formally debunk the camping paranoia—sure, sooner or later a guy named I_Just-Shot-Ya will set up on top of a building and look through a scope for the whole thing of your match, however thus far this is no more widespread than we’re already used to. In reality, the arrival of my new favorite throwable, the Drill Cost, makes it easier than ever(opens in new tab) to dislodge a comfortable camper.

My only gripe is that Modern Warfare 2 would not go far enough. The omnipresence of the UAV implies that I still spend way too much time glancing at the map for red dots. The threat of sudden destruction by the hands of overpowered stealth bombers, chopper gunners, and miniature tank drones stays constant. I might Ctrl+A+Delete all killstreaks from the game if it have been up to me, though I reckon a move that monumental would create an angry mob outside Activision.

The Basilisk, in each size and stature, delivers on the promise of hand cannon, and it’s cool that I could’ve told you that had I only heard it fired from half a mile away. We think of Call of Duty as arcadey and unsophisticated, but MW2 disrupts that reputation. Infinity Ward demonstrates its care for fidelity and intricacy. Individual bullets in Modern Warfare 2 snap downrange and ship rippled, gradually-waning shockwaves by means of the air. It is not just about whether or not the guns look cool and make loud sounds (though each apply right here)—MW2 cares just as a lot about the routine actions that get FPSes from A to B. Reload animations bask in tacticool mastery with trendy yet efficient magazine swaps that’d get the John Wick stamp of approval.

That Basilisk revolver has three completely different reloads depending on how many rounds are left within the chamber, together with a distinct animation for reloading two spent casings without replacing all six. Sound effects are what tie it all collectively: Within the clip above, I counted eight unique scrapes, clicks, and metallic clangs for just one reload animation. I wonder how many of these 88 compressed gigabytes on my SSD are raw audio.

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