Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 PC Three

Kill streaks are back again and this time there's some customization involved. Don't want to use that extra UAV upgrade? You don't have to. You can wait to get that Predator drone to really blow away some opponents. It's clear that Infinity Ward has listened to their vast community of players from the last game and given them a huge amount of content to unlock and enjoy while they run around the levels shooting people.

It would be more enjoyable for PC players if Infinity Ward had decided to stick to what works the platform. Of course we are talking about support for dedicated servers, higher player counts, mod tools and more. Instead, PC players are stuck with either a random quick match which throws you some into laggy games with players that can be ranked well ahead of your own character, or a private match where options to change rules are relatively limited compared to what can be done on a private dedicated server. Forget about traditional LAN play set-ups; if you don't have an Internet connection to set up a private match, it's not happening.

The PC version does use Steamworks to offer things like bringing in friends to your party and leaderboards, achievements and the Steam Cloud to save your progress on a remote server so you can play Modern Warfare 2 from any PC you log into your Steam account on. All of these additions are welcome but they certainly don't make up for the game's lack of features that were a part of the first Modern Warfare game.

We do think there's a place for a quick match feature for average PC players who just want to jump in and enjoy the game quickly but as we mentioned in our open letter to Infinity Ward, we don't buy that the community would split as a result. Also, having an upper limit of 18 players in a match is silly when PCs could have more. We don't want to hear anything about what the levels are designed to support; that just plays into the mods issue and underscores how this is a console game at heart and the PC platform was kind of an afterthought.

Infinity Ward claims the changes for the PC version are to make the game better for the platform. In practice, however, that claim isn't really true. The PC version ofModern Warfare 2 isn't better. With the possible exception of the Steamworks features, it's simply the same as the console versions. It takes away all the things that hardcore PC shooter fans love about our platform for the sake of making every version of the game homogeneous. That includes, by the way, the whopping $60 price tag, which is $10 more than games of the same (or better) caliber. Considering that there are no royalty fees for the PC nor any extra content or features to justify the cost, it's a blatant money grab, pure and simple.

Infinity Ward, after starting out as a pure PC developer with the original Call of Dutygame, has clearly decided the console experience is best and have shoehorned that philosophy into the PC port of Modern Warfare 2 to the detriment of its many hardcore PC fans. There's a lot to like about the game, but its shallow single player experience, lack of PC specific features, and high price tag for the game keeps us from recommending it. If there's a sale sometime in the future, then consider picking it up. As it stands now, there are other PC games that give you a comparable or better PC gaming experience for $50 or less.

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Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 PC Two

It doesn't help that the plot is convoluted and hard to follow. The game's "characters" have no depth at all. They as a means of trying to explain the storyline, but it doesn't work. As a result, you feel nothing when a couple of the many characters you play in the game get killed.

Visually, the game is something of a mixed bag. There are some well done visual effects. Lighting is evocative at times and character animations are smooth. But the limitations of Infinity Ward's graphics engine are showing. The levels look and feel more like fake movie sets than actual places. The linear design of each level highlights the overall fake feel. Additionally, some of the art textures are dated, especially when it comes to water. The graphics are clearly meant for console specifications, but there are no options to increase the visual quality for high-performance computers. On the bright side, most PC gamers should have no problems running Modern Warfare 2 at high frame rates, but the look probably won't impress a lot of hardcore PC gamers.

Modern Warfare 2's single player campaign is fun but not terribly challenging. Its lack of a coherent storyline and no real characters will not make you forget truly memorable shooters like BioShock or Half-Life 2.

Infinity Ward decided not to put in co-op support in the campaign, wisely knew that players would be upset if there wasn't any co-op at all. Enter Spec Ops, a series of levels culled from this campaign and the previous Modern Warfare game, but re-imagined as an arcade-action experience. You play through the levels to achieve certain goals. If you make it through, you gain stars that eventually unlock even more levels to play. While you can play Spec Ops all by yourself it's definitely designed for two buddies to enjoy. In fact, one level is just for two players.

Goals in the Spec Ops mode include racing to complete objectives in a set amount of time, killing enemies or blowing up vehicles and more. It's very addictive, and believe it or not, it will likely take you longer to complete the Spec Ops mode than the regular campaign. However, for some reason you can't just jump in and find someone online to play Spec Ops. You have to bring a known friend online to play. The Spec Ops mode is quite fun and it helps take some of the sting out of Modern Warfare 2's shallow single player campaign.

Then there's competitive multiplayer. We will get to the PC version's features in a minute, but first we have to give our hats off to Infinity Ward for packing in tons of content, modes and levels in their multiplayer portion of the game. Everything that made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare such an time sink in multiplayer has been turned up to 11 here. There's the RPG-like perks system that adds new abilities and skills as you play and you can even get some secondary abilities in this edition. We also love the new Deathstreak abilities you can get. One of the coolest is Copycat which after you get killed lets you take on all the weapons, abilities and more of the player that killed you.

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Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 PC

All right. It's time to separate the men from the geeks. You may have read a bunch of reviews of how great Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is but we bet that most of them have concentrated on the console versions. After all of the hubbub about no dedicated servers, no mod tools and only 18 players allowed online, can Infinity Ward's latest first-person shooter be any good on the PC?

Actually, there's quite a bit to like about the game as it turns out... but many of our concerns regarding the PC port of Modern Warfare 2 also proved to be true.

Let's start with the game's very short (inside of six hours on normal) single player campaign. Although it's incredibly brief, playing through the campaign is much like experiencing a Hollywood summer action flick. That's also a bad thing because, while it's thrilling during your playtime it also means that you will likely forget about the whole experience once you finish the campaign and it's also unlikely that you'll want to go back and replay any of it.

There are lots of huge levels to play through in single player. The game itself is truly global as you travel to four different continents, and there's even a brief non-playable sequence in orbit. From raiding a Russian military base to running through the slums of Rio to fighting in the Oval Office itself, Infinity Ward knows how to craft a single player experience that will keep you on your trigger and your toes. AI for the enemies is fairly solid. They will run toward you but also try to duck and flank your position at times so it's not entirely scripted.

In all of that fun if mindless shooting, however, comes THAT SCENE. By now you likely know that (BIG SPOILER WARNING) there is an early sequence in Modern Warfare 2 where your good guy character has been recruited by the CIA to infiltrate a terrorist organization. The sequence centers on the group massacring unarmed civilians in a Moscow airport via a hail of bullets. (SPOILER WARNING ENDS). As has been pointed out the game does allow you to bypass playing in the sequence itself with no penalty and even if you do decide to play in the scene you can choose not to participate in the grisly part.

We are no prudes here. We think that games can offer up morally dark sequences like the above just like any other form of art, but frankly it's way out of place in Modern Warfare 2. Most of the game is handled like a Michael Bay-on-steroids movie. In other words you are supposed to have fun. Throwing in such a dark and brutal scene in the single player campaign just puts you out of the feeling that we are playing something that really should be for entertainment. We question why Infinity Ward would put such a sequence in the campaign. We are guessing they just wanted to be talked about on Fox News. If that was their intent , then mission accomplished. For us, it was way too jarring.

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Modern Warfare 2 is a BIG Success

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's launch was a huge success, the game generated $550 million during its first five days on the market. MW2 actually broke Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's five-day global box-office record of $394 million.

Modern Warfare 2 also dominated last week's game charts in the United Kingdom, with the Xbox 360 version selling over 1 million copies. The NPD sales figures for the United States should be available in a couple of weeks.

Despite the boycott, the PC versions first-week sales topped COD4 and COD5: World at War.

Robert Bowling - "The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has actually outsold the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in it's first week.

Essentially, all this percentage proves is that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions sold great, not that the PC version sold poorly, because that's actually not the case. The PC version has done tremendous in it's first week, better than our previous game."

On a side note, Modern Warfare 2 had over 2 million concurrent users on Xbox Live last Wednesday, which overtook Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 with ease. Over 5 million hours of multiplayer matches were played through Xbox Live on that day. Sony has not revealed how many PS3 users are playing the game over the PlayStation Network.

Hidden Game Modes
Modern Warfare 2's developer console has been hacked, thus allowing modders to access many of the games hidden 'features'. It seems that MW2 has 4 hidden game modes that didn't make it in time for the games release.

Arena - Round based capture the flag, with one flag in the middle of the map.

Global Thermonuclear War - There is a nuke in the middle of the map, and both teams have to get to it and set it off.

OneFlag - Just like capture the flag, but one team defends the flag and the other tries to capture it.

VIP - One team tries to get the VIP to the extraction zone, while the other team tries to kill the VIP.

It's unknown if these game modes will be available later as DLCs for the Xbox 360 and PS3 users. Check out one of the hidden game modes in the video below.

GameStop Hosts World's Largest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Tournament

Separate the men from the Pyle's.

GameStop, the world's largest video game and entertainment software retailer, today announced it will host the world's largest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Tournament. On Friday, ............ Find out when, more than 2,900 U.S. GameStop locations will kick off the player vs. player tournament in-stores on the Xbox 360. Round 2 will be held via Xbox Live, powered by gamebattles.com/gamestop. Players will be competing for a trip to the finals event for bragging rights and a $5,000 grand prize.

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Modern Warfare 2 Trade-ins Expected to be Low

GameStop not expecting many used titles until early next year.

It's been close to two weeks since this holiday's most anticipated title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, launched in just about every store across the globe. And despite its semi-short campaign length, it appears most players will be hanging onto the title until well into the New Year.

I spoke with GameStop VP of Marketing Tony Bartel a little while back about this, and he says Call of Duty titles are rarely seen back at the store until about two months after its release.

"Typically, we don't see a lot of people trading back in their new games right away," Bartel told IGN. "In fact, when you look at our used sales, at any given time, less than four percent of those used sales come from new games launched in the last 60 days."

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