PS3 Review – Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty would not be Call of Duty without its online multiplayer. If you played the original Modern Warfare at all online, you will be immediately familiar with Modern Warfare 2. The controls are the same, the overall level and perk systems are the same, etc. What has changed is… everything else. The level cap has increased from 55 in Modern Warfare (and 65 in World at War) to 70. To help get you there, you can unlock an insane number of challenges that earn you new weapons and bonus XP. The perks have been tweaked and made upgradeable to “Pro” versions that further enhance your soldier and add even more strategic and tactical options to your repertoire. There are several that return from Modern Warfare and several that are new to Modern Warfare 2. New perks include “Scavenger,” which lets you pick up ammo from dead enemies, “Bling” for adding multiple attachments to your weapons, and “Scrambler” for jamming nearby enemies’ radar.
The kill streak rewards from Modern Warfare are back with some friends. UAV brought along his brother “Counter-UAV” for disabling enemy radar. It’s much harder to call in an air strike when you don’t have a map for reference. The “Air Strike” brought along the “Predator Missile” that is guidable by the player and rains down death on your enemies. The “Helicopter” wasn’t invited, so it invited everyone else that it knew, from “Sentry Gun” to a player-controlled “AC-130″ gunship. If you are either lucky or extremely good, you may even find the “Tactical Nuke” after a kill streak of 25. Hands down, the best new kill streak reward weighs in at a very obtainable 4 kills; the “Care Package.” This is no box of cookies and mix tapes; a care package will hold anything from a UAV to an AC-130 that can be called in. This is a great way for lower level and lower skill players to get a taste of the more advanced kill streak rewards without having to be able to string together 11 kills for an AC-130. To add another twist to it, the care package shows up on the map and can also be picked up by enemies. Be careful where you drop your care packages!
In addition to being rewarded for killing, you now get rewarded for dying! As you rank up, you will also unlock new “Death Streaks.” For example, “Copycat” will allow you to steal your killer’s class after dying 4 times without a kill. The noobish “Martyrdom” perk from Modern Warfare is back as a death streak, as is “Final Stand”. For those that just need a little extra help, you can use “Painkiller” to give you a big health boost for a short time after you spawn.
Leveling up and completing challenges also earns you a new badge of honor called the Call Sign. The Call Sign is a badge that pops up when you do something cool or stupid during a match. The enemy you kill sees your call sign during the killcam. Everyone sees your call sign when you do something awesome like shoot down a helicopter or capture an objective, etc. The Call Sign includes an unlockable title that describes something awesome or stupid that you’ve done. There are also a bunch of unlockable emblems that you can choose that are graphical representations of your deeds on which your clan tag, PSN ID, rank, and level show up as well.
To help you grind up to level 70, Infinity Ward has kindly added a whole slew of new challenges to go along with the new features of multiplayer and to help give you those extra XP boost injections. Each weapon includes a “Mastery” challenge that gives you a ton of XP for unlocking all of the attachments for a particular weapon. But to unlock each attachment, you have to get kills while using the previous attachment, so now there is even more incentive for people to kill me with a rifle mounted grenade launcher. Thankfully, the range of the “noob tube” has been tweaked so you won’t be getting killed by one from across the map anymore.
A new Call of Duty also needs to have a bunch of new weapons, and Modern Warfare 2 is happy to oblige. New to this installment are the likes of the FAL and the ACR assault rifles, the UMP45 and Vector sub-machine guns, the L86 LSW and AUG HBAR light machine guns and the Intervention and M21 EBR sniper rifles. Shotguns like the SPAS-12 and AA-12 are now secondary weapons, as are RPGs, AT4-HS rocket launchers and Stinger and Javelin missile launchers, as well as machine pistols like the PP2000 and M93 Raffica. This makes the lives of snipers much easier, and lasts much longer when an enemy gets too close for comfort. If you are a pacifist, or just want to help our your teammates, you can whip out the Riot Shield. The Riot Shield protects most of the front of your body from weapons fire and explosives, allowing you to withstand most assaults and allow you to protect an objective or just keep from getting shot again for the tenth time in a row. Gone are the ever present frag grenades and the multiple frag grenade perk, but as a consolation prize, we get quite a few new “equipment” options. Grenade lovers will still love the Semtex timed sticky bomb, and the throwing knife is a re-usable knife that you can fling at an enemy to silently take them out.
No game of this scale is without its issues. Shortly after the official launch, party invites for PS3 players stopped working due to server errors, but this issue was given top priority by Infiity Ward, Activision and Demonware and fixes were available relatively quickly. As of now, multiplayer is working beautifully, despite having more than 300,000 people online at the moment.
Despite the controversy and the multiplayer birthing pains, the bottom line is simple. Infinity Ward knows how to tell a good story. Not only that, they know how to make it fun, challenging, and keep their players coming back for more.
PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score
Bar raising online multiplayer CoD 4: Modern Warfare… on steroids |  |
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26 Responses to “PS3 Review – Modern Warfare 2”
Great Review!!!!!!!!!!
I like the level called “The only good day….was yesterday” They re-created the shower scene in the move “The Rock” with Sean Connorey and Nicholas Cage. I couldn’t stop laughing when I popped up out of the ground into the showers.
Awesome review. I haven’t picked this up yet, but hopefully will have it by christmas
the story is actually awesome, l could care less for the story of the 1st MW. Excellent review
I’m loving this game. I’ll be keeping it for years to come. I must say though that I disagree with the contention that Infinity Ward knows how to tell a good story. They are actually known for not telling stories very well but having great action moments. I personally thought the delivery and presentation of the story in MW2 was the worst I have seen in any game to date. With that said, the Co-Op and Multiplayer more than makes up for it.
5/5…sounds about right!
@The Queef Sisters
definitely felt the same way about the shower scene. i always really liked the movie “the rock”.
but my favorite part is after you take out the guard at the begining of ‘the only easy day… was yesterday’… you take him into the water and then when you get back to the surface two of your soldiers are waiting to pull you up… it got me super hype and made me feel like i we were about to go in there deep and lay boys down.
this is a great game. the online is even more addicting than the first and this game is easily deserving of the editors choice platinum trophy.
so I just played the level where you end up going into the airport and shooting at civilians and I guess I didn’t have a problem with it…it’s just a game, I would never do it in real life…People just need to relax and take video games for exactly what they are…VIDEO GAMES! Actually if I was in that situation in real life I would drop back behind the Russian dudes and then just rip a bunch of bullets into all of them…but then I guess the game would be over and it wouldn’t be as dramatic…
Anyway, great game I just wish the single player campaign was much longer. I understand a lot of people seem to believe that they only sacrifice single-player length to put all the extra time into the multiplayer portion, and I also understand that a lot of people would rather just play the multiplayer, but my question is this…why do they have to sacrifice a lengthy single player for multiplayer? If I did something great, like Infinity Ward does multiplayer, I wouldn’t just put most of my focus in that area. I would want to work twice as hard and make a single player campaign, which is absolutely amazing anyway, and give that experience to the player for at least 12 hours so that there is no way the consumer has anything to complain about and I receive praise all around. I think it just comes down to Activision telling Infinity Ward, “If you keep the story short in all the games then you can save some of your ideas for sequels and we can keep the franchise going twice as long or just charge the customer more for it later as DLC.”
It’s all I played for a week and it will be the only game I play for a while … Love COD MW2!
[...] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released only about a week ago, and so far it has become one of the most popular online titles of all time. With an average of around 400,000 Modern Warfare 2 players online, the competition to rank up has been fierce on the PlayStation Network. While Modern Warfare 2 features dozens of unlockables ranging from weapons to equipment, there have been a few additions from both of the previous Call of Duty titles. Callsigns and emblems have been a great addition to the series and have helped the millions of online players worldwide distinguish themselves from one another. There are dozens upon dozens of each, and thankfully below we have images of every single callsign and emblem within the game. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } [...]
[...] Modern Warfare 2 has been a very popular game the past few weeks, and rightfully so. Although the multiplayer has gotten the most attention, the cooperative experience is considered to be equally as good. The cooperative mode also allows for singleplayer play within the challenge maps, and many players try to achieve high records within these maps. According to a recent account, one player has actually managed to beat the record of the development team at Infinity Ward. Within the special ops mode of Modern Warfare 2 there is the popular speedrun map titled “The Pit” which many players use to gauge how much skill they have in the game. The record set by Infinity Ward on the map has been a challenge for many and was set at a mere 22:60. However, a player has managed to clock in a time of only 22:10, which many fans thought was unreachable. [...]
[...] before its release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was expected to break sales records which proved to be true after it hit store shelves. And while [...]
Hey by “intervention” do u mean the Cheytac M200 “Intervention”???
Dont know what im talking about, search it on Youtube.
[...] Ward’s very own Modern Warfare 2 was released only weeks ago, and while a few issues existed in the original release, most of them [...]
ilove it my best game cod1,2,3,4,5,6
[...] to console. Games like Killzone 2, inFamous, Uncharted 2: Among Theives, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. With 2009 coming to a close, it’s time to set our sights on 2010, a year filled with the [...]
[...] Modern Warfare 2 was released nearly two months ago, it smashed almost every sales record in gaming history. With [...]
mw2 sucks. 1943 is better and bc2 will most likely be better.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is much better. I can only recommend this game to the casual market. The single-player is undoubtedly the worst I have personally experienced in an FPS. The multi-player is ridden with glitches and exploits, and the worst part is that there is no incentive for teamwork.
Hands down this game is the game of ’09. BUT! Its 2010 now, mw2 is still the biggest hit. JUST LOOK AT IT. Estimate 105,000 just in TDM. WOW!.
JOIN OUR PS3 CLAN. “QUIK” thats QUIK. Its a Quik Scope/ No Scope clan. MUST USE INTERVENTION WITH NO ATTACHMENTS, ONLY FMJ AND SCILENCER.
OH AND YA BEST USE “SLIGHT OF HAND”. NO OTHER WEAPONS allowed. NO side arems. NO knifing. (Throwing knives acceptable)
this game was HORRIBLE
This game is too addicting
[...] Modern Warfare 2 was a smash hit both in sales and reception when it released nearly a year ago. While the game was impressive on almost all fronts, exploits seemingly hampered an otherwise amazing multiplayer experience. Judging by the latest information from Treyarch, the team seems to be taking exploit prevention more seriously than Infinity Ward. [...]
[...] play or skill. However, this might not be the permanent resting place for the multi-million selling Modern Warfare 2, as Infinity Ward plans to fix the issues before they become even [...]