MW2- Another perspective

Considering Dennis openly admitted that he hasn't really even played the first COD4, I thought it would be prudent to tell you what I thought of the game, seeing as I recently racked up 1000 hours of COD4 MP on Xfire, and have played the first game singleplayer so much that it hurts.

The singleplayer experience is similar in length to the first game and essentially continues where the last singleplayer left off. Unfortunately, if you've played COD4, you're going to be finding a lot of stuff in here repetitive. Things that were fun to do or watch the first time round don't bring that much enthusiasm and you only really start to get interested in the second half of the campaign. This could be put down to a lack of innovation on IW's part. Sure, you get to fire some predator missiles now and then, but for the rest of the time you will be seeing things that have already been tried and tested in COD4. By far the most interesting new part of the singleplayer are the all too brief vehicle scenes where you can control a snow mobile for example.

Dennis said the game is well written and I suppose this is true, however it is not very well explained in parts. Relationships between members of your squad are not fully understandable if you haven't played COD4 and there are some major plot points where there is a lack of explanation to the player as to what has just happened. This is still a fun singleplayer game, but it doesn't feel like a proper sequel as much as episode two of the same game.

I'm going to skip to graphics in general now, and simply say that the graphics have been tweaked. They haven't developed a new engine or anything, but that doesn't bother me because they still look good. Just don't expect to be blown away by new graphics or anything.

Multiplayer is an interesting mixture of good things and bad things. The maps and gameplay are new, plus new weapons and killstreak unlocks mean you will never want to stop playing. The problem is, it's likely you'll be forced to stop playing all the time. If you and a bunch of friends want to play together you'll have to make a party and try and join up with another bunch of people wanting to play. Private matches are also at the moment completely obsolete, because you can only get points through matchmaking.

Also, if one of your friends is disconnected from the server you're playing on, the matchmaker will sometimes find a replacement and you'll all have to leave to get back into a game together. On top of this, these "lobbies" have only ever lasted 6 maps at MOST for me. It is very irritating having to spend so much time on menus instead of transitioning smoothly between each map and staying with the same player group. The only problems in terms of gameplay is that fact that there is no lean button on PC anymore, which doesn't seem that irritating until you try it.

If you can get into a game, you'll enjoy it immensely and I would still recommend buying the game, I simply couldn't resist adding a dolop of negativity to Dennis' cake of awesome.