Video Games Suck - Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2

I remember the days were a video game took months to finish, and even then you needed the strategy guide. Then they got progressively easier, and you could finish them in two or three days. I just finished Modern Warfare 2 in one sitting, and strangely enough it still felt longer than Modern Warfare 1

Infinity Ward releases the sequel to the best selling console game of this generation, will it live up to the hype, or will Jeff Keighly give it a high score regardless because he's a lying, conniving sac of shit? Lets find out.

Story: I'll be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea what the fuck happened. You play 3-8 characters in the game, but it's hard to keep track because some die, some come back to life, and others change aliases. You start out in Afghanistan as a training mission. Afterwards you go to retrieve something (US codes I think) from a really cold place. Then you get recruited by the CIA to shoot up an airport, thereby gaining points slaughtering innocent civilians (Kick Ass!). Unfortunately, after all the good times, Makarov, presumably the bad guy, executes you. Apparently this implicates the entire US --this was the first plot hole that lost me. Then they go to the City of God (Rio), you shoot up some of the locals. Then you go back to America where it's under attack --second plot hole: who? why? how? To stop this war, you have to save a prisoner from a gulag --third plot hole. This guy, turns out to be captain Price. He then detonates a nuclear bomb at high altitude to generate an EMP blast which destroys all the Russian vehicles and planes over Washington --fourth plot hole: shouldn't that also destroy every american plane as well? Fifth plot hole: wouldn't the affects of radiation still be dangerous? Sixth plot hole: a space station/satellite gets destroyed in this explosion, but I don't think a nuke is that powerful; that space station was thousands of miles away. After an escape, it turns out the American general, Sheppard, double crosses Price and Soap and Roach (who you play as) and tries to kill Price and Soap (who you now play as). He does this to 'tie up loose ends', whatever that means. Then you go after him --seventh plot hole: what happend to the bad guy, Makarov? Before you kill the general, he mentions how he lost 30,000 men in a day and now he will not have to worry about running out of recruits --eighth plot hole: what the hell does this have to do with anything. To their credit, Infinity Ward did their best to avoid annoying cliches like Russians fighting with crapy ass AKs, and from-the-hood stereotypes. It was also very gutsy, so they depicted death faithfully.

Graphics: The graphics vary from level to level. So the level in the snowy mountains is phenomenal. I can only compare it to the Shadow Moses level in MGS4. The levels in the desert not so much. Levels in America are good, the one in Brazil is stunning, and the one on an oil rig is good too, and they used really bright colors like in Mirrors Edge.The animations are all great. They definitely improved the water visuals where they exist.

Gameplay: This game is FUN. They keep everything fresh, so you go from climbing the side of a mountain, to tracking and killing people in a snowstorm to escaping on snow mobiles. All I have to say is that this is a thrill ride. I feel lame, but it reminded me of ski-free on Windows 3.1. Also, there's a really cool river race at the end which is almost as good as the River level in Far Cry 1. In the Rio level, after you shoot up the slum you have to run across the roof tops to GTFO. Then you fall and lose your weapons and the locals hunt you down like a dog, so you got to book it out of there. Then there's a level where you shoot up the airport. I don't care what anyone says, shooting defenseless men and women is KICK ASS. I have never had that much fun mowing down civilians since Die Hard Trilogy 2. After all that mayhem, they bring in the FSB and you fuck their shit up. They have also upped the number of soldiers on screen at any one time. Around 20-50 at a time, and the AI is really good. They also got unmanned aerial vehicles, and more guns, movable turrets, the whole shebang.

The only criticism I have is that the game is incredibly chaotic (the story elements don't help). The Rio level in particular. There, people come at you from everywhere. I don't mind flanking, but since you don't have a sense of direction to begin with, you start to wonder if you are headed in the right direction. In the level where you have to defend Washington, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was just running around like a chicken with its head cut off. All throughout the game someone is shouting orders on the comm. But you can't hear hear half of them. Therefore, you don't know where to go, and this is compounded by the fact that you can't see who's shooting you, which brings us to my final, and biggest complaint.

Although the game is not hard in the classical sense (see Far Cry 1), it is frustrating as hell. If you stick your head out from around a corner, any corner, you get shot. INSTANTLY. There might be a microsecond delay as a result of controller lag, and slow clock cycle on the crap 360, but it is for all extensive purposes instantaneous. It's as if the AI has cat like reflexes. I had to put the difficulty to the lowest setting because this was such a pain in the ass. So the game amounts to popping out of cover, soaking up bullets like a sponge to see where the fire is coming from, then getting back into cover until you recover. Other problems include, but are not limited to: grenades that roll [away from your intended target], the compound effect of your view shifting 30 degrees and the screen going terminally blurry every time you get shot, and quite frankly a heavy emphasis on suspension of disbelief. I can understand two SAS soldiers taking out an entire squad, and I can believe a delta force operative with a nano suit taking out the whole North Korean army, but I'm not buying 4 US recruits wiping out and entire Russian platoon, air force and all.

Multiplayer: Only fagots play online console games. Although it could be argued I already fail at life for owning a console.

Conclusion:All around it was a really fun game, a little frustrating, somewhat chaotic, and the plot blew donkey dick, also it lost several man points for captain Price trying to act all high and mighty preaching peace and justice using big words. However, it more than made up for it by letting you kill innocent people at the airport. So that makes up for the flaws. But the best part of the game, is the last scene, where general Sheppard has captain Price pinned down and he's going to work on him. Just punching the shit out of him. You are supposed to throw your knife at him, but it's so much more fun to watch the old man get a good bashing. Self righteous British bastard.

9/10