Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

So I guess I should clarify my position on first person shooters... It's not like I hate first person shooters, it's that I'm kind of indifferent to them. As far as I'm concerned, they're the Asians of the gaming world. They're all the same to me. Shooting someone in the face from a first person view is the same to me, no matter if it's an alien or a Russian mercenary. But seeing as how I'm reviewing games and not just the games I like, I figured I'd give one of the year's biggest releases, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a try.

Probably the toughest part about reviewing a game like Modern Warfare 2 (besides all of the mail I'll get for not giving the game the rating some of you think it deserves) is the lack of perspective, if you'll pardon the unintentional pun. Having not played many contemporary first person shooters, or even the predecessor of Modern Warfare 2, I have no idea what's different about the sequel, what's been changed for the better or worse. But maybe that's a good thing? I can gauge the game based on it's own merits and not hold it to the standards or preconceptions of the games that came before it.

In case you've been living under a rock, Modern Warfare 2 is the follow up to the Modern Warfare, which takes the franchise out of it's all too familiar World War 2 setting and places it firmly in the no-too-distant future. Modern Warfare 2's story splits it's time between a group of US Army Rangers and a multinational counter-terrorist unit called Task Force 141. Through an unfortunate series of events, the US is on the brink of war with the Russians. The plot starts to balloon out of control and ends up feeling like a Michael Bay movie, flashy but something you can't think about too much or the whole thing will unravel.

Although, the game does uses its first person view as a way to not only put you in the middle of the story viscerally and situationally but also emotionally. The much discussed level where you "play the role of a terrorist" is an example of this in Modern Warfare 2 but I wonder how effective this kind of storytelling is among the general gaming population. If anything, this type of narrative is certainly more effective in a first person shooter than in a third person view or any other type of game.

In addition to the story mode, Modern Warfare 2 includes two other modes, multiplayer and Spec Ops. In multiplayer, at first you're limited to a couple of different play modes, but as you play and gain more experience you can unlock various other types of multiplayer matches, including a third person view. (Which is only available in multiplayer modes... but it would have been an interesting experiment to see if playing the entire game from a third person view would change my opinion of the game.) In Spec Ops, you play through objective based missions either alone or with another player. The mission types have a lot of variety, including stealth and even driving objectives. It definitely adds replay value to the game and provides a nice change of pace.

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Recommendations