The highly popular Call of Duty series has returned in grand style with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game not only continues the epic series in a grand way but, for my money, is the best in the series to date and is one of the most intense and gripping games ever crafted.
The game is set in the near future and follows Marines and British Special Forces on missions on varied fronts around a centralized theme. One minute you are stealthily working your way through Eastern Europe in order to retrieve a vital piece of technology from enemy forces and the next moment you are hurtling through the mountains on a snowmobile.
The plot jumps the globe from Eastern Europe to South America and the Middle East, with a very intense segment in Washington D.C. where players have to defend the capitol against an enemy invasion. This is one of the more controversial moments of the game as players have to fight in suburbs, malls, and the nation’s capitol, and for some seeing the city in flame may be disturbing.
The action of the game is exhaustive, and the check point save system at times makes for some frustrations, but thankfully the designers have placed them at decent intervals that do not require gamers to redo large portions of the mission should they fail.
The plot of the game is amazingly vivid and detailed and the action is as fierce as anything in the series. The range of weapons and the highly detailed strategem and locales really make this the most fluid game in the series to date.
The multiplay of the game is solid, as not only are there numerous classes for players to chose, each with their own unique weapons, there are tons of perks which allow players to have greater speed, stamina, firepower and so on. I love the grenadier class as I love to lob grenades from the launch and take out the other players, though this method does at times draw venom from some of the online community. They prefer the use of rifles, hand grenades, and knives only. The game offers players the ability to customize their weapons and perks and gain new options as they increase in skill points earned in online matches. One nice perk is the ability to now select what your reward is for a kill streak, all the way up to a tactical nuke for a player who kills 20 in a row.
There are also several skill missions that you can play alone or with another player after the completion of the game. This is a good bonus, as the game was so furious, it seemed to end too quickly for me. But when I looked back, I realized I had covered an extensive amount of ground in the game.
In the end, the numerous multiplay modes, great graphics and story, and solid gameplay made the game not only the best game in the series, but in my opinion, the best game I have played this year to date.
