Modern Warfare 2 - Is it worth going back to war?

Author's Rating:

Pros: online is fun, the story is good, graphics and sound are excellent

Cons: online can get laggy, people boost/cheat pretty regularly online, story is too short

The Bottom Line: 
The story is short, but the online gives it additional legs, and I sunk a ton of time into it.  Still, the online was occassionally frustrating - especially cheaters

Author's Review
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a very intense; rewarding gaming experience that is built around multilayer but still has a solid, if short, campaign mode.  The action maintains a usually brisk, object oriented pace that helps to advance a storyline that I personally thought was only average.  Shooter games are not my favorite genre.  My first one was probably Doom on the computer, and over the years I have played plenty that were entertaining (F.E.A.R, Battlefield: Vietnam, Star Wars Battlefront, etc) – but I enjoyed the prior Call of Duty games enough to want to give this one a try.

With record-setting sales since its release, it is safe at this point to call the game a marketing and sales success (with a combination of ads, packaged deals and so on) – but is the game fun?  In a word, yes.   With shooter games being near the bottom of my preferred genres (sports, RPG, fighting games tend to round out my favorites), that makes Modern Warfare 2 stand out even more.

Graphics – 4:

I’m stingy with perfect scores, but this game comes close.  The amazing environments are detailed and immersive, but more impressive is just how much is going on at all times without slowdown or graphic tearing or pop-in.  I have some screenshots and also have some video footage.  The screenshots are pretty but the game in motion is more impressive.

Sound & Music – 5:

Quality voice work, plenty of explosions and surround sound gun effects really help to draw you into the game.  The surround sound is actually quite useful as well, often giving you an indication of where the threats are at, even if you cannot see them at the time.  The music was also pretty good throughout.  Very few of the themes really stuck with me afterward, but none of them did anything to pull me out of the experience either.

Gameplay – 4:

Aiming is easy, shooting at targets is not a problem.  Sometimes terrain could be a hassle when it did not seem like it should have been, but overall the game was responsive, menus were easy to navigate and the lack of slowdown during the game kept things feeling fluid.  While the game seems to do all of these things pretty well, it never felt like there was something amazing to put it over the top either.  Most of the controls, content and so on feel familiar to fans of the series.

Intangibles – 5:

The campaign mode is entirely too short.  However, the multiplayer is where this series lives and dies, and on that front the game is incredibly solid.  The maps are enjoyable, the team sizes felt about right to me, lag was almost never an issue and the leveling-up aspect intrigued me most of all (it just appeals to the RGP gamer in me).

Overall – 4:

Not my favorite type of game, I’ve been over that.  Some of my friends though consider first-person shooters their absolute favorite type of game and those friends have been playing online pretty much non-stop since the game’s release.  One of them never even bothered to play the campaign mode, and just went right into the online matches.  So, if that is your type of game, then Modern Warfare 2 will probably fit the bill as well as any game out there currently.  There’s some language, plenty of killing, lots of weapons and more which makes this game a questionable one for children, so parents should be warned that it does come with an M rating for Mature 17+ suggested.