I cant tell you the last time I took this many notes while playing a game. Im flipping through page after page as I write this, reminded of my original intentions to discuss my experience with Modern Warfare 2: throw away the notes and just discuss the implications of the unsettling scene in the airport that drops you into a mass slaughtering of innocent bystanders. The first time I went through this obstacle course of cold-blooded murder, I was a little shaken up. The true power of the interactive medium revealed itself; games can be much more than innocent fun, and this is only the beginning. I want more. I want to be challenged and tested and moved by games, like I was here.
But enough about that. Lets get back to the notes and beyond the airport scene, leaving a larger discussion for another day. At the top of the first page, scribbled as the credits were rolling: Modern Warfare 2 was an awesome experience, an awesome game, and an awesome achievement in the continuing attempt to blend the craft of gamemaking with the craft of cinema. As a big fan of the first game, I expected something great, but I honestly thought the startling newness of Modern Warfare would leave expectations too high to match. It speaks volumes that Modern Warfare 2 was an even more satisfying, more intense experiencethe visual design is slightly more impressive in moments, but its the improved gameplay ideas and level design that are that much better and really matter in the end. Its the second time through that I really began to appreciate what Infinity Ward had accomplished, as I further tuned in to the games machinations.
Modern Warfare 2 is in many ways more of the same. The cynical player may indeed have expectations too high and walk away impressed but wanting more. I get that. The game largely recycles fundamentals: follow very direct, very linear commands through a very direct, slightly rigid space demanding that you stay on a course while chaos rains down all around you. Is the central AI of the enemy much better? Hard to say. What most impresses is how the resistance is established in the scene, as much fantastic set dressing as engaging shooting gallery.
Infinity Ward has a flair for the dramatic. I have friends far more hardcore than I with their competitive shooter natures, who get the demanding subtleties of pure gameplay moments, while I tend to be just as interested in how those moments play out on the persistently directed stage. Modern Warfare 2 peerlessly builds wonder and chaos and spectacle into its battlefield, yet the building blocks that organically shape the engaging combat rise from this incredible visual space. Getting pinned down underneath latticed rooftops in Rio De Jeneiro, darting around shattered columns in an underground prison in Russia, trapped in a casing of fog as thermal sites reveal deadly targets on an oil rig in the Arcticthe game plays out in sequences with weight and narrative force.
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