Anyone else share this opinion?

[VENATOR]

I think CodMW2 is mediocre - compared to its hype - both on Singleplayer and Multiplayer. I tried Spec Ops too, nothing amazing, IMO. It's a good game, but my friends at school are just RAVING about it but I honestly don't see what's so special. I'd be interested if anyone else shares this view, or if anyone wants to contribute some reasons as to why they like it so much, please go ahead.

Don't flame me!

[Major Banter]

I don't intend to flame, but neither will I post anything else here after this one post. LET'S DO THIS.

Single Player: An undeniably overhyped wtf-athon. As a British citizen, I found a lot of the game very difficult to identify with. COD4 had the massively superior campaign and it's due to the simple expedient of being incredibly tightly written. The second game reeks of hardware pushing. The favela levels had a good buildup, but it just descended into brutal streetfighting that only comes alive on Hardened. The real problem with the Brazil levels is that you're constantly popping out of cover to get shot to fuck. Then you go back into cover, despite the fact you've got Soap and Ghost in your ears yelling "DON'T GET PINNED DOWN! MOVE MOVE MOVE!" It's utterly frustrating, especially being shot by enemies on the roofs of shanty buildings while you're concentrating on the dogs.

On the other hand there are some golden moments, and the moment where I really thought "fuck, this game has met my expectations" was the fighting back against the Ultranationalists. The excellent American missions of driving, house to house combat were followed with some awesome, potent firefights with a solid team among a genuinely innovative series of environments. Prisoner #627 being

Captain Price

was the icing on the cake.

I found Act One a disappointing attempt at topping COD4 at everything, and Act Two a well constructed series of missions that achieved it without being deadening. Dying three times in the whole game was just stupid. Pulling a knife out of my chest to throw it in someone's eye was just incredible. It's this jumping around that really makes the single player campaign a bit of a fuckfest, but the real problem is the storyline. It's good, but told badly. COD4 is cohesive, as I've said tight, and very well told. MW2 fails to convey it's story constantly and thus feels very lacking at times. I can murder my way through an airport but not witness the torture of someone for information? Just for backstory? COD4 allowed you to, and that's what rankles. MW2 constantly forces you on, to keep powering through people rather than chilling out and enjoying yourself.

Spec Ops: Absolute stroke of genius. I don't see any problem with it, aside from the sometimes laggy online two-player. All 69 stars are achieveable with work; you don't need to be a COD machine, and there's more than enough variety for everyone. Spending 25 minutes creeping back through Chernobyl with a mate was easily one of the best times I've ever had on a console.

Multiplayer: Aside from the hacks that are constantly ruining people's experience, as a pretty good online player I'm really relishing the multiplayer. Chunky scores of XP, hundreds of challenges, weapons and gear along with some really quite good maps make it a friendly or intense experience. It's such a contrast with Halo 3, with it's limited weapons, maps and playlists and score of 1xp for winning. Christ almighty, even if I lose a match in MW2 I could walk away with a total of 3000xp.

Since COD4 invented the original best multiplayer, along with the now much coveted perk system and create-a-class, it's come on such an enormous way, with such high levels of customisation and reams of menus to get lost in. It's a gun-whores dream, basically, and capping fools was never more fun that watching big chunks of XP slap onto your screen with cries of "BUZZKILL" or "ASSISTED SUICIDE". It's a rewarding and engrossing experience and the real reason to play the game.

/frenzied typing.

Enjoy reading that

[RefaelBA]

*flame flame flame*

No, just kidding. I won MW2 in a competition, and I'm enjoying it fairly much. I wouldn't call it game of the year, and the single player didn't have as much impact as CoD4, but the multiplayer is pretty nice. Some of the Special Ops are really great, like the one that has you fighting through a map with the other player providing air support, or other things. They were really great missions!

The more general multiplayer is nice, if not groundbreaking. Over-customization is a little annyoing at first, but when you move up in the ranks you start seeing what it's good for, and why you need it. Sometimes you get crazy runs through the round, and then you get rewards for that, it's pretty sweet All in all it's a good game, as you said, it's probably better since I didn't pay for it, but even if I did it would have still been worth it.

[VENATOR]

I enjoyed the Spec Ops stealth missions, actually. Fighting snipers amongst the grass of Chernobyl was really HARD! But cool.

[reptarz]

I enjoyed the Spec Ops stealth missions, actually. Fighting snipers amongst the grass of Chernobyl was really HARD! But cool.

I enjoyed this game too. Its quite tough but really fun to play and challenging.

[srredfire]

Hated it. Still do. Over hyped. Over rated. Over played.

Only good part was the airport scene, mostly for the ambient music.

Can't believe people actually like that game. It's so fucking stupid. It's a point and click FPS game. It's boring, you don't actually have to do anything half the time because the whole game is fucking automated, and there is no tactics what so ever.

If you disagree with me, you can go drink rat poison.

However, I will say the animations in the game were excellent.

[korge]

It's a point and click FPS game. It's boring, you don't actually have to do anything half the time because the whole game is fucking automated, and there is no tactics what so ever.

...Sounds exactly like what CS and UT are.

[Major Banter]

It sounds like every FPS ever made, from Doom, to Far Cry, to UT, to COD, et cetera et cetera.

But to counter Srred's argument somewhat; stuff like L4D and ME that he loves so much - I don't see how they're that much different. If anything I found the gunplay in MW2 to be the best in any game I've ever played, and ME's to be absolutely cock and balls. Storyline and the way it's conveyed are important, yes, but I think people seem to hate on a game because everyone else is enjoying it, and they're failing to. It's odd. Because it's a perfectly solid game.

[RefaelBA]

Hated it. Still do. Over hyped. Over rated. Over played.

Only good part was the airport scene, mostly for the ambient music.

Can't believe people actually like that game. It's so fucking stupid. It's a point and click FPS game. It's boring, you don't actually have to do anything half the time because the whole game is fucking automated, and there is no tactics what so ever.

If you disagree with me, you can go drink rat poison.

Just join the navy and give us a break will you?

[Gary]

I am disappointed by the length of MW2's Story mode and some glitches in MP, but other then that, I found it most enjoyable. As for the others you guys are talking about. ME: Combat system wasn't bad, but felt a bit unpolished. ME2: Seems more solid then the first, not bad at all. L4D: Some mechanics seem unfinished and/or unpolished. Mainly anything dynamic feels wrong and that game.(And I like dynamic objects.)

[Unstoppable Florence]

This a torn subject for me. MW2 is the only game I have ever played all the way through without paying for, I will admit. I haven't touched the multiplayer, but the combination of COD4's multiplayer becoming pretty shallow pretty quickly for me, and the brutal tearing out of any semblance of respect for the PC 'hardcore' left me with no desire to approach it even with the Eiffel Tower as my barge pole. From what I have heard it is fun and explodey and everything, but really seems a bit whishy-washy from my distance.

Singleplayer, however, I was looking forward to and I really wasn't dissapointed. I went in expecting the plot to be a rather convoluted load of tripe, which it served up in good doses (I mean, come on, space for 20 seconds for no apparent reason? And why the hell was there a physical shockwave in a vacuum?) but for all of the ludicrously bad plot holes (again, why are modern Russian soldiers using surplus weapons used by NATO in the fifties and sixties?) it succeeded in blowing my mind out. It used stupidity as its tool, but hey, it still blew my mind.

The gunplay is good but the truth is that IW have been flogging the same horse since COD1. There were scant few moments in the game which challenged me to do something that was meaningfully different. But those moments were good. And the ending... I mean wow... the ending. It's one of the few endings to a video game that actually felt satisfactory. Nikolai's 'Ja, I know a place' actually made me care for a sequel. In a game that continually insulted my intelligence, I actually gave a damn what was going to happen next.

[Major Banter]

Just a question Florence; would you agree if I said COD4 was more compelling, better told, and while lacking raw "epic" was much more memorable and standout?

For example, fast roping onto a pitching deck for me was a defining experience of gaming. Storming the White House was not.

[stoopdapoop]

I just bought the game (legit) a few days ago. I most people are tripping some serious balls when they talk about hacks, there are these things called "Good players" that join servers from time to time, and they do rack up alot of points, as well as a lot of deaths, but I've never been killed in a manner that suggests that the player had an aimbot or any real knowledge of my position (unless he was close enough to hear me running, or had a UAV) I asked a friend about the hacking situation in MW2 (he's not terrible at the game so I sorta trusted him) and he says that he's only seen one blatant hacker and that was in early December.

But yeah, love the game, Multiplayer is fantastic, can only get that degree of gunplay and customizable playstyle from a Modern Warfare game.

I Spec ops is a lot of fun, alone or with a friend, frantic, fast paced but never unfair and on the later missions, it makes you really adopt some interesting playstyles. A friend and I were playing the Estate mission where you have to kill 40 enemies, and every time a Juggernaut came by, we would have to radically alter our playstyle, throwing flash nades left and right, whipping out or Barretts and just unloading clips into the fuckers' heads. All the while screaming, and hiding behind random objects to revive each other while under some serious fire. So intense.

The sound of a distant L96 (what juggernauts carry) shooting nonstop while getting closer every second is now more frightening to me than tank music was when the first l4d was released.

And single player cinematic gold. If you can forgive some of the silliness then you're set. But it does feel kinda weak on any difficulty that isn't veteran. Damn console kids ruining my difficulty levels

If you were disappointed by MW2 then I have no pity for you. If you really expected to use "tactics" in singleplayer or a "realistic combat experience with varied gameplay" or whatever the shit people are complaining about then I really advise you start reading about games before you buy them.

Or at least looking at the back of the box.

And banter, You can't compare an Marines mission to a task force mission. Marine missions are always involving large numbers of troops assaulting something, whereas task force missions usually have more memorable events, and deal with the characters alot more (this is true for both games.) but the Marines missions were a lot better in MW2 than they were in MW1. And I think for the most part, the task force missions were better in MW2 as well.

[Noodles]

I agree with pretty much everything Banter said in his first post.

The XP factor is a major plus, getting huge chunky new things even if you aren't playing too well is really good for morale and keeping you playing.

I can't think of too many problems with MP game, maybe the knife thing which annoys me a lot but then when I get annoyed I just use my run n' knife class and feel better

Actually the lack of power of the Barrett and the WA2000 annoy me, I've taken 5 shots to kill a person before. THough they were charging at me at the time, was ludicrous.

[Major Banter]

And banter, You can't compare an Marines mission to a task force mission. Marine missions are always involving large numbers of troops assaulting something, whereas task force missions usually have more memorable events, and deal with the characters alot more (this is true for both games.) but the Marines missions were a lot better in MW2 than they were in MW1. And I think for the most part, the task force missions were better in MW2 as well.

It was a generalised example, not specific or particularly meaningful. Or thought out. Chillax.