Answering the call

by ERIK LEIJON

By moving 4.7 million copies in the U.S. and the U.K. on its first day in stores, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s (PS3, X360, PC/Activision, Infinity Ward) launch was astonishingly the largest and most lucrative in entertainment history. Game reviewers worldwide are in an invisible race to see who can heap the most praise upon this action-packed war shooter. Albeit a small sample size, it’s the only game that has managed to transform the Mirror’s gaming population into pro-America killing machines. It’s also slightly rubbish, a glorification of gaming’s casual brutality and action-movie worship—a product purposely devoid of emotion and creativity, filled with hollow explosions. It’s the Michael Bay of gaming.

Modern Warfare 2 is also two very distinct games in one package. Playing solo or with others dramatically alters the CoD experience. Single-player attempts to tell the story of a Russian assault on Washington D.C., except the tale isn’t told through cutscenes but through audio. Good luck developing any connection to the wooden American protagonists who spout war slogans with fortune cookie messages (the non-Yank heroes are so under-written, it’s hard to tell why they even showed up to WWIII), while the multiple storylines muddle things further.

The single-player campaign feels more like an accidental rail shooter (à la Virtua Cop, or Duck Hunt) than your conventional first-person shooter. There’s a set path to walk down, and enemies will peer their heads above windowsills or from the sides of buildings, and shoot while remaining stationary. It’s all reflex gaming, as the AI appears non-reactive—enemies will emerge in waves, rest in set locations and ignore you unless one of your partners explicitly tells you they’re an imminent threat.

All their actions can be easily telegraphed and their positions never change. There are a couple of scenes designed to shock—shooting up civilians in an airport and the aforementioned Washington attack—but the developers retreat to straight-faced Bush-era jingoism and catchphrases rather than storytelling, and frankly both instances are rather offensive given how nonchalantly they slide in between the regular missions.

But no one plays Modern Warfare 2 for the single-player, and multiplayer mercifully feels like another game altogether, requiring an entirely different (read: any) set of skills. Modern Warfare multiplayer is a stark contrast, all the pomp and explosions from the campaign replaced with technique and traditional FPS mechanics. It was the simplicity and balance that made the original such a popular game, and the sequel actually attempts to shake up the delicate ecosystem. Like a good nightclub, online games are only as good as the number of people dancing, and with millions of users, Modern Warfare 2 is the go-to online experience for FPS buffs and novices.

The supposedly cataclysmic shift comes in the form of dramatic new kill streak bonuses. A player who mows down a few opponents in a row can call the requisite airstrikes and helicopters, but now can also receive supply drops or direct a deadly missile strike. The Predator missile strike is insanely effective, and certainly those on the receiving end will cry foul, but all of these bonuses require some skill and luck to attain, so it’s not as if they completely skew the multiplayer experience in anyone’s favour. As much as developer Infinity Ward should be admonished for having nothing to say vis-à-vis war and death, this slight shake-up of the multiplayer arena sadly constitutes a true risk in the gaming world. It works, since it changes the way players think on the battlefield without diminishing other strategies.

I’ll take a game with a plot over mindless killing, but at least Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer explains CoD’s shocking success.