Modern Warfare 2's Multiplayer Map Style

Slight schedule adjustment: I have enough posts to last until May now. I seem to have taken a liking to writing about games, although I'm phasing out just about everything else. I gave up Twitter for Lent and I'm starting to feel guilty about it because it was a pretty easy thing to give up. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, if you ain't paying rent you ain't getting a room.

This week's post is one tackling the multiplayer elements of Modern Warfare 2. I was touched by the various blogs struggling with claiming 'No Russian' meant something but it was just the cherry on a big sloppy mess to me. Nobody who actually plays MW2 gives a shit about the single-player component of these games. Out of the dozen or so people I've spoken to about that section of the game, most complained about not being able to run during the opening.

I interviewed and relied heavily on e-mails swapped with Simon Ferrari and Iroquis Pliskin for this piece, along with actually coughing up the cash for the strategy guide. After spotting a lot of the problems with the Halo 3 post I needed them to balance out my views. A lot of it was confirming what I'd spotted myself while playing, so I used two choice quotes at the end rather than try to balance out their input with my own.

Basically, MW2 is a map game. You learn the map, you get in position, you shoot people. That has its merits as a design and is really just a spin on what the FPS has always been about. In Goldeneye you ran to the armor or the good gun, in Halo 3 you ran for the right weapon, and so on. If anything, the game is depressingly commercialized because it will taper out so rapidly once the majority of players know the terrain. It will be too difficult for someone new to play.

Which will probably happen...oh...about when the next COD game comes out.