Decided to play this game yet again after replaying MW1 recently and how bad Black Ops 7 was. No matter how many times I beat the MW2 campaign, I just seem to find new ways to be lukewarm on it if not outright apathetic. This does seem to be a reoccurring theme when playing popular 7th gen sequels and by extension games from that era. That aside, MW2 is where CoD's flanderization into the franchise it is now began. The only that prevents me from being overtly vitrolic is due to the sound design for weapons, the very good OST, the voice acting and how brisk and breezy the campaign is. It's why I have beaten it so many times despite being so lukewarm on it.
MW2 was the start CoD campaigns being more and more like action movies and adopting the "one man army" mantra Infinity Ward was against that spawned the creation of Call of Duty to begin with. The story isn't framed as soldiers on a battlefield working together to take on overwhelming force. Now you are the Master Chief but your player avatar does all the work and everyone around him takes the credit and the ones the story directly acknowledges. Being at the mercy of the game's script is questionable due to this.The story itself is almost fascinating in how ridiculous various campaign scenarios has. Like a parody of American propaganda, the War on Terror and everything Michael Bay gets mocked for but the game does all this all with a straight face. You have two American soldiers infiltrating and escaping an entire military base of troops, Russia able to actually stage an assault on the US, the longest mission in the game is fending off Russian troops in a Suburb with multiple fast food joints while using predator missiles like toys, escorting a tank through a neighbourhood while marking it's turrets with a designator, a combat arena that is modelled after the Rock's shower room, another one where a soldier holds green flares to avoid fighters from boming the area, an Oil Rig with SAMs, firing a nuke to activate an EMP blast to help fend off Russia. There's so many not even including how towards the end of the game you fight a mercenary group with barely any foreshadowing where their leader is a nameless goon and the guy who hired them has poorly explained and presented motivations.
This all sounds like a parody or satire but there isn't really any self deprecating humor or self awareness to be found.
The characters are also very underdeveloped like Ghost. Who is a hacker with a skull mask who only uses his hacking abilties once. Captain Price is no longer a calm, collected wise cracking leader to an action hero that the other villain fears who somehow got into a gulag.
There is also the fact that your player character still can't talk even when playing Soap MacTavish late game who spoke before. It made sense in the previous games because you were one of many nameless soldiers, now you are an action movie hero so a disconnect is created.
Modern Warfare 1 quickly got information across with it's load screen cutscenes reveals it's limitations here with Shepard's not very well presented motivations or a late game betrayal's rationale being presented very poorly since the information is directly told to the player. The game expects you to understand a paragraph while removing the introductory sentenace. I didn't know Shepard cut a deal or was working with Makarov, there was a betrayal but the reason why is never properly said. On top of the game doing very little to create attachment towards him as a character. His monologues in the opening cutscenes are delivered brillantly by Lance Henriksen but it stops there.
Most of my praise comes the audio. Voice acting is great, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the weapons sound nice and punchy. Shooting is what you'll mainly be doing so it's good Infinity War nailed this.
The gameplay? Nothing has truly improved from the last game. The scripted nature is poorly contextualized due to being an action movie. Combat is still ADS, shoot, get hit, duck behind cover regen health rinse repeat. There are things I dislike more now like how flashbangs should be a way to resposition yourself after being at critical health but it also blinds the player when close making it's use a risk than a helpful tool. The level design is also overly linear barely much flanking with enemies that die in few shots.
Many of the deaths come from going off script, off screen enemies having line of sight and firing at you while ducking behind cover leading to a death or being overwhelmed from all sides without having enough ample cover for health regen to kick in since I'm at it's mercy when at critical health.
One part I can praise is Download and Defend the DSM. Its a take on the Battle on Hill 40 from CoD2 but you get more guns and there's multiple areas enemies flanking you and you need to make your the DSM isn't destroyed by enemies so it's different enough.
Overall, I'm as lukewarm as ever on MW2 but not surprised
