Call of Duty 4 was like a good game that was given a powerful shot of energy to make a great and compelling campaign that had one special moment that came to a viewer like a hard smack in the face, the one thing that turns a great game into a classic game--- the mission "Shock and Awe", from start to end. This needs no explanation here.
The sequel aims heavily for upping its predecessor as much as possible, with a story far more complex and action-adventure laden, going bigger and faster as well as darker and edgier.
Where Call of Duty 4 was a gritty smack to the face, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is like a kick to the back of the head. And a curb stomp.
Call of Duty 4 stuck out to me for its "stinger" moment---which not only succeeded beautifully in being shockingly realistic, but in playing off my very real and the very real fears of billions of people---nuclear destruction. "Shock and Awe" gave us all of that, and turned an average campaign into a monstrous creature that blew us away (much the way Paul Jackson was?) Modern Warfare 2 doesn't use these moments very sparingly, and in fact indulges in them at a brisk, satisfying pace. The opening mission is a very realistic journey into a war in Afghanistan, where your force has to hunt and kill many OpFor terrorists, and has an early sequence in which the Marines are riding in their big armored vehicles down completely barren and deserted streets. An occasional civilian comes out and runs away in fear. At one point, you see three men glaring nastily at you from a balcony, all but screaming "bad guy" about them, and yet you can do nothing. Some time later, you're attacked.
The rest of the story leaps immediately after this "cold open", and where it took half the campaign to kill off the American character in COD4, the American character is dead by the third mission here, in a mission called "No Russian", which itself is the most terrifying, gutwrenching, brutally offensive missions ever. Just ever.
Without spoiling it, there is a very good, and very mindblowing reason the terrorist Makarov tells his fellow terrorists "No Russian" in the mission's start. The first half of the mission then involves you---an American spy, forced to go to any means to maintain your masquerade with Makarov---and the rest, murdering HUNDREDS of innocent civilians in a Russian airport.
That was something I simply couldn't take in and register, and had to restart the level some time later to get over it. I then realized then that they were very, very serious about the pre-game warning about the game's very extremely graphic content, and giving me a one-time only offer to turn off the graphic portions of the game.
From there, the game keeps delivering "HOLY SH!!" moments again and again, but without spoiling you into expecting them every level. However, a very similar ending to "Shock and Awe" appears this time around, spread across three whole missions and a cutscene (IN SPACE!) And yes, the game DOES give us more of the same---more stuff and junk. More multiplayer options, more single player options, more weapons, etcetera. It keeps the multiplayer system intact with great new options and fun.
Another big improvement: the graphics. These are by far some of the most realistic graphics I've seen in any game ever. People's faces actually look human (though obviously 3D), and their mouths move correctly to their speech. Details everywhere are given great attention, as random computer systems have every crease, button, hole, and screw in clear detail. A box of mints shows in clear detail on the dashboard of a military vehicle. Wads of gore stick to where they land, and boxes of paper for printing are in perfect detail and fully labeled all around.
Then, the drawbacks. None of these are enough to bring down the game even half a star: - The blood-on-the-screen look is probably more realistic than just shades of red, but it's incredibly distracting, and fills up far too much of the screen that it becomes almost impossible to see anything.
This time around, it stays to that storyline universe, while taking greater and greater departures from reality. For me, there seems to be a genuine concern that the game that was so appealing for its realism may end up going just a bit too far into the fantastical, and while still be a great experience, not be as impactful as COD4 because it went beyond the realm of speculative realistic fiction, and into the realm of fantasy war stories, like "Turning Point", "Command & Conquer/Red Alert", "Rainbow Six", "24", and all the other modern-ish war stories that become fantasy on their own terms.
Perhaps that's a good thing for this game, though it has more than enough features to make it an epic experience.
The sequel aims heavily for upping its predecessor as much as possible, with a story far more complex and action-adventure laden, going bigger and faster as well as darker and edgier.
Where Call of Duty 4 was a gritty smack to the face, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is like a kick to the back of the head. And a curb stomp.
Call of Duty 4 stuck out to me for its "stinger" moment---which not only succeeded beautifully in being shockingly realistic, but in playing off my very real and the very real fears of billions of people---nuclear destruction. "Shock and Awe" gave us all of that, and turned an average campaign into a monstrous creature that blew us away (much the way Paul Jackson was?) Modern Warfare 2 doesn't use these moments very sparingly, and in fact indulges in them at a brisk, satisfying pace. The opening mission is a very realistic journey into a war in Afghanistan, where your force has to hunt and kill many OpFor terrorists, and has an early sequence in which the Marines are riding in their big armored vehicles down completely barren and deserted streets. An occasional civilian comes out and runs away in fear. At one point, you see three men glaring nastily at you from a balcony, all but screaming "bad guy" about them, and yet you can do nothing. Some time later, you're attacked.
The rest of the story leaps immediately after this "cold open", and where it took half the campaign to kill off the American character in COD4, the American character is dead by the third mission here, in a mission called "No Russian", which itself is the most terrifying, gutwrenching, brutally offensive missions ever. Just ever.
Without spoiling it, there is a very good, and very mindblowing reason the terrorist Makarov tells his fellow terrorists "No Russian" in the mission's start. The first half of the mission then involves you---an American spy, forced to go to any means to maintain your masquerade with Makarov---and the rest, murdering HUNDREDS of innocent civilians in a Russian airport.
That was something I simply couldn't take in and register, and had to restart the level some time later to get over it. I then realized then that they were very, very serious about the pre-game warning about the game's very extremely graphic content, and giving me a one-time only offer to turn off the graphic portions of the game.
From there, the game keeps delivering "HOLY SH!!" moments again and again, but without spoiling you into expecting them every level. However, a very similar ending to "Shock and Awe" appears this time around, spread across three whole missions and a cutscene (IN SPACE!) And yes, the game DOES give us more of the same---more stuff and junk. More multiplayer options, more single player options, more weapons, etcetera. It keeps the multiplayer system intact with great new options and fun.
Another big improvement: the graphics. These are by far some of the most realistic graphics I've seen in any game ever. People's faces actually look human (though obviously 3D), and their mouths move correctly to their speech. Details everywhere are given great attention, as random computer systems have every crease, button, hole, and screw in clear detail. A box of mints shows in clear detail on the dashboard of a military vehicle. Wads of gore stick to where they land, and boxes of paper for printing are in perfect detail and fully labeled all around.
Then, the drawbacks. None of these are enough to bring down the game even half a star: - The blood-on-the-screen look is probably more realistic than just shades of red, but it's incredibly distracting, and fills up far too much of the screen that it becomes almost impossible to see anything.
- The story indulges a lot more in a fantastical action-packed nature of real, open war not just on terrorist organizations, but on an equal footing. Part of what made Call of Duty 4 so great and shocking was that it essentially was based on reality and stuck to that---Americans were waging a "war on terror", surgically striking OpFor locations while hunting down the OpFor leader Al-Asad, the Bin Laden of this world, while SAS agents sneak around working against Russian (and perhaps Chechnyian) terrorists, in which both story lines overlap and become one towards the end.
This time around, it stays to that storyline universe, while taking greater and greater departures from reality. For me, there seems to be a genuine concern that the game that was so appealing for its realism may end up going just a bit too far into the fantastical, and while still be a great experience, not be as impactful as COD4 because it went beyond the realm of speculative realistic fiction, and into the realm of fantasy war stories, like "Turning Point", "Command & Conquer/Red Alert", "Rainbow Six", "24", and all the other modern-ish war stories that become fantasy on their own terms.
Perhaps that's a good thing for this game, though it has more than enough features to make it an epic experience.