Modern Warfare 2 Overview
De Wikifliping
All Modern Warfare 2 needs to be is a good shooter, and it delivers. This is the Call of Duty expertise, deconstructed, reconsidered, and obsessively optimized over 15 uninterrupted years of iteration. I know when I'm playing a Black Ops game because it has offbeat arcade modes and the latest iteration of Nuketown. I know I'm taking part in a Modern Warfare game because the shooting is so finely tuned that I want to take my Gunsmith build out to dinner. Infinity Ward has officially mastered the instant gratification of aiming down sights and deleting targets.
That goes a protracted way, although some of Modern Warfare 2's biggest swings, equivalent to revamped progression and a genre-bending campaign, are less elegant. It also suffers from an obtuse UI, fits of crashes, bizarre bugs, and the unexplained absence of fundamental options like stat tracking. But altogether, it's a superb 12 months for Call of Duty.
Gunplay
I said in 2019's CoD evaluation that Modern Warfare "sets the bar high for first-individual gun feel." Consider Modern Warfare 2 the new bar. Ballistics are once once more physically simulated (not hitscan), however you would not know it from playing on regular 6v6 maps. On arena maps with brief sightlines, guns behave like lasers that instantly tag targets. Jump into a 64-player Ground War match and the same guns accommodate to firefights spanning total city blocks, requiring players to lead shots and account for bullet drop. It is kind of wild how versatile and seamless the system is—even in the most recent Battlefield, a series that is dealt in simulated ballistics for 20 years, weapons are a little too sluggish up close.
Modern Warfare 2's silky physics compare favorably for those who've been playing Vanguard for the past 12 months, and even higher should you've stuck with Cold War for the final two. I by no means quite received over Cold War's noticeably sluggish hit detection; it'd take round 5-7 frames for level-blank shots to register in my tests. Under similarly unscientific testing conditions (me counting frames in replays recorded at 60 fps), MW2's latency is a far less discoverable warzone 2 cronus zen script-3 frames. It's not clear to me exactly what number of factors are at play here. It might be that Treyarch's weapons seem slower because they're slower by design, but regardless, Infinity Ward's interpretation is better.
As a counterbalance to Modern Warfare 2's wicked-quick ballistics and time-to-kill, Infinity Ward has pumped the brakes on operators themselves. In terms of movement, this is by far the slowest CoD in recent memory. Established traversal techniques like slide canceling and bunnyhopping, a lot to the dismay of CoD's loudest fans(opens in new tab), have been deliberately abolished. The minimap, breaking with 15 years of tradition, now not highlights enemies as red dots whenever a shot is fired. Traditionalists will inform you these tweaks are bad for the series—that they "lower the skill gap" or encourage dishonorable camping—however this paints an incomplete picture.
By gluing our boots more firmly to the ground, Call of Duty has lastly created the area to be a more methodical, dare I say tactical, FPS. For the primary time in years, it is actually a greater concept to tread lightly, hold angles, and listen for footsteps than full-dash down each straightaway and bunnyhop round corners. And allow me to formally debunk the camping paranoia—sure, sooner or later a man named I_Just-Shot-Ya will set up on top of a building and look by means of a scope for the whole lot of your match, but so far this isn't any more common than we're already used to. Actually, the arrival of my new favorite throwable, the Drill Charge, makes it easier than ever(opens in new tab) to dislodge a comfortable camper.
My only gripe is that Modern Warfare 2 would not go far enough. The omnipresence of the UAV signifies that I still spend way an excessive amount of time glancing at the map for red dots. The specter of sudden destruction by the hands of overpowered stealth bombers, chopper gunners, and miniature tank drones remains constant. I would Ctrl+A+Delete all killstreaks from the game if it have been as much as me, though I reckon a move that monumental would create an indignant mob outside Activision.
The Basilisk, in each measurement and stature, delivers on the promise of hand cannon, and it's cool that I could've told you that had I only heard it fired from half a mile away. We think of Call of Duty as arcadey and unsophisticated, however MW2 disrupts that reputation. Infinity Ward demonstrates its care for fidelity and intricacy. Individual bullets in Modern Warfare 2 snap downrange and send rippled, gradually-waning shockwaves by way of the air. It's not just about whether or not or not the guns look cool and make loud sounds (although both apply right here)—MW2 cares just as a lot in regards to the routine actions that get FPSes from A to B. Reload animations bask in tacticool mastery with fashionable yet environment friendly magazine swaps that'd get the John Wick stamp of approval.
That Basilisk revolver has three completely different reloads relying on what number of rounds are left within the chamber, together with a distinct animation for reloading spent casings without replacing all six. Sound effects are what tie it all together: In the clip above, I counted eight distinctive scrapes, clicks, and metallic clangs for just one reload animation. I wonder what number of of these 88 compressed gigabytes on my SSD are raw audio.
