Big Cat's MW2 Review (Multiplayer)

This review was originally written by Big Cat, who posted it on the Infinity Ward (MW2 PC) forums. All credits for this writing-piece go to him.

All questions or comments in response to the review itself should be made on the original thread, here. Any other, general comments, may be made in the comment section attached to this post.

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'Sup guys? So this is my thoughts on the multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2, so far, just my two cents. Flame me if you want, I'm just giving my observations. Hopefully it'll provide some information for you. This review will only focus on the multiplayer portion of the game as that is all I have played so far. I will include my thoughts on the singleplayer later. [This will likely be a new post on this blog -ed]


INSTALLATION
I installed my game on Steam and had to wait until last night to play it when it came out. The installation process for me was very smooth; I pre-ordered and pre-loaded the game before release date, so on the night it released I just had to quickly install a 4mb file and click on the icon to play.

Overall the installation process was very easy for me to go through. I know some people have been having problems with the retail CD's, so I would suggest buying it over steam if you have a good internet connection.


STARTING THE GAME
After I clicked on the icon, the usual small steam window popped up and did its "first time checks". This took around two minutes to complete. Not too bad.

Then the game screen popped up. Here's where I ran into some trouble; the main menu for me appeared, but it was like it was a jpeg and didn't allow me to move my mouse or anything. It was strange because the background music was playing but it was just like there was an image of the main menu frozen in front of me.

So, freaking out a little, I closed and re-opened the game. This time, the game opened up and I had the same screen that didn't allow me to control my mouse or anything. Still flippin' shit, I decided to wait it out and see if it was possibly a loading screen or something else that I didn't know about. My patience paid off and I was eventually greeted by the REAL main menu with a functional mouse.

Since then, I've figured it out its apparently my computer's way of saying that the game is loading; it stays on the so-called image screen for a while and then goes to the real menu, which I'm fine with.


FINDING A MULTIPLAYER GAME
I was pretty excited at this point. Oh, dang - I'm about to play the most anticipated game of the year and possibly the decade! Y'know, I was drooling all over myself and making gutteral noises within my mouth and all that.

So I quickly bumped up the graphics settings in the options menu then clicked 'find a game'. I'm greeted with a screen that shows the list of playlists available. (Now, the following got me really pissed off!) Theres a little box that pops up, and says this:

Fetching Playlists....
Retrieved Profile Cmplete.
Connected to IWNet Complete.
.........................(Cancel)

Naturally, I'm like, "Oh, okay.. It'll take around 5 seconds to 'fetch' these playlists. I mean, its just a list of game modes right?" Wrong! Ten minutes later, I'm still sitting waiting for this fucking playlist thing to load. Finally it does: it says, "playlist data cannot be retrieved, most recent will be loaded" followed by all the playlists appearing. I was then like, "Cool! Of course, you couldn't have done that in the first place..". [Haha! -ed]

Anyways, to be fair, this could have been attributed to the large amounts of people coming online at the time, considering that it was just after the steam release, but I'll never know for sure. Since then the playlist loading has been lightning fast. Maybe it was just a first-time-run thing, too - I dunno. Not really that big of a deal, since everything is good now.

Moving along, once the playlists had loaded, everything was hunky dory. You click on a playlist, and as long as it is reasonably playable [clarification needed] you get joined into a game in less than 2 seconds. Normally, once I've got the game running, I can be joined into a game and playing in 20 seconds tops, including loading time, which isn't too bad, I would think.


THE GAMEPLAY and Lag
Mmmkay, so this is the part that everyones pissed about. The lag..Honestly, I don't have that much of a problem with it. I'd say around 80% of the time I'm getting good, green, four bar connections when I join a server. This may be due to my location (Southern California; lots of gamers here). But yeah, it's pretty good most of the time and it's like I'm playing CoD4 with a 70ms ping.

Now, the other 20%: It can be annoying if you dip below a 3 bar connection strength; your hits wont register fast and other players with better connections can kill you much more easily. Normally my plan of action if I hit 2-bars-or-less-server is to leave and find another server, which take around 15 seconds, usually, so it's not really a major inconvenience.

Overall I'd say that the whole IW.Net/no dedicated servers thing can be annoying, but it's not really that big of a deal once you get playing. Clan members can still party up and play together. The only other problem I see with it so far is how you're taking a chance with the map selection and the people you're playing with. In a nutshell, it's the randomness when you join a game that's the most annoying.
....Of course if you're pro like me, it doesn't matter what map or games you're playing with! *cough*


Max-Player Cap and 'Big-Ass Maps'
Honestly, I can both agree and disagree with people who are dissing the maximum-player cap (9v9). Some maps are perfect for small engagements: back in the day when I played CoD4, I most often played hardcore-only with only a small number of people, usually 20-man servers, so this may just be a preference, but I'm happy on most of the maps with the amount of players supported. Although, if there were larger player numbers in a game at once, the frequency of choppers, airstrikes and AC130's would just be ridiculous. Not to mention that care packages would probably be falling out of the sky, raining down on peoples' heads! --Funny story! In one game I was playing, I spawned and immediately started sprinting out towards the enemy, then BOOM! A giant, green box drops on my head from the sky. Dead.-- So if there were, say, 64 people in a game at one time, it would just be madness, in my opinion. [Madness?... This is Sparta! Well, at least, the PC boycott community likes to think we are. -ed]

However, a problem I do have is that IW has designed some big-ass maps, this time around. You've got bigger maps than were in CoD4 and smaller amounts of people playing on them (i.e. Derailed, Wasteland- which I understand is sort of a sniping/nostalgia-CoD2 map, but still, I mean it when I say BIG). It's not fun having to run around for the majority of the time trying to find people.


Weapons
The weapons are fun. Lots of new ones to suit peoples' varying play-styles. One thing I'm kind of peeved about is the lack of recoil: I can shoot someone across some maps with an m4/red dot. It's pretty easy. Some guns do have some kick to them, but a lot of assault rifles and sub-machine guns unfortunately, do not.



OVERALL
If I had to say, I'd give the multiplayer portion of the game a 7.5-8.5/10. Definitely not a potential game-of-the-year product anymore. I think if they implemented some of the changes the community wants, Modern Warfare 2 could shape up to be quite an amazing game in the future. Right now, it most definitely doesn't measure up to the groundbreaking advances in gaming made by its precursor. It feels like a true sequel, making expansions on the original while retaining the same gameplay feel, features and an improvement on graphics, albeit minute, still an improvement. If you liked CoD4, you will probably find Modern Warfare 2 an enjoyable experience at least. Buy it, rent it - don't buy it - whatever, it's your choice. I personally like the game and think it is of passable quality. Currently, I enjoy playing the game multiplayer and the hardcore mode is as fun as ever for this CoD4 hardcore mode fan.

~Big Cat


Remember; any questions to the author should be asked on the original thread, here.

All rights reserved by Big Cat. Edited by TheTopMostDog.