Let’s get the frustrating out of the way. The single player pillar of MW2 is garbage, absolute Micheal Bay over the top garbage. Time and time again you’ll find yourself in unbelievable situations that can be solved only with an equally unbelievable amount of bullets. Also be prepared to die, again, and again, and again, and upon death be subjected to death quotes which are to long to read before the respawn timer is up and are frustratingly bad in the first place. For instance, there’s like 5 JFK quotes and then a whole batch that make you feel like Patriotism is for blockheads; they round out the quotes by throwing in a Dick Cheney for good measure.
Then there’s the franticness, which is frustrating, even on hardened difficulty, most SP levels crawl slowly by. I’m not a fan, it’s not fun, it’s a pain, only if I’m really hard up for gamer score will I ever attempt these levels on Veteran. It’s just that there’s so many angles to keep track of and no “hugging the walls” cover system to help make quick peeps around corners. The SP has a few select moments that rock like the snow blind mission and the oil rig hostages but overall the journey is full of fail which brings me to something full of win, MW2’s; Spec Ops.
This is Co-op gold, I’ve now got help taking care of all those angles! Spec Op’s is the second pillar of MW2 and is separate from the single player. So, you can’t redo those SP missions that I was telling you about which is fine, because the offering of mission snippets you get with Spec Ops is robust, featuring all kinds of different objectives, time limits, and scenarios. Each Op has three stars of difficulty for a total of sixty nine possible stars whereby unlocking an achievement. One level I tried at the second star rating, had you and a buddy defending this platform against 4 waves of infantry with a few truck and jeeps mixed in, it was awesome and the kind of “frantic” I enjoy. I’ve only played a few of these Op’s and they rock. I’m holding off on doing the majority of them till I can enjoy them with a friend.
The final pillar is MW2’s multiplayer which is undoubtedly the most frustrating and fantastic thing in the game. Everything is better than the original, the killstreak rewards are awesome, the perks are refined, the guns are cooler, the attachments steller, and everything is, dare I say it, balanced! I carry around a Stinger missile launcher as my secondary weapon and am always on the ready to knock the enemies Cobra’s, AC130’s, and Pavelow’s out of the sky. Post match I love hearing the guys complain how their ten kill streak reward crashed to the ground ten seconds after they called it in. I love it! The maps are great with Scrapeyard probably being one of the better MP maps around. The ranking up takes time and has legs, there’s so many ways to get bonus points that it makes it really addictive. Every gun and piece of equipment has challenges and rewards for those challenges. I can’t sing the praises of the multiplayer enough. The only negative for me is the franticness of the multiplayer slightly echos the SP campaign. You will feel like a loser if you haven’t killed anyone within three seconds of spawning. Indeed you ‘ll be losing if you don’t because more than likely you’ll be dead in three seconds. Don’t feel bad if the person I just described is you because it is me as well. In order to prolong my life from two seconds to three I’ve built my perk set around detection and evasion. Hopefully some day I’ll be good enough to have a K:D ratio of 500!
My conclusion is this, man this game’s difficulty curve is high and frustrating but good grief it’s addicting, you’ll have no regrets if you pick this one up…
