Infinity Ward has proven that they know exactly what they are doing when it comes to first person shooters. Modern Warfare 2 has an intense single player, an addicting multiplayer, and a satisfying co-op. All three are good enough to stand on their own, but together on one disc this becomes a fantastic product.
The single player runs about 5 to 8 hours long on the regular difficulty level, depending on your skill. While this may dissapoint some, it's just long enough to keep you engaged throughout, without ever losing your interest. In the vein of CoD4 and WaW, most of the story is told through the loading screen dialogue, with the major stuff saved for gameplay. In typical CoD fashion, you are always in control. Always. A good example of this is in one early mission where you and Soap are on a stake-out for an arms dealer in Rio. Said dealer see's your car, and opens fire on you. The first few shots hit your driver in the head, sending blood and brains everywhere, and Soap yells at you to get down.
You need to get down. Seriously.
If you press the crouch button you'll duck under the glovebox to avoid the bullets. If you don't, well, you're going to die.
I loved how IW never took me out of the game for a story element in CoD4, and that is just one example of how they make those times that much more interactive this time around.
Throughout the campaign you will scale a mountain wall with Soap, storm a russian castle to rescue a familiar face, fight off invading forces in suburban Virginia (culminating in a last stand defensive at the local "Burger Town"), and speed through a favela in Rio in hot pursuit of that arms dealer I mentioned earlier. The scenery is constantly changing, and the gunplay is always fast and frantic. I loved every second of the campaign.
The multiplayer has also been expanded upon. You can now customize your killstreaks, for one. It's a little hard to explain, but basically where as before it was 3 kills got a UAV, 5 got an airstrike, and 7 got a helicopter, you can now choose 3 of your own. The number of kills required is tied to the streak itself, so you can't get a tactical nuke for a 3 kill streak, you will need to get the 25 kill streak it's tied to. My only complaint with this is with one of the killstreaks itself. The sentry gun, care package, and emergency air drop all are recieved by popping a smoke grenade to mark the location you want your packages dropped at. This is fine, but the problem arises when the package can randomly bounce off the ground and hit you in the face, killing you. Seriously, it seems like every few packages is made out of rubber. Additionly, and more commonly, you will wait for your package, and never see it. You'll see the icon to indicate the package is there, but it's not. Further inspection reveals that it landed in an unreachable area. There is nothing more infuriating than getting a AC130 in the care package, but not being able to get it because the package landed outside the level border, or on top of a structure you can't reach. It happens somewhat frequently, too.
Additionly, the perks system has been reworked. Sleight Of Hand is now a "blue" perk, Bandolier is gone, Martyrdom is no longer a "green" perk, and so forth. All of the changes make the game much more enjoyable, and anything that has been removed entirely has a new, ussually better, counter part. For example, Bandolier has become Scavenger, which lets you pick up ammo off dead enemies. UAV jammer is now Cold Blooded, and makes you invisible to UAV, Sentry guns, and the like. Of course, there are plenty of entirely new perks, like Bling, which lets you put two attachments on your primary gun. Complementing this is Pro perks. For completing level 4 of a perks challenge, you will unlock the pro version, which gives you an additional bonus. Stopping Power Pro gives you additional damage versus any vehicles the enemy calls in, while Sleight Of Hand Pro lets you aim down the sights faster.
The two perks everyone got pissed about at least once, Martyrdom and Juggernaut, are now deathstreaks. Die about 4 times in a row without a kill, (the number changes depending on the deathstreak chosen) and your deathstreak activates. Juggernaut has been changed to Painkiller, and gives you triple health for 10 seconds when you respawn. Martrydom works like it always did, you drop a grenade when you die. These changes make the gameplay much smoother, and more enjoyable.
The other major change is how weapon unlocks work. You still get camo for headshots, and attachments for kills, but there are certain attachments that require you to use another attachment so many times to unlock. A heartbeat sensor requires 15 kills with a silencer, (There's a perk to make you invisible to heartbeat sensors, in case you were wondering) and a shotgun requires grenade launcher kills.
While I'm on the topic of weapons, secondary weapons classes have ben expanded to include Shotguns, Machine Pistols, and Launchers. Launchers shoot grenades or rockets, and the rest are pretty self explanitory.
Most killstreaks can be "denied" by the enemy. A stinger missle can take out most airborne assistance you call in, an enemy can steal your care package, and a counter UAV can jam your entire teams radar. This adds another layer of strategy to the action, and it's pretty satisfying to shoot down a harrier jet as soon as the enemy calls it in.
For those wondering, there is a new gametype. It's called Demolition. A Demolition game takes place over 2 rounds, with an overtime round if there is a tie. One team has to plant a bomb on 2 targets, and blowing up one gives them more time to take out the other. The other team has to, logically, prevent this until time runs out. When a bomb is active, the timer stops, so defenders must defuse the bomb in order to get the round timer to resume counting down. Respawning is allowed. After the round, the teams alternate.
Finally, the co-op mode, Spec Ops, is great. You can do most of the missions on your own, but it's not nearly as fun, and some of the best require two players. You can do co-op over live or on the same console, but Spec Ops does not have matchmaking, so you'll need to invite one of your buddies to play with you.
Spec Ops mode presents you with a shitload of missions. To unlock the next batch, you need to earn a certain amount of stars. The better you do, and the harder the difficulty level you choose, the more stars you can earn, up to a maximum of three for one mission. The missions range from simple "hold out as long as you can", to seperating the two players, with one running on ground at night, and the other up in the sky in a AC130 giving fire support. A lot of fire support. They are all very fun, and very challenging. If one of the players goes down, his friend has 60 seconds to revive him. The downed player can crawl around and fire off about one magazine of bullets, and pressing the "Y" button calls out to the other player.
The polish on the smallest things can make a game that much more impressive. This is one of those times where I was really impressed. The less time I had, the more frantic my characters screams for help became. By ten seconds left, I was screaming about how I had lost so much freaking blood. It's very cool to see the developer put work into something as small as contextual dialogue for a character when he is down, and that polish is present in every aspect of this game. Infinity Ward clearly loves making games, and the level of dedication to this game is astounding. I could make a cheesy "Beyond the Call Of Duty" joke, but I won't.
This is one of the best games I have ever played. Every aspect of it is fully fleshed out, and fun as hell.
But I still hate Bobby Kotick.
