Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

[Badnik Mechanic]

Does anyone know how brutal the Veteran mode is going to be? Mass grenade spam like the previous title?

[Cake]

Does anyone know how brutal the Veteran mode is going to be? Mass grenade spam like the previous title?

Well, I've yet to play the Campaign on Veteran, but I have tried some of the one-shot Special Ops missions on Veteran (I'm a whore for collecting three stars at a time), and they are tough. Enemies are smart, flanking you, shooting exposed Claymores, lobbing grenades if you're camping too much or ducking to recover, and even drawing your fire so their teamates can get to a better vantage point to whoop you one.

[Phos]

I came up with so many bizarre strategies in MW 1's veteran mode. In that mission that you play as Price, I took to throwing claymores right in front of people to kill them. In another mission, I jumped off of a balcony to bypass a particularly vulnerable location.

Screw Attack did an analysis of the launch trailer.

Edited November 8, 2009 by Phos

[Patticus]

Does anyone know how brutal the Veteran mode is going to be? Mass grenade spam like the previous title?

Grenade spamming is present in some isolated locations but, overall, this game is much better for it than CoD4 apparently. They've also got rid of the infinitely respawning enemies in most places too I hear.

The airport level is really, really grim to play through...

[Cake]

The airport level is really, really grim to play through...

I agree on this, but at the very least, it was extremely relevant to the story, and not just thrown in for shock value. IW would have lost major points in my book if that was the case; the airport scene, while I found it uncomfortable to play through, was the entire premise of the Russian's invasion, and also illustrated just how terrible Makarov is.

Seriously, that guy is scary fucked up.

[Gabz Girl]

Wow, some of you already have the game? H-How? D= I envy you!

I want to get this, but I haven't even got the first title yet! I'll ask it for Xmas, or something. I'll wait till next year for this one, though I'm glad the price isn't THAT bad at most places like Amazon. That 55 quid price tag thing was outrageous.

I agree on this, but at the very least, it was extremely relevant to the story, and not just thrown in for shock value. IW would have lost major points in my book if that was the case; the airport scene, while I found it uncomfortable to play through, was the entire premise of the Russian's invasion, and also illustrated just how terrible Makarov is.

Seriously, that guy is scary fucked up.

I thought you could skip that? You didn't have to watch all the horrors! =P I know I won't (maybe...).

Well, it's not that I find it as HORRIFYING as the bloody Daily Mail, but it's a very cold, realistic scene. Very disturbing. I know you can kill people in the GTA series too blablabla, but..there's something about MW2's

airport scene

that just makes it far more cruel, and not as um.."funny."

[Cake]

there's something about MW2's

airport scene

that just makes it far more cruel, and not as um.."funny."

That's just the thing though, the scene isn't meant to be funny; it's meant to illustrate the coldbloodedness that is terrorism. That scene is meant to dehumanize the villain, and set the premise for future plot points. While it can be skipped, I'm not sure how the game proceeds, though I'm sure they in some way make the knowledge of the events available in the player's eyes.

[Patticus]

The airport scene was grim as fuck, and this from the guy who was expecting to be laughing his head off like a maniac during the event. You can't run during the initial massacre sequence, you can only walk. The slaughter is slow, it's methodical and you can tell even from the pre-stage briefing this is gonna take its toll on you. In a way I actually found the stage rather tiring, draining... I can't really explain it, but it took a lot out of me, that stage.

Totally worth it though. You need that stage to understand the following events adequately.

Edit: Okay, holy shit at the direction the plot has taken as a result of the airport... it's got more than a whiff of a certain recent PC RTS* about it, and that's okay by me. I fucking love the weapons you get given in the 'Wolverines!' mission.

* (Don't read if you don't want a massive plot spoiler!)

World in Conflict

[Covskin]

Holy crap, that airport scene...its not pleasant. As someone who hadn't been looking at any previews or hype or whatever, that seqeuence caught me completely off-guard. Superb stuff though.

My copy arrived this morning, and I've just got up to that point. Taking a break now, but be back on it soon. I'm hoping to be half-decent at this game by the end of the week (this is my first FPS since Timesplitters, and my word, do I suck).

[Patticus]

The sheer variety of weaponry on offer in this game is just brilliant. It's probably the best weapon set I've seen since Perfect Dark 64 nearly a decade ago. I really, really hope there's a second round of Ghillie Suit escapades.

[Patticus]

British supermarkets have plunged into a price war frenzy over this title, with ASDA and Amazon.co.uk selling the game for £32, Sainsbury's and CoolShop.co.uk going for £26 and Makro (a shop I'd never heard of) selling it for £20.

I could've saved £20. Ah shit, oh well, at least I had the pleasure of receiving it early. That felt good.

PC gamers who own legit copies can now install the game via Steam, while Steam purchasers have to wait until the 12th of the month (2 days) to unlock theirs.

So c'mon people, are you buying it? Are you playing it? What do you think? Give your impressions of the year's biggest game!

[Badnik Mechanic]

I decided to get the Hardened edition from grainger games' website, it was around £10 cheaper than both Game and Gamestation, sadly, Tescos were all out of the PS3 version, Asda however had the best deal on this one, but they do have a few Xbox copies left.

Mind you, Makro's price is quite simply mind boggling.

Makro for those who don't know tends to stock supersize of everything at pretty good prices, however they do not add VAT until you reach the till. But you can buy super sized portions of utterly anything. I had no idea though that they sold recent games, once I got a very cheap dance mat from them, but new games? Thats quite unheard of for me.

Also... if you fancy popping down to your local Makro, they even have a store locator which tells you how many copies of each version of the game they have.

Makros awesome store locator and stock list

However one catch with Makro, you need to have a voucher, and last time I went you needed to sign a register so you could enter, since they're not technically supermarkets, they're warehouses, you need to sign a special form so you can just get through the front door!

Print off and get a stupidly cheap game... then sell it to gamestation/game.

[Patticus]

Reports from midnight store openings in the UK; Tesco aren't reducing in-store the price until tomorrow (lol!), Asda and other retailers have huge queues in some areas (mostly chavs, go figure), and there have been several reports of violence and theft at the events. Nothing unusual there then, there's always some cuntish types out to make trouble or try to steal a copy for themselves.

[Remy]

Been playing this all day in multiplayer, wow matchmaking is shitty sometimes.

Alot of the time ended up matchmade with people from the US, probably only played with a couple aussies hosts all day. It's about the same as MW1- so if you hated that, my australian brethren, your ping won't be much higher in this.

[Paul Str337]

So I didn’t care about this game at all until the weekend when I was suddenly taken by a wave of hype. This hype was buoyed more by the fact that the Supermarkets were selling it for silly money. I was contemplating queuing outside Asda at midnight but that’s until I heard about the Makro deal. See, my mum has a membership with Makro and the Leeds store is about 5 mins drive from my house. So I’m up early and about to wake up my mum to go collect the game as they open at 7am. I need to get it and get her home before 8 as then I need to get to work! All this just to get it for £20. If they’ve somehow sold out I can wait for it to be slightly cheaper on e-bay.

[Detective Shadzter]

Just been to Sainsburys to get my PS3 version (got Xbox 360 Hardened edition at HMV at midnight) and there must have been 100 people in the queue when I left. Glad I was early and grabbed 2nd place.

It's one per customer, you can buy one of each version but not 2 of the same version.

My local Merry Hill store had 200 copies, 100 of each version.

Absolute steal at £26, even better with 15% staff discount making it £22.10 and nectar points earned too.

[Remy]

I take back everythign I said about multiplayer, singler player is fucking awesome, and now people actually ahve the game, multiplayer is grrreat too.

I'm addicted. :'(

[Patticus]

The finale to Hornets' Nest was frigging incredible.

[Remy]

Was that the oil rig mission? if so, agree!

[Patticus]

Was that the oil rig mission? if so, agree!

Er, what oil rig? I hope that's not a spoiler. No I mean the

escape from the Rio favelas.

Review Roundup

Eurogamer: 9/10

PSM3 Magazine: 96%

Daily Telegraph: 10/10

1up: 'A'

C&VG: 94%

Official Xbox 360 Magazine: 10/10

IGN UK: 9.4

IGN US: 9.5

GameTrailers: 9.5

GamesRadar: 10/10

Team Xbox: 9.7

Game Informer: 9.75

[Remy]

No, I mean the *spoiler*.

indeed, that was a truly HOLY FUCKING SHIT I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW AWESOME THIS IS moment.

[Tiller]

MW2 Launch Midnight launch event!

The game looks fucking awesome but due the recent cock ups by IW and Activision, I cannot bring myself to buy this game. Everything I've seen my roomate playthrough looks solid and polished, but the lack of dedicated servers and mods is unbelievable. Console users should enjoy it though, but PC users just got shafted hard, and for that I cannot give them my dollar vote. So instead of waiting to buy the game we held a special launch event on the TF2 Kotakuites server!

Edited November 10, 2009 by The Engineer

[PaddyFancy]

Reading on Digital Spy, the UK supermarkets like Sainsbury's and Asda refusing to sell the game to mums because they believe they've only been brought in to buy the game for their underage child.

Managers going up and down the line pointing out that it's an 18-rated game and that you have to be over 18 to buy, the school pupils got out their mobile phones and contacted family members to get them to come down here and buy it for them, although in most cases to no avail. Some supermarkets even had the police round in case there was a breech of the peace. Sadly they couldn't arrest them because it isn't a criminal offense for parents behinh 18-rated games on behalf of their child.

Very responsible of them.

Edited November 10, 2009 by Major Ziggy

[Paul Str337]

So I got to Makro for half 7 this morning and picked up the game for £20. A huge thanks goes out to my mum as without her I couldn’t get into the shop to buy the game.

I’ve had probably an hour and half on it but don’t really have time to get settled down into it until Friday. Initial impressions are that it’s good. Oddly I seem to be doing better in this than I did COD4. The single player is much more enjoyable and despite only having two multiplayer games I didn’t feel like I was being destroyed like I did on COD 4. I didn’t do well or anything and died more times than I killed people but hell, just to kill a few people is an achievement for me! People are actually dying when I spray bullets at them, something that seemed to not happen last time round.

[BlueFox]

I've finished the game, played some MP and Spec ops and I've decided now is the time to give my opinions of the game.

It's been a while since games have actually made me make sound effects or make me verbaly express points when there's no one around. I really found my self expressing words as if I'm quite shocked at they've done that (though not in a bad way) I really enjoyed the whole snow mobile sectionand the Ice climbing. The combat is amazing, you don't quite realise that you're going at such a fast pace, the game makes things hectic without over pressuring you and it's often split up by small Stelth sections (That work) Vehical driving or other little things to break it up.

The storyline I've yet to fully grasp but it's nice to see something different and to be able to see it through many different points of view. E.G.

When you quantum lap into a man in space watching the huge nuclear explosion.

It's a small thing yet somewhat powerful. It's just a shame that whenever you get an ingame cutscene such as that

95% of the time you'll end it dead or dying

which still leaves me a bit confused at the end.

Veteran mode isn't as hard as CoD:WaW with the grenade spam. It's possible but there are some missions that will take a while.

Multiplayer, at first due to the amount of variation in the weapons and perks untill you get to about lvl 10 (although that shouldn't take too long) it's quite over whelming and confusing, although you get to grips with most of it after you get the create a class at lvl 4. I just wish the people I met weren't such dicks.