MW2 - The Wait Is Over!

Well the moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived and in a year when many of the marquee games have been let downs (Wolfenstein, ODST), how are things looking for MW2?

Like everyone else I only have the videos and various interviews with Infinity Ward heads to go on. From what I’ve seen, the game looks stunning and it seems there will be at least one set piece to rival the nuke scene on COD 4 and hopefully the single player will last longer than its predecessor.

Which brings me neatly to the main reason that most people will be buying MW2 - online play and the kick you get from riling Americans who trash talk but don’t have the goods to back it up? Infinity Ward has been listening to players, it had a twitter site that let gamers put suggestions forward for what they wanted to see in MW2. I would have preferred to have a respawn immunity for about 5 seconds to stop the occasional spawn killers while others have put forward suggestions for multi-parts for weapons i.e. red dot sight with a silencer. Most of the suggestions have been very good and reasoned.

Of course all of this will broaden the appeal to a wider audience but there is also the danger of it becoming too populist. For example I’m not convinced by the awarding of points for every single thing going. But on the other hand I think the balancing out of the game by introducing a death streak bonus (it’s the opposite to a kill streak, if you die 3 times in a row without getting a kill you get some assistance e.g you can copy the kit of the last person who killed you) will help a lot of people get to grips with the game.

Then there’s the new kill streaks which again I’m not too convinced by, one of the most fun things to do was to kill your enemy when he was one kill short of a helicopter or an airstrike. Again Infinity Ward have attempted to balance things by not letting kills from your killstreak weapons to count towards getting the next weapon in the streak.

For me, the things I will be looking forward to most will be the more customisation of loadouts, the throwing knife and the AC-130 gunship.

What are your hopes for MW2 and what aspects are you looking forward to most?

Modern Warfare 2 goes on sale on November 10th 

Ian Foley (our first reader contributor)