Whew boy, this is going to take some explaining. Mind you I still have a sleep headache.
Basically I was stupid and played it all the way through after getting back in at about 1 AM EST. I went to bed at 7 AM, so figure 7 hours of campaign.
Let's see if I can cover some of it.
More of an arcade-like design. MW1 had what I would call a CoD or a Counter Strike look and feel to it. MW2 has a lot of largely distracting info on your HUD which isn't necessary in many cases. The blood splatters on your screen any time you get hit, get worse as you get damaged more.. to the point you can't even see anything.. so you can't defend or protect yourself.
On just about every level you have some superior or comrade yelling constantly about what you need to do. Like "TAKE OUT THE SNIPERS BY THE BURGER TOWN!!!!!!" or some other yell. But the darn game doesn't make it clear where these locations are. Yes there are way points, but evidently the level designers forgot to provide them when you are in the midst of the heaviest battles. This is a repeated problem.
Your captain also shouts to go east, west, or whatever direction... but there's no compass in the game. So how on earth are you expected to know what direction that is? Look at the sun's position?
Enemy forces can kill you with extreme ease. I started the game on normal, as I usually do for a first play through... and by the 3rd or 4th mission I couldn't stand the dying. I knocked it back to easy and still had to play through the same choke point about 15 times before I managed to pass it. I'm more of a slow methodical sniper type mentality with COD campaign... and it just doesn't work for several missions. You can't run through the areas either. You have to poke your head around corners and jump or crouch around objects while being shot at from every type of weapon from all directions above and below, try and get a shot off... move..repeat x infinity to have any hope in these areas.
Frag grenades are useless, stun nades almost as much. I understand IW trying to limit the problem of nade killing in MW1... but they just don't work. I have on multiple levels had a small room of enemies (3-4) and tossed a stun, and then all 4 of my frags at places in the room to get proper coverage... maybe 1-2 died, and even that was extremely rare! Nades also can not be thrown nearly as far and they have sort of a cartoony trail in the air as they are thrown. However enemy grenades have a great blast radius range.
Weapons have very little recoil... 50.cal, etc... heavy machine guns... whatever....
In general they are pretty fun to fire.. moderate to very effective although several
of the classic guns seem to have reduced magazines... you have to reload after
every tap/kill it seems. Multi spray and pray kills are nigh hard/impossible.
You don't get an AC130 mission in the campaign, there are a couple chopper side gunner and a Humvee gunner mission sections. That was sort of a downer, but I know the spec ops has a ac130 specific mission.
The story itself is way "over the top." *SPOILERS*
- Spoiler:
Basically you don't figure it out till the end, but the general that commanded the troops from MW1 when they got nuked has a vendetta, and is nuts enough to secretly cause wars. He puts a sleeper agent in the terrorist group so that he can get himself killed in the terrorist attacking the airport scene. The Russians (supposedly - since all this is skipped over in a 2 minute cutscene) call for blood against the Americans and crack a ACS (whatever that is) module and send a massive (unbelievable type massive) air attack against D.C. proper. Supposedly using the codes from the ACS to fake signatures with our sat system and knock out all our defenses. The previous mission to this scene is where you have to go retrieve the ACS from a Russian air base - which turns into a snowmobile escape.
So you've got hundreds of troop transport planes dropping paratroopers over the suburbs of DC, and armored vehicles rolling down roads in little towns blasting "doll home" like houses.... while you have to fight through the crossfire.
Meanwhile your other task force is sent off to rescue an asset from a gulag prison castle. Meanwhile the Navy acts like jerks and keeps bombarding the building you're in even though your superior keeps telling them to quit. The asset turns out to be Capt MacMillian from MW1.
BTW did I mention in between every loading you get the general or some other guy waxing poetic about war and how whoever wins writes history, or how lives don't mean anything as part of the cost of war... yadda yadda yadda... who's got the bigger stick, who's holding it... because we're the "good guys" we are going to "show you" freedom... even if you don't want it.
Capt. M has a bur up his shorts with the general, they get into it over the comm (why? we don't know). Capt cuts him off and decides to launch nukes from a Russian sub at DC on his own.
You switch to a astronaut on the ISS, to watch the nuke blow up in the upper atmosphere. Which then some kind of giant wave (physical, not just emp) hits and shreds the ISS.
Back in DC, choppers and all sorts of stuff starts falling from the sky like rain drops. Now your comms and electronic gun gear like red dot sights and so forth don't work (nice touch).
You have to push through DC buildings and tunnels that look like the city has been nuked a few times. No one seems to care about radiation or what just happened... it's all a on foot uphill vs. entrenched fight to get into the white house. You have to pop smoke at the top of the building to keep the air force from leveling all the buildings in DC. (Which begs the question, how did the fighters avoid the emp when half of the US went black when the nuke went off?) Yet even though the rest of your forces shouldn't know about the strike, when you get to the roof there's many other buildings with green smoke lit. One of the last lines from the marines is to the affect of "so when are we going to Moscow?" "I donno but when we get there, we'll burn it to the ground" "all in good time."
The politicians give the general a blank check (literally) and tell him to do whatever he wants.
Of course he wants genocide in actuality.
The task force is told to find the terrorist leader Makarov and they have to split to two locations. Both are traps set up by the general once he gets the data from you, as he puts it "tiding up loose ends." He shoots you and your partner, then has the marines throw your bodies in a pile as you're still barely alive, they saturate you in gas, then the general lights you himself.
At the other location, Soap and Capt M figured out what happened and are on the run. They call up the terrorist and find out the location of where the general is hiding. The whole world is told you are responsible for the terrorism... Soap and Capt go in for a suicide mission against the general, all the while the Capt is throwing out his philosophical bull. You get to a desert location and cave kill till you get to some whitewater rafting... eventually you end up trying to kill the general, he takes your knife and jams you in the chest with it. He starts monologging about how after he gets done, the 30,000 troops he lost in MW1 will mean nothing, there will be no shortage of volunteers after what has been started in DC.
The capt tackles the general and they start their slug match, the capt looses. You have to pull out the knife in your chest as you're dying and throw it and nail the general in the eye. Miraculously the Capt gets up and supposedly bandages you... as your other friend shows up with a copter to evac you, even though he was told to not show up.
The game then goes to credits, which are fly bys through a museum of animated dioramas from every mission in the game. Some of the scenes show either side putting the other into submission holds, physically beating them, breaching rooms, etc. Not appropriate stuff in some cases for any museum.
Basically in all this I think IW was trying to send a veiled message about war and politics.
That there can be "crazies" on either side, and all of history is a lie...written by the victor as they saw it. When in reality both sides thought they were right. What I'm alluding to is of course the wars with Islamists, war on terror..etc... It's so very suttle though that I think the masses aren't going to see it.
I can see the game being hugely offensive to anyone of Russian ancestry, and no doubt they have something planned for the next game following this plot - since you never caught the original terrorist Makarov. Heck I'm an American, and I'm offended by portions of the game.
Graphic wise in most areas is was on par or slightly better than MW1. In one or two places it was much better than MW1.
Gameplay wise... I extremely dislike the enemy AI. Due to how nearly impossible it is to get around some points. They are much smarter, nimble, and react much better. Character models seem to be better... although the dogs in the dog patrols are downright obviously terrible. If it were not for them turning sideways, I'd almost say the patrol dogs were medium resolution 2D animated images. Their movement AI is about as bare basic as you can get too.
- Spoiler:
Story wise, they skipped explaining a lot. Every mission was fast paced and felt like rush rush rush. The whole tirade coming from Capt Mactavish or the general, I felt like we might have traded one evil for another letting the Capt out of the prison. They both in my book qualify as psychotic and had no qualms about escalating things to wipe out whoever they wanted, however they wanted... all seeming like they were instruments of divine justice and monologging the whole way through.
So like I said... I hope the multi picks up the game some. I'm not thrilled with the campaign all too well.
Additionally, the menu's are obviously geared for someone with next to no experience with a computer. the MW1 menus were fine. The opening title screen give you 3 big choices like vending machine buttons for which mode you want to play. It's weird, not as good as before, and seems like it was geared for casual/arcade players because they want something simple... which is kind of insulting IMO. There's indicators as well that state you've completed such an amount of a percentage of a gametype or status... but there's no way of figuring out what else it expects you to do to complete more. After completing the campaign, it says I'm 50% complete.... where's the other 50%? Am I supposed to complete it on another difficulty, am I supposed to do multiplayer or spec ops, are there missions I missed some how?
Oh I forgot too... when your AI shoots with something other than a sniper weapon in a siege.... they can have an enemy AI get up right in front of them (5 ft) and they can be shooting each other and neither one die. It was sort of rare... I saw it happen like 4 times. But it's really stupid when the enemy AI decides you're the new target and your guy is right in front of him firing away. Meanwhile you're getting hit by something you thought should have already died.