It's no L4D, but it's great fun. The fact that it's "only" a defensive line against waves of baddies is easily made up for by map size and design, and the characters are more amusing than simple cut-and-paste models would suggest.

Money money moneyyyyyyy....

The problem with WaW's single-player is how utterly overboard Treyarch went with the Darker and Grittier feel to get the player feeling horror about World War II. The only thing they did right was destructible limbs; this should've been in Modern Warfare, and should be in Modern Warfare 2. Armed conflict today is just as violent and gore-tastic as it was back then, and Modern Warfare is bizarrely sanitary about it.

Other then that, it was just way too much. Practically every mission has a bit where the player is knocked down with your vision going into blur-0-matic mode until a supporting character picks you up and tells you which way to run amidst all the chaos carefully scripted to give you a specific window out. The cutscenes were ridiculously overdone, with so much visual, auditory and overall cinematic trickery used to get across the point that War Is Hell they became laughable instead of cause for thought. I'm all for ditching the John Wayne-era of war in fiction and never looking back, but you can't make style or an engrossing depiction of a war just by throwing more blood and more angst on it every minute. Sergeant Jackson's death in Modern Warfare is easily ten times as hard-hitting as Polonski or Roebuck dying in WaW, and it's not just because Jackson is the player.

Using Imram Zakheav's model for Sergeant Reznov was a nice touch, at least.

There was plenty of the usual butthurt at release about how it isn't good at either because it's totally a terrible console port with no depth at all lol, but it's a decent game and the singleplayer can keep you occupied for awhile; took me something like forty turns at fifteen to thirty minutes a turn to beat the campaign with one faction, although they're not different enough for you to try it again as another one after the first time. (Although that being said, lazyness on my part in learning how the campaign map worked probably added to my turn count.)

Agreed wholeheartedly. I actually read somewhere that they designed the maps to AVOID having long distance shoot-outs, I guess to encourage action. I feel that might have worked well for the console crowd but was a mistake for the PC players, and I love the more open and bigger maps in World at War. I hope IW takes a play out of that book for MW2.

That's interesting, I suppose I can imagine the rationale behind it, long range tends to be shooting at little dots instead of battling other people (which itself does happen in Modern Warfare, maps like Creek have specific areas where it's possible to see someone on the other side of the entire map and line up a shot without a sniper scope, if you've got a very steady hand.) I like to abuse the M14 with a reflex sight, myself; give it Stopping Power and Deep Impact, it's always a one-hit kill on hardcore at any range and through walls, the red-dot is precise enough to nail someone as far away as they can possibly be.

Infinity Ward's biggest flaw is treating "traditional" game mechanic as dogma, I think. Say "open world" to them and watch the apocalypse happen above their offices. For whatever reason, despite seeming inflexible, they still turn out an awesome experience, but this is surely where all of these little problems we're mentioning here come from, and it'd be nice if they'd think outside the box not so much that it changes their high-quality core design, but just enough to fix the little nitpicks.

Clear Skies was great. Almost makes me want to play EVE Online.

Modern Warfare's only major problem was small multiplayer maps (seriously can I have one space where my ACOG matters?) Here's hoping this fixes it.

Also, the melee combat going on in one of those shots was pretty neat, could be fun as a perk instead of just a scripted SP event; get knifed, get a split-second to land a quick-time event that counters it.

Hell, maybe they'll replace martyrdom with that.

When do the new monsters start showing up in the DLC? Is it after you've reached level 20? Or even before?

I believe level 18.

You mean Fable had an ending before they added it in the game's re-release?

That said, sci-fi shooters definitely don't have the same mainstream appeal as the more realistic ones (in terms of setting). People instantly recognize shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, etc. They also recognize terrorists and Nazis. Another factor is accessibility. Pseudorealistic shooters use hitscan and player movement is very slow. You don't really need to lead your aim or predict where your target will be in 1-3 seconds.

I suppose this is why so many people eat up Halo despite its complete banality. The biggest butthurt over Halo 2 was, after all, the pistol being nerfed.

It's much easier for a newbie to kill someone with an AK than with a rocket launcher.

The obvious innovation to take here is to give the player a shitty AK held onto by a stereotypical "towelhead" with no clue about proper maintenance and watch it jam. Then point and laugh as they flail with it.

I think it would be a good idea if they set it in Iraq, in Fallujah, using that battle that lasted for six days.

If you want something modern-age and terrible to tackle, set it during Operation Vigilant Resolve instead of Operation Phantom Fury. The latter happened (and lasted for six days) mostly because the former was a mess of even greater proportions;.

You are right, they aren't popular anymore. But trust me, when Quake was new, no FPS on the PLANET, then or since then, has ever had as much following, as many players, modders, etc. The entire polygon based FPS genre is based entirely off Quake. CoD is a footnote in comparison.

I don't mind modern shooters. I'm just sick of the same formulaic, static shooters like CoD we've gotten in the past half dozen years or so. Every year there's a new one that is almost entirely exactly like the last accept for the storyline. The locations, the gameplay, the setting, the graphics, the weapons, the same stupid artificial cover systems, regenerating health system, it's just all so BORING.

I think this particular case has more to do with Infinity Ward's (and byt extension, Treyarch's) massive hard-on for scripted gaming rather than publisher pressure. They used to rail on Crysis quite a bit for not being able to come close to the epicness of their scripted events. Naturally, no one in those interviews ever mentions that scripted events only get one shot and then it's over and done with, whereas sandbox games never do the same thing twice.

That being said, I actually like Modern Warfare. Has everything it does been done ten thousand times? Yes, but not with nearly a much production value and polish. Not every game needs to be innovative to be good, and half the reason so many games coming out these days suck is that developers/publishers insist on always making some half-baked attempt at innovation. Sometimes they just don't have the funding or the backing to be innovative and it falls flat, sometimes they're trying to innovate just for the sake of it and the end result is poor game design. While I don't want gaming to turn into a drudge of one Halo after another, this belief that every single title must be innovative in some way, shape or form is ludicrous. It's perfectly possible to make a good game based on tried-and-true formulas.

It's like when you watch crappy military movies and the enemy's attack is turned back by a hero laughing at their predictability for following textbook tactics; no one ever seems to understand that things that end up in the textbook are there because they work.

Hell, if you want an example of this formula not being done well, look no further than World at War. The scripted sequences largely consist of your character falling down and a supporting character running to pick you up, and the presentation is trying so hard to be gritty and realistic instead of like a John Wayne movie that it goes way, way too far in the opposite direction and is just corny.

The real problem with the Wii isn't that it's made Nintendo something it's not, it's that it's a fantasy gone seriously wrong. Everyone thought of it as virtual reality when it can't do 1:1 motion until Wiimotion+ comes, and developers never bother actually being innovative with it, instead making you wiggle your wrist back and forth instead of your thumb up and down. It hasn't been revolutionary for gaming because no one will actually do anything interesting with it; it's just the same old mediocre game every time with a fancy-looking controller instead of good game design, on last-generation hardware to boot.

How can you be historical and analytical over something that is *still* happening? To be fair, I don't particularly see shows like generation kill to be truly retrospective. Documentaries are about it for me, and even then they are a slice of a moment and can't be analytical.

Generation Kill, specifically, is about a specific, small frame of time five years ago. Five years may not be the fifty since World War II, but it's more than enough for retrospective. I would go so far as to say it's more interesting retrospective, because you can actually hear it straight from the mouths of people who were there, who aren't dead or senile with age. Some of the Marines have mentioned how, in hindsight, a lot of the decisions made by the battalion commander that seemed ludicrous and lacking in all common-sense seemed perfectly reasonable at a later date when they had more than their own perspective to consider. I'm pretty sure it's even in the extended afterward in the book's latest print.

If that's not retrospective, I don't know what is.

In response to the Times Online article:

The ultimate purpose of a video game is to be fun and entertaining. I highly doubt an Iraqi child who watched his father being shot by American troops or being hauled away to be tortured would find the concept behind this "game" appealing in any way.

If you are a brainwashed American who views the war in Iraq as justified then I see why you might like the game. If however you are part of the REST OF THE WORLD you view it as a war crime. American propaganda needs to stay out of video games.

Oh, you again. You know, repeating the same nonsense over and over and over without even changing the words is the most common and easiest way American politicians convince people they're right. It's okay as long as it's your point of view though, isn't it? Hello, Pot? This is Kettle; you're black.

Also this:

I highly doubt an Iraqi child who watched his father being shot by American troops or being hauled away to be tortured would find the concept behind this "game" appealing in any way.

Just like Germans go ripshit when WW2 games are all about killing Nazis (unlike insurgents who suicide-bomb civilians which somehow isn't worse than white phosphorus, they're obviously bad, so it doesn't matter if they're the same nationality,) right? The Chinese go...well, okay, so you can't sneeze at China without massive outcries of offense, but still. I've yet to see a valid argument for how "it's too soon" is actually a good justification for calling something tasteless. World War 2 fiction is less tasteless just because all the people who were there like our supposed Iraqi child are dead now? Shouldn't we worry about disrespecting the dead, then? Funny thing about being a human being, it means you have free will, and free will means you can look at something that bothers you and say "I'm going to have no part of that" instead of insisting that everyone in the world foam at the mouth with you, most of whom don't care and don't have a similar personal experience that would allow them to sympathize with you. There are American soldiers in the sandbox playing Modern Warfare to pass the time and none of them seem to mind the game showing the Op For killing a whole lot more Americans than vice-versa. Of course, since they're brainwashed evil Americans, I guess it doesn't count.

Does no-one remember the part where the entire idea and event direction for the game came from a bunch of veterans who wanted to tell their story in a medium the current and coming generations care about (ie., not books?) Are they being tasteless to themselves, or something?

Evan Wright's Generation Kill inspired some pretty batshit backlash, too. "Real Marines wouldn't talk like that, it's completely insulting to actual servicemen!" Nevermind the book isn't fiction and was written by someone sitting next to them in combat, and the actual Marines have been friendly with the guy ever since. People will come up with any excuse they can to justify their dislike of something when it challenges their view of the world as a happy place where bad things don't happen.

War is all fine and dandy as long as it's romanticized, which you simply can't do in anything trying to be current and/or faithful to the actual experience; I am immensely insulted by this double-standard. God forbid we actually think about how people die in armed conflict. How would everyone whose freedoms are protected by a state military actually live with themselves if we did?

Even worse, it could end up in the hands of a fanatical young Muslim and incite him to consider some form of retaliation or retribution. He could use it to get worked up and want to really 'finish the game'."

The problem with this man isn't that he's not being rational on account of how close it hits to home for him, that much is obvious. And completely understandable; if I lost a relative, let alone a son, to armed conflict, I'd be pretty crazy too. The problem is that pointing this out is politically incorrect, so ridiculous statements like this go unchallenged as if they should be taken seriously.

Tasteless? Other than it being based on an actual battle that happened only a few years ago, compared to CoD4 where you're invading a fictional Middle Eastern country, how is it really that tasteless? If the game ends up not sucking, I'll probably check it out. I guess I'm in the minority, wondering what the battle was really like, rather than just judging it from a distance.

An interesting note here, watch the loading-screen briefings very closely in Modern Warfare when the map is zooming in; I'm pretty sure the "fictional Middle Eastern country" would have a big fat "IRAN" over it if the map had labels. So the game is about attacking a country that has attracted Western attention in the form of rising tensions for the past few years now, but it's perfectly tasteful, as far as everyone is concerned, because it's never named and the beginning of the game hints it to have been going pro-US before some bad dudes threw a coup.

To say nothing of the Russian Federation in Modern Warfare, which is home to an insurgency of such military might that the actual state army can't stop them from seizing a nuclear missile base and has to rely on the big damn (Western) heroes to stop it.

Mind you, I don't consider these things tasteless at all; Modern Warfare is fiction, and fiction is more powerful when it uses the real world. I sure as hell felt more attached to Sergeant Jackson than I did anyone in Full Spectrum Warrior while they invaded Zekistan. But it seems strange that something like this gets a free pass just because it's fiction, whereas something grounded in very specific reality is immediately tasteless (and the brains behind it are people who were actually there, seriously, did anyone actually read the article? Actual veterans of Fallujah who have undoubtedly suffered battle fatigue are interested in nothing more than controversy caused by the subject matter increasing sales? Right.)

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Another disgusting title aimed at brainwashed Americans who get off on the pain and misery of civilians as long as they don't have white skin and aren't Christian.

Or, you know, something that will, through being entertaining and therefore interesting and capable of holding those with short attention spans for the real world, give the ignorant masses a taste of how shitty armed conflict actually is. Funny how when Maximum PC built a gaming rig for some mechanized infantry over in the sandbox and asked them what they'd planned to play on it, they said mostly Modern Warfare and World at War. Conflict makes good entertainment, end of story. Entertainment based on real conflict has with it the unique possibility of being educational without being a documentary, assuming the developers are actually competent.

(Oh, and we're not all pasty-white pansy Christians who count on God to make the world function. And Quite a few of us have no problem shooting Marines as Ultranationalists in Modern Warfare, or wrecking the National Guard as the Red Army in World in Conflict.)

If you want a realistic feeling of QCB (Close Quarters Battle) there are Rainbow Six games that will fill that need.

No, just...no. This is like saying if you want a realistic combat aviation experience, play Ace Combat.

Looking forward to this and inFAMOUS. Seems like every city-based open-world game coming out these days is better than the last, let's hope this doesn't break the trend.

Im sorry but I dont have time to wade through 3 or 4 pages of text to "read between the hype" so to speak. Forum reviews and blogs are x10 times better sources of information, you just have to read all the stuff thats out there both the positive and especially the negative ones.

You have time to play games but you can't read for twenty minutes? Really? I work a fifty-hour week too, but I can still research my purchases before making them.

And no, blogs and forum reviews are not better. There is zero quality control and even more unsubstantiated bias. At worst, you have "reviewers" who don't know how to form a proper sentence, and at best, you have the rare someone who knows how to write like a politician, seeming unbiased but having more than their fair share.

Forum reviews and blogs are x10 times better sources of information, you just have to read all the stuff thats out there both the positive and especially the negative ones.

So, uh, how are you reading all the stuff that's out there if you don't have time to read?

And especially the negative? You seriously give more weight to the negative opinions of people you don't even know? This is just as bad as giving more weight to the positive; you don't know if your tastes match someone you've never even heard of ranting and raving on the Internet about how pissed they are about a game they, personally, didn't like.

Not that user-populated forums are a reliable source of information either, since they're overwhelmingly filled with the small percentage of the player-base that gets pissed enough about a game not conforming to their exact desires that ranting to the Internet makes them feel better.

Really, reviews are the best source of information, just don't consider the reviewer's opinion on the aspects of the game he talks about, just that those aspects are there. Compare with other reviews to see if something you personally don't like about games in general is being overblown or understated by the first review you read.

Still surprised that anyone these days needs to be told that any industry pulls stuff like this on a regular basis...