Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is in development and set to release on November 10, 2009. It was officially announced by Activision Blizzard on December 3, 2008.
No co-operative play will be included in the campaign of Modern Warfare 2, unlike the previous installment. In the Game Informer article, Infinity Ward stated that co-op campaign detracted greatly from the cinematic effect of the game no matter how they tried to implement it. However, a new mode of gameplay, called Special Forces mode, will include co-operative play. Special Forces mode will include several fast-paced action missions similar to Mile High Club which will be of much higher difficulty than normal campaign missions and will lack real stories.
It has also been stated that NPCs will carry customized weaponry, similar to multiplayer.
In at least one mission, enemy soldiers will be amongst non-combatant civilians, forcing the player to discern between civilians and militia soldiers.
Modern Warfare 2 is to feature Russia once again in political turmoil. Makarov, a political leader coming from the shadow of Imran Zakhaev, plots to cause a chain of events that would threaten global security. The plan made by Makarov is deemed dangerous enough for Task Force 141, led by Cpt. Soap MacTavish, to be deployed to Russia. There, the force must fight its way through near-white out conditions. After escaping the scene on snowmobiles, Task Force 141 is later deployed to Rio De Janeiro to capture an arms der linked to the plot, eventually being led to the barren lands of Afghanistan. But the intel Cpt. Soap MacTavish and the rest of Task Force 141 is receiving is likely inaccurate, as even they do not understand the danger of the sinister plot.
On May 10th, a promotional video for Modern Warfare 2 was unveiled on TNT. Multiple weapons were shown in the video, all of which are listed above, along with weapons shown in the Game Informer article. On May 21st, a second promotional video was shown on GTTV. Both of the two videos were pieces of the large trailer that was to be released on May 24th, to which an Infinity Ward developer responded, "The extended trailer which launches on ModernWarfare2.com on Sunday will be 5x the amount of content.".[3]
Sure enough, the full length trailer topped off at around 2 minutes with more gameplay than was previously shown. The trailer's debut was so popular that the official Infinity Ward forums were crashed for nearly ten minutes, due to the flood of people.
Making certain superhero videogames must be difficult. Some guys, like Batman, are just regular people with lots of money and awesome gadgets, and they can still die. But what about nearly immortal characters, like Superman? The Man of Steel has kryptonite to make him a little more "human," but Marvel's undying bundle of anger, Wolverine, can survive almost anything (or at least put himself back together after being torn to shreds). Wolverine's latest adventure X-Men Origins: Wolverine, does a great job of making you feel like the nearly invincible mutant, but it doesn't quite provide a story to match.
Like the title indicates, Origins details Wolverine's beginnings...well more of the origin of his name and adamantium frame. The character's true origin began in the 1800s. Regardless, Origins' five-chapter tale alternates between the present (mostly the Weapon X facility) and three years in the past (in an African jungle), setting up a frame story that slowly but surely drives the narrative forward. After act three, however, things start to get weird; for every question the game answers, it brings up two more. Other popular mutants, like Gambit and the Blob, make brief appearances, but their cameos only confuse the tale of flashbacks further. By the end, the game has set up so many loose plot threads that it leaves no choice but to try and wrap them up in a confusing mishmash of explosions and overlong battles.
But you're playing this game for one reason and it's not for a Dickensian retelling of Logan's history; it's to do what "he does best": tear people in half with reckless, bloody abandon. And that's what Origins gets right. The camera cinematically sweeps around the battlefield, and the game throws the action into slow motion whenever you execute an especially violent decapitation. And almost every enemy can succumb to getting ripped apart at the torso or a messy decapitation. The combos are simple, and button-mashing usually works just as well as any type of strategy. But the game always makes you feel like an effective killing machine.
The guys you're killing, however, get old pretty fast. Both the "past" jungle levels and "present" facility chapters pit you against the exact same enemies, reskinned to fit their surroundings. It's even more off-putting when you start fighting mutants. How many blade-wielding, four-armed dancers exist in Wolverine's world? Apparently several hundred. Boss encounters, while they force you to change up your battle strategy a little, are simple exercises in running around in circles, leaping on your opponent's back, and slowly whittling away at their health bar.
But to ease the grind of fighting the game's endless parade of cloned grunts, Origins incorporates a few adventure-like qualities (leveling up, equipping new powers, choosing which skills to power up). While it adds a sense of purpose to the slaughter, it's also a bit misleading. You can constantly upgrade your strength and stamina, but the enemies always seem to take the same amount of punishment. And it makes the cut-scenes, where Wolverine effortlessly slices through skin, bone, and concrete walls that much more jarring. How do the same enemies take so much more damage when they're in-game? By the end of Origins, I was hoping to have created a Wolverine who could swing a fist and immediately send limbs flying, rather than a character that feels about the same as he did at the beginning of the game.
Origins also occasionally throws in some nonsensical platforming sections to slow things down. Suddenly, the camera feels like less of a thrilling addition, and more like an annoyance whose purpose is to make you die. Leaping precariously between platforms or girders with Wolverine's inexact jumping is one thing, but some scenes force you to run toward the camera, away from some cataclysmic danger, usually while avoiding obstacles at the same time. Screw up: You die, and start over (though invisible walls tend to keep you from taking too many unnecessary leaps to your doom).
The game has unlockable costumes, which is a nice change if you get tired of looking at Logan's A-shirt attire, but neither costumes nor battle damage carry over to most of the game's cut-scenes. One second you're dressed as the classic, yellow-and-blue suited Wolverine, the next you're looking at your character in jeans and a white shirt -- all the more strange since most of the scenes take place in-engine, not as separate, high-rendered cinematics. It's the oversight to little details that ultimately detract from the game the most. Sure, Wolverine takes battle damage, exposing gaping chest wounds, protruding arm bones, and a bare skull. But his pants are always perfectly intact. Maybe Levi's Jeans has a secret deal with the Wolverine game: the pants can get a little bloody, but they can't sustain damage -- like a racing game where none of the cars can show any scratches or dents.
While Origins doesn't seem to have any game-breaking bugs, I still ran into spots that had me walking in mid-air or grabbing onto invisible ledges. Even the final boss encounter forced me to spend part of the battle running around in the sky, just trying to get back to the battlefield. The game never locked up or dropped me through a floor, but it still has some pretty big glitches for a finished product. And, this is a minor detail, but Origins doesn't have subtitles. If you want to turn down the game's constant shouting and battle noises, you'll also miss out on everything the characters are saying.
As a mindless, button-masher that puts you in control of the eternally angry Wolverine, the game provides some simple fun. But it quickly devolves into a mediocre Tomb Raider/God of War mash-up of balancing across precarious ledges, quick time events, and moving crates around to solve "puzzles." Origins isn't bad at what it does, but what it does isn't very ambitious.
