You might have noticed. You might have queued up at silly o’clock to get a copy. You might even have got some sort of tattoo to commemorate how excited you are about the prospect of shooting virtual men of assorted ethnic origins. Aye, today was Modern Warfare 2 day – a game that, for a lot of the industry and its consumers, has managed to become pretty much the only game of the year. I was at the UK launch last night – some thoughts on that and some of the rolling PC version problems follow.
I wasn’t at the pre-launch party, the one held in a Leicester Square cinema, because a quiet pint with chums seemed infinitely more appealing than braving the crowds and listening to Vernon Kaye pretend he’s a geek, but I did pop along to the big booze up afterwards, which covered the two and half hour run up to midnight, when the vaunted FPS became available. A funny affair – clearly an awful lot of money was poured into the giant countdown screen, the glut of student barstaff dressed in fatigues and a few dudes dressed as snow terrorists. A few celebrities showed up and were quickly ushered off to a special pen – the thin one from Gavin & Stacy, some Radio 1 DJs and Dizzee Rascal, who played a short set just before the witching hour. But mostly, it was a big warehouse with free booze, a few Xboxes and lots of people standing around trying not to stare unblinkingly at the enormous timer on the wall.
It wasn’t bad, not by any measure (and I’d be an awful churl to say it was, as I had a pleasant enough time), but there was an unavoidably awkward, how-do-we-do-this air to the proceedings. I say this not to mock it, because it doesn’t deserve to be mocked, but instead because it was arrestingly incongrous with MW2’s enormous profile so far. Honestly – I’m not bitching, I’m just fascinated by how new and strange a thing it is to put a videogame on the same level as a movie premiere or royal visit. It’s one of the biggest entertainment properties of the year (wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being the biggest): this is as good as it’s ever got for games. Perhaps the best it will get for the next couple of years, until something else achieves this degree of critical mass. It could have been, perhaps should have been, the launch party to end all launch parties – but instead it was a demonstration that for, for all the recent rush of success they’ve experienced, games are still in their infancy in a lot of ways.
No-one, it seems, quite knows how to make a game about repeatedly shooting dudes as glitzy as a red carpet affair – it all gets a bit unsure, a bit wobbly once it’s moved beyond showing footage and trailers. Games aren’t films, and one of the many side-effects of this is that celebrating them with pomp and ceremony isn’t easy, regardless of how much money the thing’s going to rake in. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops over time, as we (presumably) get more games with this degree of crossover appeal, and there’s more of an effort and an understanding of how to Go Big, to make it a bona fide cultural event as well as a gamer’s event. We’ve hit a new age in terms of public awareness of games in the last few years, and that’s going to bring interesting changes.
This struggle for glitz and glamour also hints at a certain hollowness at the heart of what Modern Warfare 2 really is. It’s certainly an incredibly accomplished first-person shooter and deserves success, but it’s still Put The Cursor Over The Man’s Face. it’s not doing anything to make anyone who wasn’t already going to buy it believe videogames are capable of a greatness nothing else can do. I understand why it’s “the most anticipated game of the decade”, to quote one of its marketing lines, but I can’t help but feel a little sad about that. Can’t we have a weirder, cheerier figurehead? Hey, it’d even help with launch parties – surrealistic colour and alien shapes would have brought that warehouse to life far more than all the frowning guys with fake AK-47s in the world ever could.
Still, I went home with a copy of the game, which was jolly nice. Except it was on Xbox, which wasn’t. I want to play the thing on PC, but I’m stuck with a Steam preorder. Which brings me to the latest in MW2’s litany of PC screwups. If you bought the thing via Steam, retailer appeasement nonsense means it doesn’t unlock for another two days yet. Buy a boxed copy instead and you’re laughing right away, even though it nonetheless requires Steam (and immediately downloads a 1.3Gb patch, a chum claims). So, a whole flock of people are being punished for buying the game up-front.
If you’re mad/desperate enough to go buy a boxed copy as well as having the Steam version, you’ll still be locked out, as the preorder version keeps priority – so setup a second Steam account if you plan to do that. Clearly, I’m not quite sure who’s to blame for this open stupidity, but it’s a sorry state of affairs – red tape and back-scratching holding PC gaming back from its present and its future, miring it bloody-mindedly in the past of plastic discs. What’s been achieved by doing this, apart from pissing off a bunch of guys who pre-ordered on Steam in good faith, expecting to be able to play at the same time as everyone else? Honestly, the degree to which high-up businessy types don’t have a blind clue how things really work in the real world never ceases to stun me.
I would guess this whole sorry saga, and all the sniping and swearing and spitting it resulted in, could well spell the end of Call of Duty’s PC tenure. I won’t be surprised if the next one does a Gears Of War 2 and gives up on the platform entirely. It’ll be a little sad if so, as the PC is where CoD was born, where Infinity Ward earned the experience and mega-bucks necessary to become the goliath they are today – but hey, we’ve got plenty else to be getting on with instead.
All the more importantly: who’s playing MW2, and what do you think so far? Worth the hype? Better than you thought? Sickened to the very stomach by That Level?
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Me, I’m going to put on the old eye-patch and wooden leg and get the game that way, for now. The asking price is a bit obscene, and I’m flat out broke this month (here’s the irony: buying a PC that would allow me to play this sort of thing properly means I can’t afford to buy this sort of thing this month).
I’m actually really looking forward the SP campaign. People complaining about its shortness only make me want it more. I’m finding more and more that this sort of length (around 4h for a person with well honed putting cursor on man’s face skills I hear) is pretty much the sweet spot for me. I still have some sort of damage in my brain where I cannot enjoy a singleplayer experience for very long amounts of time without feeling some sort of weird universal guilt. Think of all the multiplayer matches that could have been improved by your presence, says the very weird angel on my shoulder. Also, it seems that if you give developers the freedom to tell their story in as little time as they want, they make an experience that is just infinitely better than the old “oh but it’s gotta be 10+ hours so let’s send ‘em back through this level four more times”.
There’s very little doubt in my mind I’ll buy a legit copy for the MP down the line. I’m a magpie when it comes to shiny things, and shiny things plus carrot-on-a-stick multiplayer will totally demolish me, in a good way. I just don’t think I’ll be giving Steam 60 eurobucks for the game any time soon.
Allow me, dear imagined reader, to go into a bit of a rant for a moment here. I love digital distribution. It’s the future, and not the dreary old “things are the same but our cellphones are a little smaller” actual future, but rather the “things are the same but we live underwater” awesome-o future full of flying (or diving!) cars, orbital death rays, and a pill that cures your hiccups. And lets you grow a new kidney. I want it, and I want to pay for it.
But even though it’s better than brick’n'mortar retails, I don’t want to pay more for it than for that quaint meatspace ritual. But Daniel, you just admitted that the digital thingamajig is the superior product! Why would you not want to pay more for that? YOU MAKE NO SENSE! Well, thank you imaginary interlocutor, for bringing that up, but here’s the thing: the whole stick a disc in a box and truck it to a convenient retail location model costs the distributor more money than the stick a file on a server conveniently connected to the internet model. There’s the physical medium, there’s the box, the high quality manual (oh wait it’s not my childhood anymore), there’s the trucking it here and there, there’s the highly paid employees/subject matter exoerts at said retailer, there’s the cut the retailer wants, and so forth.
So part of what should make digital superior is that it just should have a lower price tag. That’s the way evolution intended for it to work! No wait. Anyway. I can give 60 buckses to the Steam gents or I can hit up cdwow.ie and get MOAR stuff (physical stuff, but still) for 37 buckses. That don’t seem right.
Anyhoo, the dedicated server brouhaha was actually very amusing. You know what’s the part I hate most about TF2? And you should know that TF2 is the kind of game I would sell my children to the Armenians for if I had any. It’s the old “find a server that’s not ridiculously craptastic.” Last night I cried tears of joy when I found a server actually running the VANILLA GAME I WANT TO PLAY; no ridiculously increased maxplayers, no instant respawn, no “roll the dice and see if you’ll turn into a suicide bomber ha ha”, no unreal tournament announcer, and not a server displayed 18/24 players where it turns out the thing was lying to me–TO MY VIRTUAL FACE!–and it’s actually empty. Sure, there’s great mods. There are wonderful maps considerably better than the official ones (many of them are officialized eventually). I don’t think an entirely invisible host-based matchmaking system is the answer. But right now, both the IW way and the “there’s only fan servers, you figure it out” approach are shit. I think we need something in between “don’t worry about your online experience, The Benevolent Party will tell you how to enjoy your game and who to enjoy it with” and “here’s the deep end of of the shark pool, now go forth and DROWN LESS.”
But that’s not what this post was about. This post was about WHY IS STEAM SO EXPENSIVE WHEN I ONLY WANT TO GIVE THEM ALL MY MONEY!??!?
This is pretty much what you get if you stick electrodes in my brain, too.
for every people like you that want to play the games in a “vanilla” way, theres a lot of other people that want changes, or that are tired of the vanilla way and could have more fun on a different style. this is why these no-vanilla servers are created, people do want these changes. the wrong solution for you to play on vanilla servers is to stop other people from creating non-vanilla servers. And you can’t stop modding, modding happends, modding is a force of nature, is as sure as dead. You can have your vanilla servers, I will have fun with Hex editors. *grins*
Yeah, you’d stop stealing games if they were just a little less expensive. It’s bad enough I have to fund your entertainment, let alone have to hear you try and justify it to yourself here.
You are consuming a product which I funded – give me back my money.
I’d love to be able to play vanilla TF2. Without all those Valve mods, these “hats” and alternate weapons that unbalanced the original core game which I loved.
I so agree with your TF2 comments. You CANNOT play Team Fortress 2 in the UK with less than 100 ping. You can only play some bastardised, 32 player, insta-spawning, party hats, monster truck rally announcer garbage version of TF2 that sucks big donkey balls.
All this ‘choice’ means that I can’t actually play the game that Valve made. What’s that all about? I don’t have this problem with Left4Dead and it’s looking like I won’t have this problem with MW2 either.
Thank you for voicing my very opinions on TF2. The standard game (including all the unlocks, etc.) is fantastic and I wish more servers would run it. No instant respawn (ruins pretty much every map), 24 player cap (the majority of maps become spam-fests with the usual 32), no weird sounds, no dice rolling, I just want to play the game as Valve intended.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want dedicated servers. I like to have something a little different once in a while. Those dodgeball servers on TF2, for example, are great fun. In MW2 none of these little gems are going to emerge. We also have the much more significant problem in that the games are going to be completely unfair and weighted towards the game creator, due to him having zero latency. All TF2 needs is an option to show standard, custom or vanilla games.
Just quickly on the ARRR! matter: I’m very much a pragmatist when it comes to this. Games are too expensive, yeah. Pirating needs to be more of a hassle than buying the legit game, not less; true, too. But I’m not saying “AND BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS it is my moral and ethical imperative to download these games and deal a deathblow to The Man! HAHAHA!” I like to think of myself as a little bit more sane than that.
I pirated CoD4:MW2 because I really wanted to have a look and couldn’t spare the 60 quid it would have cost me to get it with the same amount of hassle. Of course I can order it for about 40 from cdwow.ie; then I’ll still have to go to the post office during my lunch break to pick it up, and having a physical medium is just not something I enjoy at all. I’m also unsure if buying the retail version would allow me to download the game off Steam if I lose the disc at some point (which I tend to do). So basically, it’s 60 euro (way too much) for a legit copy that’s about as much hassle to download as the pirated version, or 40 euro (pretty much acceptable) for something that’s actually more hassle than pirating it.
Buying MW2 is a no brainer. Next paycheck (that’s about two weeks from now), whatever’s cheapest at that time will get my money. It’ll be more hassle than pirating it was, but I’ll make an unhappy sound and move on.
What we need, really, is a common sense-driven, open digital marketplace with games priced much lower than they would be in BnM retail. That may drive retail out of existence, but who cares?
Also, if I can go back to piracy for just a moment. The hostility from much of the gamer community toward people who actually admit that they pirate stuff is really counterproductive. Pirates are superfans, to borrow an observation Cory Doctorow made about the same situation in the music industry. People who consume massive amounts of this type of entertainment are basically forced to pirate by the prices. I have a pretty decent job, earning around 28k, but I also live in Dublin, so a lot of that money is sucked up by Life. If I went entirely legit, I wouldn’t be able to afford more than one or two games a month, and what if I buy the wrong ones? Many, MANY games I download I only play once or twice, decided that the PR was all hype and false promises, and delete again. That’s not a risk I want to take with an investment of 50-60 euro.
Instead of yelling at people like me (OMG, stop destroying my Entertainment Industry Of Choice) it might be better to try and change the way games are sold (see above) in order to get us to happily part with what spending money we have.
Just a thought :)
Stop kidding yourself, you aren’t a ’super-fan’, you are a thief, no more, no less. You aren’t entitled to every piece of entertainment media just because you buy some of it – there’s plenty of shit I would like, but don’t have because I can’t afford all of it. You are forcing the prices artificially high for the rest of us because we pick up your share of the development costs – please, don’t for a moment think you aren’t taking money out of my pocket every time you steal a game I have paid for.
omg, i also read that fov is default 65 and cannot be changed. Can anyone confirm this? Low fov in console ports annoys the hell out of me :/ fov 90 in source games is just barely acceptable for me.
It is indeed locked at 65 even on PC. If you try to change it and go online, VAC will warn you and I suppose ban you soon after. Just read it from another forum so I’m not sure if the guy got instantly banned or was it just that, a warning.
Awe man. I was on the fence… but the locked FOV just pushed me over the fence… and into the neighbor’s chipper/shredder.
Stupid Infinity Ward.
It’s good to see that RPS at least can still be level headed about new video game releases, unless they are by Valve, of course. As a thirty something male I can’t really get myself excited about this game in the way that a 12 year old boy, the games obvious target market, can. They have probably calculated that 12 year olds are much more likely to have an XBox these days than a gaming PC and that they will want this game for Xmas and oh, who cares. The best of indie vol 2 compilation on Direct2Drive is what I’m playing now, there is some great PC gaming there.
I concur!
Especially with the last sentence. In fact if it weren’t for the excellent sales I’d never buy anything on steam!
18 rated game aimed at 12 year olds?
What an outrageous concept!
…. It replied to the wrong comment. hmmm
“usually the console games are repetitive crap that depend more on patience than in skill, and whose rewards are just the same things over and over again (I’m thinking of MGS series…”
Saying this then bringing up the MGS is utterly ludicrous as whether you like it or not it offers far more choices and gameplay styles than most games do (PC or otherwise).
Ugh, messed up reply.
Messed up reply or not, you said what I was going to – the MGS games are some of the most ridiculously replayable out there because of the massive range of ways that you can play them. They’re why I could never get into the Splinter Cell series, because *just* sneaking past guards and cameras and moving from shadow to shadow loses some of its luster when you’ve been capturing live snakes to use as weapons in unsuspecting guards.
It blends genres, but in a very rutinary and repetitive way. And well, carried on by a story that takes itself too seriously and gravely for its own good.
Dude… MGS? Too serious?
You hear that whistling sound? That’s the joke, flying right over your head.
“There’s this big pile of crap, right? It’s shaped like a giant tank, and walking around on two legs.This giant turd is carrying the nastiest missiles you ever saw! Whatever it hits, people, trees, buildings, TURNS INTO SHIT! EVERYTHING IN THAT TURDS PATH TURNED INTO SHIT.”
Really not happy with the dedicated server situation. If there going to continue pulling stunts like this im happy to see CoD leave the PC.
Might pick it up when it drops in price (a lot) but i may also be crying ‘yaaar me hearties’ at somepoint sooner just to check it out.
The game is good.
BUT it does lack that tiny extra bit of polish that mw1 had the luxury of having.
Sort of like the shiny sheen that Pizza Hut sprays on their food to make it look appetising.
Small gripes:
Level difficulty; the early brazilian levels are brick hard and not in the ninja gaiden ‘teaching you how to block that’s why it’s hard’ way.
You just get shot from every direction and it’s stupid and off putting for an early level.
Trying to figure out what the game wants you to do is also confusing.
Go where? How? Shoot what? Is it this way? Crap I’m stuck between these barrels…I’m dead.
Also it does have a love of 80’s adventure game insta death.
If you try something that’s maybe not what the game wants you to do you will insta die.
Like a shooty Zak McKracken.
These things were ironed out in MW1 [which I prefer] but bloody hell is this game good but bloody hell it’s shorter then ODST.
plus 25 quid from sainsburys?
Take THAT Activision.
The Airport level wasn’t what I expected. I held off watching the leaked footage because I didn’t want to see it out of context, so when I played it these guys I was with just started shooting civilians but I didn’t fire, I even found myself turning my character away from some bits because I didn’t want to see it. The fact that you are essentially a ‘good guy’ in the scene is important because the character has been forced into the situation, it’s not like you are controlling someone evil from their perspective forcing some sort of weird disjointed empathy.
Game is fun though, the levels in Brazil are a bit annoying.
Why is there so much hate on IW forums on all platforms? I feel sorry for forum mods at times like this. I guess it’s working for most players so they are too busy playing to post on forums.
Others have time to rant that can’t/won’t play it I guess.
I do want the game, but I really just can’t get into this silly “5 year old on christmas eve” type excitement. The game will no doubt be good, but it’s overpriced and has made moves towards reducing its own longevity (ie. lack of dedicated servers etc.).
I shall be pirating it sometime in the next week or three, reserving my hard earned money for games worthy of it (like Torchlight and Dragon Age).
I’ll get it when it’s cheaper.
CoD 4’s single player was a good laff, and buys them some good grace in the face of the multiplayer nonsense. I never really enjoyed CoD 4’s multiplayer component anyway.
Incidentally, to those of the “I’ll be pirating it HARHAR” persuasion – You aren’t big or clever, and you’re part of the problem.
Actually, I think that people pirating this will part of the solution. When IW/Activision look at how many copies were illegally downloaded, they’ll realise just how badly they screwed this game up. Say they sell 14 million copies, but 4 million copies get downloaded illegally – that’s a lot of dough getting away. Software devs and publishers who don’t treat everyone like would be pirates actually sell more games. Fact.
I had the game on pre-order but cancelled it after all the terrible facts came out. I want to play it to see what it’s like, there is no demo, so I guess piracy is the only option.
Just one other point; The 360 version has been on download sights for a week/week and a half now – so I would be interested to hear the ‘Piracy only happens on PC’s’ brigades explanations.
“Actually, I think that people pirating this will part of the solution. When IW/Activision look at how many copies were illegally downloaded, they’ll realise just how badly they screwed this game up.”
When they look at the sales on consoles compared with the sales on PC, they’ll just decide the PC isn’t worth their time. There isn’t a simple way to get a veridical figure of how many copies have been illegally downloaded. There isn’t even a good way of getting an estimate.
So, to be fair, pirating it is fairly unimportant. If the game simply sells poorly on PC because it’s not a proper PC game, it’ll be blamed on piracy anyway. It’s the existence of piracy that’s the problem, not, really, the pirates. I guess I just resent the tone of the posts that claim piracy is a legitimate solution.
So? Either they decide to drop the PC utterly, or they decide to actually spend some time and effort on the PC version and give us PC users something worth buying not just a crappy port.
Either way is a victory.
In the first: if they quit trying to make a PC version it opens the PC market up to other devs who WILL make a proper PC FPS. Maybe that will be Valve who’ll decide to make Counter-Strike 2, with single player story mode, maybe some other Dev.
I’d wager most PC gamers own a console (my 360 sits in a cupboard collecting dust between infrequent game rentals) so we’ll just do that, rent it.
Personally this game is a rental for me now, I’ll Download it on the PC, and rent the 360 version and let my sister and her boyfriend play it while I play it on the PC. Technically piracy I suppose, but I’d rather play the single player with mouse and keyboard and you cannot rent PC copies.
Either way they’ll be getting a few quid for me renting the title, which is better than nothing, and I’ll buy it when I can find it for a tenner.
In the second: If they spend a bit of time and effort on the PC version to deliver a proper multiplayer experience, then they’ll get more sales on the platform.
Yes good dedicated servers can be hard to find, and it’s nice to have small scale P2P matchmaking for when you just want a game with a few friends.
Still, dedicated servers are a must in my opinion. Finding a good dedicated server gives you a sense of community that joining a steam group, or having a friends list never provides.
Every FPS game I’ve played I always gravitate toward a handful of favourite servers, with maybe a dozen backups.
Servers where I can get to know the regulars, servers where I can drop in and drop out yet not be playing with utterly random players – servers where the admin are fair, friendly and most of all active.
I’ve rented servers in my lifetime, for CS, then CS-source, for Natural Selection and CoD4, never big popular servers (the largest was 20 slot for NS), but a place for clans I might join, or in the case of NS and CS for playtesting maps I would make.
I’ve not made any maps for modern FPS games, as frankly the complexity of the tools and length of time/skills needed surpassed my interest in dabbling – Carmack was right on for me.
Lack of dedicated servers seriously hampers any kind of competitive gaming, which I’m not huge into, but have been known to dip a toe into.
Anyway, IW ward turned MW2 from a must-have-day-one-buy, to a rental for the single player (pirating the PC version and renting the 360 version to “pay” for it).
Hey maybe I’ll be wrong and after renting it I’ll want to play it multiplayer and buy it, but I doubt it.
oops bold tag error…
“I’d wager most PC gamers own a console (my 360 sits in a cupboard collecting dust between infrequent game rentals)”
If you don’t use it that much for gaming – and I don’t – set it up as a media centre; it works a treat. That was the main justification I had for buying one anyway and so far am not disappointed.
P.
I’ve got a basic model (only cost me £30 quid for the console – plus another 20 for a VGA cable for it), no harddrive, no wireless (and the router is in another room so a ethernet cable isn’t an option).
It’s okay though as if I was going to get a console for a media centre I’d get a PS3, for the bluray, free wifi and PSN access.
I gotta agree with Lilliput on this one. If they see 4 million pirated copies… they just won’t release the next one on PC. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s happening… we’re already low man on the totem pole for sales and companies are just starting to not care about us. We’re not worth the trouble when so many copies are pirated.
Example : Brutal Legend, Force Unleashed (which IS finally coming to the PC, 1.5 years later after the devs specifically said, no PC because of piracy).
Don’t pay? Don’t play.
There are already up to 40k people playing the singleplayer and 33k the mp making it the most played game on steam next to CounterStrike/Source.
I guess the boycott plans w’ont have a big effect on sales after all.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
I giggle at your apostrophe placement, sir.
To be fair though, those aren’t really huge numbers. More people are currently playing the /original Counter Strike/, and almost twice the number of people are playing CSS. CSS was released, what, 5 years ago now? And Counter Strike is approaching its tenth birthday.
Seeing as more people play a game on release than at other times, and that steam stats only logs hours in-game if friends is enabled, which is necessary for MW2 and not for CSS or CS, I dunno. It suggests poor sales, really.
If you add both SP and MP MW2 players currently 60k that is more than CS source. But if you add CS source and CS players there are 105k. It’ll be good to see if MW2 will ever beat both CSs added together. Plus still be top after 10 years but I’m sure there will be another COD game in the next 10 years. ;)
But is this good sales for a steam only game? More players will be online tomorrow when steam d/l version is active so we will see. Will L4D2 beat it at the end of the month? Fun times ahead I feel. :)
but COD MW2 SP and Mp are probably the same people right? Cause there is a split between counts for sp and mp people that play sp and mp will get counted as an unique user for both. So this doesnt show all the players, but i guess it will be like 5 K above the MP count of 39,014
I got both parts downloaded now and you launch SP or MP from different icons in steam so don’t know if it counts both.
When it unlocks I will know more.
The savvy of Infinity Ward has always been in their inspiration from film, right back to the 2015 days of Allied Assault. It makes perfect sense that this, their knighthood into popular phenomena would be launched in the spirit of an opening screening. What’s struck me so far is how the necessary FPS convention of ‘Put The Cursor Over The Man’s Face’ hampers the developer’s mostly deft translation of cinematic convention.
The opening mission of Modern Warfare is David Simon’s Generation: Kill through and through. Hip Hop from a boom box, overheard conversations about a lack of equipment, an allusion to descent in the lower ranks and the opening’s general masculinism are all lifts from the HBO series. Where the charade falls clumsily flat is on the same front as Alec’s justified unease at the launch – the whole thing is hollow to the point of vacuum. The dead eyed, motion captured, specular gleaming soldiers all parrot the lines, ‘We’re oscar mike!’, and ‘Hoo-rah!’ But who are they? No one. Rag dolls, technically and narratively.
The structure of it all works far better in the next mission. Stumbling blindly through a Kazakhstan blizzard guided by a instantly trust-worthy Scotsman, the context is simpler. There is no need to create the illusion of a strategically doomed and morally complex war-world with its innumerable idealogical and practical forces at play. It is a stealth arcade shooter with a big explosive ending and the narrative here is far simpler, between teacher and student. The Scot, (MacTavish?) doesn’t need to comment on the nature of war to fit this bill, he just needs to tell you what to do in his grizzled, all knowing voice. He does this, you follow, and you succeed in Vin Diesel pyrotechnics. It’s a different kind of cinematic influence, perhaps a Bond one. It works far better for the systems Infinity Ward have chosen to work within.
It’s not like Generation Kill could not be referenced interactively, or any more complex war film – Turtles Can Fly, Redacted, even Waltz with Bashir – but the series’ themes of bureaucratic frustration, hierarchy, nationalism and the morality of violence cannot be ‘emulated’ in the MW system. It is too clearly a veneer. It is for this reason that the isolated, uncontextualised airport scene comes off as crass.
Nice critique.
I second that, very well written….just who are you anyway stranger….
And this article is a perfect example of why I keep coming back to this site. Fantastically written and covers an angle I had not yet heard.
Bravo!
If I buy it, I ain’t spending more than £25. That’s a normal new game price as far as I’m concerned.
Also, no singleplayer demo means I can’t be certain how well my long-in-the-tooth PC will handle it. Bit of a risk at £40 with no possibility of return or resale.
The sp portion of the game is far too short for the amount of money they were originally asking, even with mp. Its seems with each new cod title the sp is becoming increasingly shorter, in fact I wouldn’t at all be surprised if they just axe the sp altogether in future titles. I’d prefer that if IW can’t be bothered to produce a decent sp.
Having sat and played all last night I’m happy to report it actually runs very, very well. Surprisingly so. The first few games seem to be a little laggy, which apparently is down to the game working out where you are, and sorting out people who are an appropriate host to you, so my very first game saw me playing against some people in america.
Even connecting to the US, the game was fairly playable,
Every game after that though? I wouldnt have known I wasnt playing on a dedicated server, and 9v9 games are still very intense, something I was worried about having played 16v16 at least almost exclusively in 4.
Joining a game takes seconds if it joins you to a game in progress, and up to a minute if it drops you into a lobby. (You get a 1 minute intermission in a lobby between games, to set up classes and stuff)
Oh yeah, there was a host migration at one point, took about 15 seconds.
So yeah, I’m going to play the shit out of this.
I personally can’t see why everyone has to buy it on the day it comes out. Its not like the game is going to disappear after a few weeks/months. People just caught along in the hyperbole , so they just have to buy the game the day it comes out no matter how much it costs. This I feel is especially true on the console releases.
I managed to play CoD4 without knowing about the nuke level before it happened. I was keen to play this as close to release day as possible to experience anything similar without having it spoiled. Sadly, despite not reading anything resembling a preview for the game prior to it’s release, I was informed about the controversial level via various people’s twitters before I got a chance to install the game (serves me right for caring about what games journalists are having for lunch, or what amusing thing their cat is doing right now, I guess).
As far as launch events go, I am gainfully employed so I’m not going to hang around a game store until midnight to get a copy that I won’t play until I get home from work the next day, especially when I can just duck out in my lunch break and grab it then. On the other hand, if I was still a Uni student who habitually stayed up until 3am hanging out with friends I could see a group of us going along to the launch since we’d be awake anyway, so I’m not going to question the people that were there too much.
The multiplayer will be crap and single player will be short. But hey at least they raised the price.
I’ll get it used or from a bargain bin.
Maybe…
I grabbed it at Makro for 20 quid. They kept it quiet, so when someone at work heard about it it spread like wildfire. Must have been about 20 of us go down to our local Makro to get it.
Only trouble was, they didn’t sell the PC version, so I got the 360 version instead.
1.3GB patch? Did I miss something? Mine only downloaded a 10 kb patch. I’d know if it was trying to download 1-point-3 gigabytes
I really don’t understand the hype. I never heard of this game until about 10 days ago, at which point it was the only damned thing the internet was talking about. I have zero interest in it.
Isn’t the most anticipated game of the decade Diablo 3, or maybe Starcraft 2? Or do they not count because we don’t know if they’re going to be released this decade? :P
I’m glad someone else said this first. I can name one person who’s even mentioned it to me in the real world, and that was a few days ago. Even online, I’ve not noticed any more fuss about it than, say, Gears of War 2, or MGS4.
Not that I have anything against the game, mind. The first one was a bit of a laugh. I would be disappointed if it or a presumably very similar sequel really are the ‘biggest’ game of the decade, though, simply because when all’s said and done it’s just another FPS.
Oh man, I´m glad I read this thread, because I would have been REALLY pissed off about paying 60€ for a 4-6 hour game (experienced FPS player).
That´s almost twice as expensive as any other game that I bought recently, and I like games that take upwards of 15 hours.
It doesn’t HIT the ISS, the ISS is just caught in the massive blast of a *nuclear fucking weapon.*
OH GOD DAMNIT
Oh man, I guess I’m one of the few people who thinks this is overrated console-jiggery-pokery. I saw Charlie Brooker post his thoughts on the game on twitter, he said the story was lame, I asked some friends about the story today and they worshipped it like it was the messiah. :/ I am disappoint.
The game is good for what it is, and that’s where it ends. It’s a first person shooter in its truest form with the highest production values ever. The story is completely ambiguous and presented poorly, and the characters are flat tough guys.
Usually I am the first to defend video games as art, but I am completely unable to defend the terrorist scene where you have to walk with Marakov as he murders hundreds of citizens in the airport. After hearing the controversy I felt, “surely this is an over reaction and the situation is put in a moral light”. I was expected some sort of 24isque moral dilemma, where one had to sacrifice a few to save a million. I had envisioned some sort of plot where the only way to defuse a nuclear attack would be to commit a great act of evil. You get none of these scenarios. You’re told you are an undercover CIA agent, and the scene plays out, as if that is enough justification for the carnage about to be unleashed. “It’s okay you’re an undercover CIA agent”. It’s disrespectful to the real intelligence agencies to even assume they would allow an undercover agent to murder hundreds for some utilitarian purpose. The whole scene is distasteful. It’s as if the designers were trying so hard to be controversial they forgot the why.
Oh yeah and the multiplayer blows.
Thank you! I read through the plot summaries and watched the video (no, I don’t intend to buy the game – I’m one of a few people you may have heard of hunting for a job right now, which is taking up the better part of my time), and I just don’t see “morally ambiguous” anywhere. You got it right that it’s a slap in the face of the agencies, but more than that, it’s like some perverse train ride that the player must either take part in or blindly accept – even if you skip the level, you’ll be aware of your implied participation.
It doesn’t respect the player because there’s no sense of choice. As if there couldn’t have been a more creative solution. Aka, killing Makarov and his men in the elevator. What does the game tell you if you do that? I assume it tells you you can’t make that decision for yourself and must go on with the massacre. Because IW/Activision couldn’t be bothered to work in an alternative (and don’t give me that Makarov-as-bad-guy is the whole point of the story bullshit – they could easily have altered some later moments to include “generic-right-hand-man-villain” instead of Makarov).
Someone please tell me if I’m wrong here, and that when you dust Makarov, you’re presented with a screen in which you’re called a hero or martyr for averting a massacre, and I will happily retract my protest, and in fact deliver praise on the company for getting a moral dilemma right.
As an aside the CIA deserved less than zero respect on the balance of probabilities, but anyway… what happens if you shoot Makarov?
Surely if you have played the game through, you would realise it’s not a CIA or intelligence service mission, it’s a special OP from Shephard – who obviously turns out very evil indeed.
I think it would be much better to view the situation as a “good guys aren’t always good” view – both the Americans and Russians were perfectly happy murdering civilians to get to their end game.
Honestly, while I truly do not think the game is worth £60, I’ve never before had an actual shiver of emotion based on what I’m doing – and this happened twice, once when shooting the civilians and then on the final mission, while bungeeing down to the solider and actually looking in his eyes as I stabbed him.
It may be scripted, but I think this is the truest form of video game art yet.
I, honestly, don’t even know what the game is about (other than “shooting dudes”).
This has flown under my radar completely…
There's actually about twice that number playing CS 1.6 but Steam doesn't count half of them
I can’t be the only person that has never played a call of duty game and doesn’t care.
Don’t worry, you’re not. In fact, this comments thread seems to have evolved into a support group for you guys… so stick around.
You’re seriously overreacting. No, that level isn’t going to cause mass-scale public backlash, and the government to take over game ratings (seriously, dude, lolwut?).
It’ll be forgotten in a few months.
Errr, that was in reply to Egoh Rtut, a page ago.
@mR.Waffles:
“It’s disrespectful to the real intelligence agencies to even assume they would allow an undercover agent to murder hundreds for some utilitarian purpose.”
Hahaha, do you know anything about the CIA?
Put on a tinfoil hat and google it.
@Cedge
Definitely worth £26 on the ps3.
what you are complaining a bout is that you dont control the story, you are simply playing your part in it. which that is 90% of the games out there.
They arent trying to give you 60 different ending depending on your choices made during the game like dragon age. They are providing you with a set story much like that of a movie, only you play through it instead of just watching it.
Which means they’ve got even more of an obligation to make sure the one story you get isn’t a moronic mass of idiocy and cliches where the player is forced to do things that are BLOODY STUPID to advance the plot.
You have a ton of plots and subplots, some can be a bit shoddy. You have one plot, and you really shouldn’t be able to get away with something that makes Red Dawn look realistic and nuanced.
“If only I could talk to the monsters!”
“… you really shouldn’t be able to get away with something that makes Red Dawn look realistic and nuanced.”
Best thing thing I’ve read all year.
Fuck this game.
Sincerely,
RIVAL
So this is our great game. How does it compare to great war movies?
Why would you camp out to buy a game when you could just order it from play.com and have it waiting for you when you walk through the door?
THANK YOU!! I agree, and think this kind of thing has been redundant since the first Call of Duty was released. Sure there have been fun bits added here and there in each release, but it has mostly been a case of beating a dead horse.
The first Medal of Honor game was released for Playstation IIRC. Honestly I didn’t even realize that Call of Duty was still being released for PC. I’m kind of confused by people who expect this genre of video game to cater to the interests of the PC user. It seems to be the kind of thing that was designed for a console from the beginning. The whole linear cinematic feel of it (which don’t get me wrong, was fun for a while) lends itself well to a console.
“The whole linear cinematic feel of it (which don’t get me wrong, was fun for a while) lends itself well to a console.”
I just can’t see why.
(That was meant to be a reply to Cedge back on page 2)
“I’m kind of confused by people who expect this genre of video game to cater to the interests of the PC user.”
I’m a PC user and I love this genre. I do, however, dislike other PC users and the whiter than white towers that they sit in.
“I’m kind of confused by people who expect this genre of video game to cater to the interests of the PC user.”
They’re trying to sell us a product for quite a lot of money
Why the fuck should it not cater to our interests
After hours of play this is what I think.
First this is still the PC designed Quake engine feel FPS. This is not a console port it’s the Quake code modded so much over time to make it user friendly. The fast paced multiplayer is straight out of Quake III: Team Arena. So if you liked that then add everyday guns modern setting and new game modes you get an idea of what it’s like.
So this is just another COD game and if you like that you’ll love MW2. IWnet works but I would say so did dedicated servers. Forgetting modding if you want to just play the game IWnet works just as well with normal lag sometimes. But for some reason that’s hard to explain it’s not game stopping like getting on a bad dedicated server when things are laggy. Normally you are dead before you know what happened but it’s more fair as it’s not just you having a laggy moment. I have not yet raged as someone got a cheap kill on me. Also the times where you empty a hole clip into someone and they hit you with one shot have gone.
You may have seen the funny video on youtube with lots of lag where you walk then have to walk to the same place again and again. This is I can only imagine if you are unlucky to connect to someone on and 56k modem or someone on the other side of the world. I have yet to see it this bad the most common lag I got was the odd stutter but I’ve done enough online games to think this is normal.
I need more time to with IWnet P2P before I agree with IW this is the future. I can’t ever see it being better than a top line dedicated server at best it’s on a level with it forgetting mods.
The wait time when changing host is not that often and when it dose (though strange at first) it’s not game breaking. It takes about 10 secs just time for another swig of drink then you carry on where you were.
I’ve only started the SP so don’t know what it’s all like but it’s a Quake engine FPS with up to date graphics. The same type of gameplay as MW1 as you would expect with lots of action.
I’ve not done the spec ops yet so can’t comment.
So it’s just another FPS with lots of extras but if you like FPSs and not that bothered about modding you’ll love it.
All the haters are mad for a reason and I support them fully. The game is made for fun and fun you will get if you over look what is missing.
Well for all the hype and razzmatazz surrounding its launch, I won’t be buying it as I’ve never really been too keen on the CoD games.
As for this whole thing “I won’t be surprised if the next one does a Gears Of War 2 and gives up on the platform entirely. It’ll be a little sad if so, as the PC is where CoD was born, where Infinity Ward earned the experience and mega-bucks necessary to become the goliath they are today”. I’ve never quite understood this whole concept, that because a developer started off on a specific platform, that they some how owe it a debit of gratitude. The Medal of Honor series was born on the Playstation, but undoubtedly it was most successful on the PC with MOH:AA. The GTA series started out on the PC but undoubtedly the series really took off on the Playstation 2 with GTA3, and yet now the series seems to be favouring the 360 as its lead platform with GTA4. Selling games is a business, so of course they’re going to go where the money is greatest, wouldn’t you?
@Howl – What?
Their are plenty of servers running the standard game out there. PC Gamer being a prime example. Nervous Energy Community run a good one too. if you look around, its far from hard to find a standard server. It just depresses me how many people only play on fast respawn servers because they hate waiting out the game a few seconds, despite the fact that it completey fucks up game balance.
Okay, so Steam finally decided to let me play the game at 11pm last night. Although I'd been practicing online CoD4 for the past week I figured I'd get the feel for the new game in singleplayer first. Everything loaded fine with plenty of video options to tweak, although I managed to bang it up to full settings with 2xAA and suffered very little drop in framerate. As soon as I was thrown into the training mission at the start of the game it felt right. I have a feeling they've tweaked the players movement slightly, it feels a bit less stumbly, but it's all for the better.
2 hours in and I was bored and frustrated, the standard reaction for me when faced with CoD singleplayer modes. It's more of a grind than it was before. Instead of waves of enemies that you trigger to stop they've just thrown an unfair mass of them at you and let you pick up the pieces. Fight, die, reload, fight, die, reload, fight, die, reload. It's game design at its most basic. Amateur stuff. By the end of the Rio mission I was ready to give up for the night or possibly forever. I just can't fathom why anyone would buy this game for the singleplayer alone, whether it was priced at £40 or £20. It's just not well made.
Dipping into multiplayer with a feeling of unease I knocked vsync off for greater performance and clicked the button. Sheer relief was my first emotion. I was in a well-populated lobby in a second. My fears of encountering the same limboing awfulness I'd suffered in Left 4 Dead were gone. The game started, the map loaded and there was no lag, at all. I played for another two hours and experienced about 5 seconds of juddering at some point, less than I'd had the night before when some loon with a ping of 500 joined a server I'd been enjoying for a good while. In short, it's accessible and smoothly and smartly presented. I didn't encounter any nobheads whilst playing except for one guy who called me a n00b for kicking his ass in my first MW2 match, but I adore those sorts. I'm sold on this, totally and utterly. I can understand why others will despise it, but for me its perfect and for that reason I thank Infinity Ward for the work they've put in to getting us up to date with FPS multiplayer on the PC. Just because it's different doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong and MW2 is far from being a mess of a console port.
Bought it from Best Buy yesterday, got to play a few campaign levels. The set pieces are fantastic, over the top CoD at its best. The level of detail in this game IS better than modern warfare 1. In fact, this game looks ’spankin good’ maxed out.
This is NOT a console port. In fact, despite all the issues involved with the PC release, this version is soooo much more WIN than a XBOX360 version. Two words: ‘mouse and keyboard.’ They had to build a engine that could scale well among platforms, and it STILL looks great maxed out (another reason PC is better, the xbox graphics suck in comparison).
Anyway, I recommend. Especially if you like CoD, but even to those who don’t.
When, oh when, will there be CS:S2? Though for the time being, I haven’t found a better online experience than all the zombie mods available for CS:S.
I am fascinated by the hype surrounding MW2, but not at all interested in the game. However, I used enjoy CoD2 online…
When, oh when, will there be a CS:S2? Though for the time being, I haven’t found a better on-line experience than all the zombie escape mods available for CS:S.
I am fascinated by the hype surrounding MW2, but not at all interested in the game. However, I used enjoy CoD2 online…
Nah, you pay that price because you let them make you pay that price. Also because they that you should have to foot the price of thier extreme marketing campaign.
“They’re trying to sell us a product for quite a lot of money
Why the fuck should it not cater to our interests”
It should, I’m just surprised at the expectation that it will. Maybe PC users should vote with their wallets and not purchase this game if they want to see more games with modding, decent multiplayer options, etc. (as others have already pointed out).