Some have called it “the most anticipated game of the year”. Others have called it “the most anticipated game of the decade”. Veron Kay called it “the most anticipated game ever”. I’m not going to call it any of those. Admittedly, a few people did get slightly excited about it, in the same way people got excited about LEGO Chess. Hype doesn’t make it a good game. Which is a pity, because if it did, then this would be the best game ever. Just about every other review there is out there of this game will tell you how awesome it is. But it’s not. Sure, it’s good, but “the most anticipated game ever”? Perhaps, but that doesn’t make it the best game ever.
I’m ranting here, but I’ll make no apology for that; I’m giving myself something to stand on for when I go into the ever-so-sensitive issue of the bad points. If you’re reading this and feel angry, you’ve fallen into the trap too. You’ve made yourself believe it’ll be good. And if it was in 2D and you had to collect mushrooms and your character was an Italian plumber, you’d still rave about it. Rant over. This game then.
Single player seems to be a good place to start. The plot continues five years after Modern Warfare left off and it very cleverly gets you to do that thing that every shooting game does. Look up. Look left. Fire. You’re in Afghanistan training the Afghan army and show them how it’s done. You’re then thrown straight into the action in one of the many many plots running through the game. They do a good job of interweaving, but in the end leave too many questions unanswered. It’d have been a better choice to focus on one or two at the very most plots instead of jumping all over the world. You’d better not be travel sick.
Which brings me onto another point. Ask any good author whether it is a good idea to kill of a character every couple of missions and they’ll say probably not. Ok, ask any good author of anything other than Midsummer Muders whether it is a good idea to kill of a character every couple of missions and they’ll say probably not. By level three one character is dead. By the end the body count is fairly large. Whilst the deaths do advance the plot somewhat, it comes back to the storylines. I’m of the opinion there are too many storylines and so too many characters and so too many characters to kill off at the end. The plot itself is fairly engrossing and surprising at times and it’s a pity you don’t find out more about each subplot.
The missions themselves offer a good deal of variety from the Afghanistan to snowy Russia to the favelas of Brazil. Some missions do feel a bit tedious, but on the whole, the single player campaign is solid but a little short. As in five hours short. Speaking of single player, it is just single player. You can’t get your buddies to join in the action over the interweb or locally; you’ll have to fare it alone which is a pity because most if not all of the time you’re accompanied by at least one other team member.
Luckily, Modern Warfare 2 offers the Spec Ops mode where you have to fight to complete various missions (preferably with a buddy) such as getting from A to B using stealth, defending waves of enemy or being quick enough down the mountain in a snowmobile! The Spec Ops are a welcome addition to the game and to an extent make up for the lack of campaign multiplayer.
The final game mode is the online multiplayer. It’s pretty much what you’d expect a Call of Duty’s online multiplayer to be. Perks, levels and co are back again and no doubt the multiplayer will keep fans amused for months to come. There are a good variety of both maps and weapons and other than a couple of exciting new perks, the format remains much the same as before. Which isn’t too bad as before it was very good. It remains very good.
So then Modern Warfare 2 offers very good multiplayer but with a weak campaign. It’s not the perfect game everyone claims it is, but it’s not too far off.
Nometet.com says: 
