By Ravi Sinha
With all the problems Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been encountering, the lines are getting blurred between the nuisances and actual issues. First came the crib that it didn’t look much different from the original. Next, Activision lashed out at Sony for not reducing the price of their console – shortly after, they hiked the price of MW2, thus earning boycotts galore (all AWOL when it sold it’s millions on day one). Then came the lack of dedicated servers, wherein the game would rely solely on the matchmaking process of finding online games. This spelled death for multiplayer clans and those wanting to play online with their friends. The “No Russian” controversy also insured that the mainstream media took seething notice of MW2. Needless to say, anybody and everybody has a reason to dislike Activision/Infinity Ward these days.
On Penny Arcade the other day, Mike “Gabe” Krahulik stated the following:
“I tried the single player campaign but got bored with it pretty fast. The game just feels old to me, like I’ve played this game a hundred times before. It’s a FPS without any kind of cover system and to me that just feels very dated. I’ve shot all these ambiguously foreign guys in other games for the same convoluted reasons…Where the single player campaign felt old and dated to me the multiplayer actually feels fresh and interesting.”
Skimming through several reviews online, reading between the lines of the massive praise some sites had, the consensus was pretty much equal: “You’ve played this before, shot these dudes before. It’s not even that long. But it’s fun. Oh, and great multiplayer.” There were many titles which I personally felt were unfairly awarded great reviews because of this very saying. Gears of War 2, Halo 3: ODST, Left4Dead, even Killzone 2, you name it. Other titles, like Resistance 2, faced the opposite charge – that of not having a very popular multiplayer and thus enduring a certain shaft by gamers in general. Even though the single-player has the most impressive scale we’ve see in an FPS yet.
Just recently, I came across the following review aggregates for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 across all major categories on Metacritic. PC fans may not have their dedicated servers, hence the low User Rating aggregate of 1.4 (based on an average of a whopping 1839 votes). PS3 fans may still be angered by Activision’s previous complaints of withdrawing support for Sony’s PS3 if the company didn’t reduce it’s price. Hence you have an aggregate User Rating of 4.9 based on an average of 477 votes. Then what about the Xbox 360? A console considered to be the de facto choice for FPS fans, with the Gears and Halo franchises, not to mention the rabid popularity of these titles (and even the original MW) on Xbox LIVE, sees it’s version of MW2 with an aggregate User Rating of 5.5 based on an average of 825 votes (and rising).
All of which is irrelevant, of course. For all the hundreds of users who state their dislike of the game, publicly, on the internet, there are millions upon millions of customers, and potentials, who love the game to bits. Hell, the original Modern Warfare and World at War ranked at no. 2 and 3 respectively in LIVE activity on October for October 26th (figures revealed last week on November 3). And a peek at some users recent activity indicates MW2 will steal the top spot.
Are games in this generation judged simply based on their multiplayer? That sure as hell doesn’t stop the single-player hype. Are the controversies and glitches coming back to haunt Activision? Not many critics seem to have been faced with the same glitches, though a buggy review copy isn’t exactly what most reviewers get (and vice versa). Are these just the rants of the few and the far between? Or has Modern Warfare 2 simply killed off all innovation, and we’re seeing the last signs of rebellion from a gamer base that has come to bask in Hollywood sequences of flash and fury?
Whatever side you may be on, at least you can be sure the sides are the same. You’ll either madly love Modern Warfare 2 or hate it deeply. And neither critics nor other users could convince you to switch by their own logic.
Posted on November 12th, 2009 at 3:25pm by Split-Screen
Filed Under: Feature
