Game reviews: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

There have been quite a few complaints about the latest Call Of Duty. Message boards were ablaze with gamers protesting developer Infinity Ward’s decision to reduce multiplayer to a maximum nine versus nine and not allocating dedicated servers. The company didn’t do itself any favours by making the retail price significantly higher for MW2 than for other games, either (RRP is $150 for Xbox and PlayStation versions). Then when the game was finally released, US PC users found they had to download huge files to get the thing to work online.

I’ll add my own gripe: like Halo 3: ODST also reviewed this issue, in campaign mode you flip between characters to get an overview of the story. Characters are each given more time here than in Halo, but the scenarios are still bite-sized chunks, and it’s frustrating to lurch from person to person and place to place without ever fully developing a coherent storyline.

But enough of the bitching, because when you’re in a scenario and slack-jawed at the quality of the graphics, when you’re cornered in the heat of battle and it’s utter mayhem with grenades exploding all around you and bullets whizzing past, when you’re snowmobiling down a slope or powerboating along rapids or dangling from a helicopter while simultaneously sniping at enemies, it’s a that point you stop and think to yourself, This may just be the best game I’ve ever played.

By Richard Betts

PLATFORM REVIEWED: Xbox 360  PLAYERS: 1-18  RATING: MA  GENRE: First-person shooter

4 stars