Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MA15+) BY MATTHEW KELLER / November 24, 2009 (Single Player Only Review)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the gaming industry equivalent of the summer tentpole film. It carries a huge budget, it’s destined to sell millions of copies and it’s full of big explosions and screaming military men. Yet like many summer sequels, Modern Warfare 2 is bogged down by the need to always one up its predecessor, losing sight of plausibility, basic storytelling and gameplay innovation in the quest to shock its audience. (more…)
Copped it again. Not sending this one in for repair since it’s out of warranty – going to hold out until the 23rd for the pricedrop + Halo 3 ODST bundle. In the mean time, I can use Charly’s machine to get my work done.
Time for some quick capsule reviews in the mean time.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
The Layton sequel brings more of the same sorts puzzles and mystery solving – fortunately it fantastic the first time around and works well again here.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Battle of the Androgynous Sissy Boys with a decent fighting system and solid RPG elements surrounding it. Jarring difference in the quality of character conception between the first six Final Fantasy heroes and the later four.
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Latest Caped Crusader outing is one of only two games he’s in that doesn’t make me want to puke. Succeeds as both a Batman product and a video game due to high production values (including the involvement of the animated series crew) and some fantastic gameplay that makes players feel like Batman for once.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned something about developing some other skills to compliment my writing, along with producing more original content for this blog. Of course I did absolutely nothing about it until today when I captured and pieced together this video of me playing through The Terminator on the Mega Drive.
The game came out in 1992, well after the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, let alone the original film. It actually looks pretty good, but there’s not a whole lot to it. This playthrough is on the Easy mode – on all other difficulties there is a fight with a mini-boss (kind of like the T-1 from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) before you can get the machine gun. It’s not my best run through the game either – you can see a few moments of hesitation and I take way too many hits.
Dave Perry was the game’s lead programmer – before he went on to become a hotshot with Disney’s Aladdin and set up shop at Shiny and then fail miserably on Enter The Matrix despite years of awesome games like Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah and Sacrifice. Also interesting is that the producer is Neil Young, who’d later set up the Medal of Honor series at EA before becoming an iPhone magnate at ngmoco.
I’ll probably add a commentary track to the video and do this sort of thing more often (even thought about putting it up in the Let’s Play board on Something Awful). Challenges in producing this sort of thing are time – capturing, editing and recompression take ages, uploading to YouTube takes even longer. This is a game I know inside out, and it’s really short, so I thought it would be a good one to start out on. In future, I might produce something more elaborate.
Sometimes the best review is a quick one. My bank account doesn’t necessarily agree, but sometimes you can tell someone all they need to know in 50 words or less. I figured I’d do that here and slap on a traffic light styled rating system for those people with even shorter attention spans and ratings fetishes.
Shadow Complex
Everyman stumbles upon extremist plot to take over USA while looking for kidnapped girlfriend in action/adventure inspired heavily by Super Metroid et al. What it lacks in gameplay originality is made up for by its sheer quality.
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
Deplorable tie-in to a not-so-bad summer action film feels like it was rushed together in record time. Very basic gameplay structure, difficulty is absent, and variety is minimal. Plays like a bad Contra game.
Ashes Cricket 2009
Latest Codemasters cricket title features a very in-depth bowling system, which came at the expense of the rest of the game’s quality. Far too many glitches than acceptable in a retail product, poor presentation and too easy to master.
Madden NFL 10
EA’s latest American Football effort still feels inferior to their 2005 game on last gen hardware. Some nice new presentation features, but everything feels shakey and disjointed; only die-hard fans will be able to detect and appreciate any changes.
Trials HD
Don’t let the dirt bike fool you – Trials HD is a devious, spectular and addictive physics based puzzle game. Starts out easy and gets crazy hard but never becomes exceedingly frustrating. Level editor and excellent leaderboard implementation will make it go further if you’ve got a few friends.
Too many games are released with the subtitles Heroes, Origins and Legends. I propose that we outlaw these subtitles. To appease the poor sods in marketing who rely on these titles, I suggest consulting a thesaurus.
How about an example. Instead of Origins, why not use Genesis, Alpha or Emergence? They convey the same thing, but sound cooler, and haven’t been run into the ground.
Some shuffling at GON is probably going to result in a downturn in my work. Fair enough – I’ve probably been doing a little too much there, but it’s good money and they pay on time, which is something I cannot say for every other outlet I’ve ever worked for.
Since I won’t have as much work, I think I’m going to dedicate some time to upskilling. I want to pick my Japanese studies back up, learn a bit about basic video and audio editing. I could, you know, keep a regular work week and do normal-person things too. I’d like to spruce this place up a bit, since I’ve had it 18 months and done nothing with it.
Don’t remember how many weeks behind I am now. E3 has come and gone, seems like it’s all about the motion control now, though neither of the other two offerings seems very convincing. Too many reviews to do, spending far too much on eBay, and am one episode away from fulfilling my Whedon obligation.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MA15+)