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jp's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
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| [August 23, 2010 01:06:35 PM]
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I guess when people talk about interactive narratives and interactive drama and so on, the don't really think about games like this. This may be, perhaps, the best example so far of the interactive summer blockbuster movie. It's THAT exciting. There's so much more they could have done with the characters, narrative, etc, but...if you think of it as a summer popcorn flick with lots of action and thrills. Bam! They nailed it.
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| [July 18, 2010 11:00:39 PM]
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Again, the sheer variety of missions, their pacing, and the things you do is incredible. I think I'm 2/3 through (there's only 3 acts, I think) and I'm still enjoying myself. I've probably got about 4 hours of gameplay?
I went back and replayed the tutorial level to see how I'm faring. I've been upgraded (in its recommendation) to the next difficulty level! :-) (it was an ego thing, mostly...but hey!)
I'm positively surprised by how important the audio and sound is in the game from a gameplay perspective. It's not just the sound effects, but a lot of in-game help comes via audio from your squad mates and so on. I normally play with the volume down pretty low, but I've had to bring it up a notch after I noticed I was missing out on important messages such as cues (Ramirez, go to the left!), warnings (Ramirez, enemy at your 3 o'clock), and other things. In addition to the all of the stuff going on on-screen, you have to mind the voices!
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| [July 16, 2010 03:16:41 PM]
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I'm sure that if this game was a movie, the few word reviews would probably say things like "A roller-coaster of action and thrills!", "Non-stop action", "A shot of adrenalin straight to the heart", and such.
It really is like this!
I picked this game up because I wanted to see what everyone was so excited about and because of the infamous "No Russian" level. In particular, I wanted to better understand the context of that level, what role it plays in the game more broadly, and how it was presented, included in the game, and so on.
I'm a little over 2 hours in and I think that I've probably made it halfway through the campaign. That's good news. At this stage in my life I would rather play a thrilling and exciting game for 4-6 hours than have it stretch out for 8-12. I've got plenty of other games I want to play and I'm comforted by the fact that I can go back to the earlier levels, try to get achievements and so on.
Anyways, my first impressions:
(a) I'm surprised by the variety of settings and scenarios. The game feels very fluid in this sense, it's not about the places/characters as structure for the game (i.e. Levels 1-4 are in place Foo, Levels 5-10 are in Bar). Rather, it's more about the big picture of what's going in the fictional world.
(b) I can do FPS on the console! (thanks to the nice auto-aim). I'm playing on easy (as recommended after doing the tutorial, another great idea!) and it's been just right. I guess after I finish I can try again on harder, but it's still taken me a while to get used to the interface.
(c) The first level I played on "home territory" (i.e. in the US, after/during the invasion) has some really sad/ominous music. This actually cracked me up. I get WHY they used that music (the unthinkable has happened, the US has been invaded, the suburbs have become a warzone, etc.), but it's kind of, hmm...., I'm not sure what the right word is, disingenous(?) considering that at least two earlier levels also take place in urban environments (Afghanistan and a Favela in Rio) with civilians and whatnot.
(d) The "No Russian" level, that I had seen a video walkthru of earlier, was a lot less striking than I expected. I think part of it is because you have no real sense of who the character you are playing is and, perhaps because I haven't played the earlier game, I don't have much sense of who the bad guy is. Perhaps this level could have benefitted from an earlier one that was quieter? I didn't kill any civilians, and the lack of consequences of the level as a whole also steal of lot of its impact. (you can effectively skip the whole thing without any problems). I guess the developers were trying to play it safe while at the same time hoping to avoid anything too scandalous. In the end, it's a pretty mild attempt at an interesting and through provoking idea.
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jp's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 15 July, 2010
GameLog closed on: Monday 23 August, 2010 |
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