Yesterday, to the the glee of gamers worldwide (except for PC gamers), Modern Warfare 2 was released. I don't have a lot to say about this [ed: blatant lie] but I thought I'd write a quick blog about it prior to my excitement of the game dwindling into just another thing.

Zach and I anticipating the game

First, this was the first time I used Amazon to purchase a game. I really appreciate the release-date delivery they have going on. I got home and voila! My game was sitting in front of my door (night vision goggles included, I was one of those people who couldn't resist another, likely ineffective gadget).

Now, I know what you're thinking: You're thinking that because I bought the $150 version of the game that I will give nothing but praises, proclaiming rainbows shoot out of the game's dirtiest areas, but I do have my gripes.

The Good

Where to begin really? I guess the first thing you notice is that the graphics are a lot better. Texture maps, the environment modeling, particle effects and general world interaction are all fantastic. Player models are far more refined and detailed beyond previous Call of Duty iterations.

MW2 took a great cue from World of Warcraft on the Achievements region. Everything is unlockable and then those unlocks have unlocks 10 miles deep. Oh... and there's 22 pages of titles you can unlock for yourself (equating to quite a few hundred). I think it'll help remove the sense of cookie-cutter class mixes that Modern Warfare had. Bonus!

The gameplay is fanatical. I won't get into the great things of multiplayer like all of the cool stuff you can do because well... I don't want to ruin it and because I don't want to take forever writing this. However, being a Counter-Strike fan, I've always been a fan of firefights and a slight arcade-ish feel. Perhaps not in the sense of actual gameplay, but in the delivery of information. The point system in MW2 encourages and rewards you for kill combos, long distance shots, killing multiple people from a grenade, etc. Then they bombard you with flashy messages for hours if you did something really cool or terribly bad.

Outside of multiplayer, which is obviously where you start despite the game telling you not to, Co-Op is ridiculous. It rivals or maybe even surpasses the fun experienced in multiplayer and they get pretty difficult to boot: ah, satisfaction! The single-player, for what little I did dabble, was pretty awesome but the intro cinematics were lame. I was hoping for something interesting to happen but nothing came of it.

The Bad

Right from the good into the bad, they have an arcade-ish feel that flashes stuff in front of your screen in a sometimes dramatically obnoxious fashion. There is a constant flow of extraneous information on the screen. I could deal with less, but it usually doesn't bother me.

The game interface is weak. I like the simplicity and I'm equally grateful they spent more time developing the actual game than the out-of-game experience, but it is pretty bland. The start screen feels like what I imagine Playskool video game wireframe concepts would look like. For a little visual, this is slightly reminescent of the start screen without the cute panda bear and bright colors:

MW2 UI: Stolen from Playskool

Moving right along, the time in between games is absurd. Maybe they initially made it long and will patch is once people are acclimated to all the cool new features. But unfortunately, it's borderline long enough to have me fall out of the immersion and wonder what I'm doing with my life sitting in front of  a TV playing video games: Not well played, Infinity Ward.

In single player and co-op (doesn't appear to be a problem in multiplayer), shrubberies are impenetrable fortresses for your foes to sit behind. Even using a 50 caliber sniper rifle cannot break through the bullet-proof leaves and twigs. Unfathomably frustrating considering how I can blow the hell out of everything else. Outside of that, however, I found it difficult finding any annoying bugs: kudos QA!

The Conclusion

Get it.

Are you at work and the boss won't let you leave? Send a few memos of how you're unsatisfied with the level of excitement in the company and quit--then go buy the game.

At school and your oppressive teachers won't let you leave the classroom to go to the bathroom? Flip over the desk, do some kinda battle roar and jump out the window, quickly proceeding to your local GameStop.

PC gamer and crying for days about the terrible things Infinity Ward did to you [which I agree is super weak]? Suck it up like I did, buy an Xbox 360 and play with us where the roads are paved in gold, the sun is always shining and uhh... come to terms with controls inferior to keyboard / mouse like I did.

All too dramatic solutions for you? I don't want boring people playing the game but you can still stand in line to buy the game after you're done doing whatever uninteresting thing you are doing.

Oh, and... add me on 360. My gamertag is "Pievendor".