MW 2 : Just a bad game ?

[classyplatypus]

Because it's a good game, and why the complaint with killstreaks? how are they unbalanced if you have to earn them. The campaign may have been short, but Infinity Ward packed all the fun they could into it. And for what reason is there no mentioning of Special Ops mode? That's probably my favorite part of the game. Maybe you thought the online was bad because you only played Team Deathmatch, if so, try other game modes like Demolition and Domination. Lastly the online for me and most people I've talked to about it is relatively lag free.

 

[cantthinkofausername]

After reading many reviews of MW 2 and seeing it get scores of 9.0 + from almost every reviewer, I naturally presumed that MW 2 was going to be a very good game, when in fact it is a fairly poor game and shows most reviewers to be nothing more then fan boys.

Now I begin my list of what is wrong with this game.
Firstly the campaign is far to short. Being able to complete an FPS in one sitting is sometimes expected, but to have a campaign only 5 hours long, on the second hardest difficulty is a joke. Why do game developers think it is fine to produce games with shorter and shorter campaigns?

After completing the campaign so quickly,I decided to go onto the mutliplayer and this is where the real faults of MW2 show. My first gripe is with the lobby system. Why the hell did they get rid of dedicated servers?! No FPS has had private host servers for years and for a very good reason. The amount of lag experienced in a standard match is ridiculous and its makes for an incredibly frustrating experience, and that is if the host does not disconnect and you have to wait 30 seconds to find a new host, or the game closes. Also due to a poor lobby system, the player can not choose the map and this leads to numerous players leaving lobbies which results in a 5 minute wait to start a game.

To make this game even better, you also two very badly designed mutliplayer game mechanics. The first problem is fairly common - over powered boosts and power ups. These come in the form of helicopters, air strikes etc. These just make the game very hard and annoying. The second problem I've have not seen in an FPS for a very long time - limited peripheral vision. It is not very noticeable in the campaign, but in the mutliplayer it is a disaster and results in you missing people anywhere beyond 45 degrees to your left or right. This also causes people to camp in corners of rooms and to run around with the knife - at what point did MW2 become Counter-Strike?

There are a few more problems I could delve into about MW 2, but ill just quickly note them to save time: Average graphics, terrible voice quality for mutliplayer, small number of people allowed per game and a generic game which does nothing new.


So, please tell me how did people over look all these faults and give it such good reviews ?
Please try to keep posts objective and no fan boy spams.

I agree that its campaign is too short. Though I've never had any lag problems or dying tons of times from helicopter problems in multiplayer. Though the vision thing is pretty true. Especially considering that the people are wearing gray armor wielding a gray gun in a shadowed corner.

I disagree on the average graphics though. These graphics are better than any of the recent 2009 releases I've seen, though I haven't managed to check out all of them yet.

 

[classyplatypus]

so your logic is that ee

ITT : people who think they know better then industry experts who get paid for their opinions.

MW2 was a great game, just because it was successful and mainstream its not cool to like it

So you think unbalanced multiplayer, short SP and poor lobby systems are the way foward? Or is it more likely people bought MW2 because of the success of the first, and some don't want to say it's average/crap because they don't want to admit to having pissed £35 down the drain?

The multiplayer isnt unbalanced, ide like to know why you think it is. The single player is short, but it left you wanting more which isnt a bad my any stretch of the imagination.
And being stubborn about a game because you spent money on it? Thats the most ridiculous thing ive ever heard.

See above post for why the multiplayer is a joke.
£35 for a 5 hour campaign? No thanks, that's a bad joke.
Stubborn over purchases absurd? Why do you think fanboys exist?

so your logic is that everyone who liked the game is a fanboy and therefore their opinions are invalid? and activision clearly targetted the game towards the multiplayer aspect. Trying to justify £35 for JUST the campaign, then you got a point. buts its not just a campaign is it. and i wholeheartedly disagree that the game is so unbalanced as to be unplayable as you are making out. sure its not perfect, but nothing is.

So £35 for the exact same multiplayer as dished out with the last two Call of Duty's seems reasonable?
It's not unplayable, I never claimed that. I said it was unbalanced and average at best. Though my main point is, is it really acceptable to pay £35 for the same multiplayer from a game two years old?

Last time I checked, its not 2 years old. There is much, much more to it then just activision recycling MW1(which they havnt).
They have actively tried to create a non-camp meta-game in MW2 as well as a plethora of new guns, rewards, unlocks, maps, I could go on.
Its based on the same engine. SO? think of the games that have used source, UT3 engine the variety is enormous and I honestly think the difference between MW1 and MW2 is like the difference between Team Fortress 1 + 2. The style of play is vastly different and more then enough to justify the standard [/] industry price for a new game.

Sounds to me new guns etc couldn't have just been done in DLC, or god-forbid, a free patch.
The fact that the sh*tty lobby system is kept over is beyond me, and yeah MW2 came out this time in 2007.
As for stopping camping, have moving spawn points, something Resistance 2 did perfectly. All the spawn points now do is help you get nailed by an airstrike seconds after spawning.

I see your point (considering that Resistance 2 is one of my favorite games to date), but it seems like people are only playing Team Deathmatch, and as I mentioned before Domination and Demolition are much better game modes, since the action tends to be happening around the objectives, it's unlikely that someone would spawn camp or waste their killstreak on an enemy spawn, but instead use the killstreak on the enemies around the objective. And also, what about Spec Ops mode, I've spent just as much time on that as I have on campaign and competitive multiplayer combined (although Spec Ops is nowhere near as good as Resistance 2's co-op).

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Please, please learn how to write concisely. Your walls of text are simply unnecessary. If you go to college/university, this will be a skill of great value to you.

First problem is you are creating hay-men arguments by not reading what I am writing - this is becoming really irritating.
I did not simply say MW2 was like another game, I said it is VERY similar to a 2 year old game. The two statements clearly have different meanings, with the latter showing that the game should have developed into a much better game, ideally of course. As the game is almost identical to it's 'spiritual' predecessor, this has not happened as many poor design choices were made. Clearly you like being pedantic over the word bad, so I will elaborate on what it means other than "OMGOSH OPINIONZ!":
Bad = "Not achieving an adequate standard" and "Disagreeable, unpleasant, or disturbing"
This is MW2 to a tee. "But what defines adequate and unpleasant!" you cry:
"Sufficient to satisfy a requirement or meet a need."
That need should be three things:
1)Make the company money - Success
2)Be enjoyable for players - Debatable
3)A game, as with any product, should meet the criteria of being comparable to other similar items in the market

If the item comes out highly, if can be considered a good/successful game, as in a game which fulfils it's meant requirements (See above).

Now if we take MW2 and compare it to similar games on the market, it is average at best:
1)The MP is very dated as there have been many innovations in the gaming industry. For example moving spawn points, large-scale combat, vehicles etc
2)The lobby system is very limited compared to many other games. Dedicated servers are known to have less lag and to provide more player choices. This is generally favourable for the player and so it would make sense, that to achieve the above aims, that a game should aim for this.
3)The FOV is smaller than in other FPS. This is not favourable to the player in terms of ease of the game and for a players enjoyment (Just google the outcry from PC owners).

The problem so far has been you assuming the words good and bad are entirely to do with opinion, which is not the case.
As I have shown above, the game has some undeniably poor features, which on the consoles, are left over from a game now two years old. In that way, MW2 is a bad game.
Yes, you may enjoy it, but enjoyment & quality do not go hand-in-hand for everyone. I myself have been gaming for too long to look past a badly (see above)designed game and therefore I will not find it enjoyable.
In conclusion, what I'm trying to say is that the game you are enjoying is a bad game, but that doesn't mean you, personally, won't have many hours of fun from it (See Snakes in a Plane argument).
I'm guessing if you do philosophy, you will understand higher and lower pleasures, which this is similar to. As a teen can enjoy getting drunk, you can enjoy MW2, but I'd prefer a more refined drink & game.

You had an excellent argument, then you throw it away and then come right back to it in the end.

To the point of my creating a "hay man" (straw man I presume - may have a different word than you), I will simply state that saying something is "like" is precisely the same as calling something "similar". You make a hypothesis and support said hypothesis with a numbered list. I didn't draw the conclusion - you did that when you wrote it. If this was not intended then I suggest using clarification in the future.

The problem we seem to have here, in general, is that you keep waffling from point to point. Good and Bad are words that have no intrinsic meaning - they must be quantified in order to be useful. As I pointed out already, something can be considered bad in one respect and good in another. Your determination of what makes a "good" game appears to lie in technical and creative merit, where mine lies in entertainment value. I care little for a technically sound game that bores me or a game with an excellent story or mechanic that is frustrating to play. We are inherently discussing the words "good" and "bad" in a different way. The key problem I continue to have with your argument lies in the fact that you continue to assume your subjective opinion holds some sort of innate truth. There is room for agreement between us. For example on the grounds of technical merit I find little that as laudable about MW2 beyond the statement of "I find nothing worth criticizing". On the grounds of creative achievement, I would say the game is a failure in every sense. But, when I consider the game from the perspective of entertainment value, of sheer competence in every field I care about, it's capacity to move millions of units and a whole host of other factors I have to say the game is a stellar success.

So, to put it briefly, while there IS room for a consensus if the debate is one of definition, there is little chance your previous attempts at argument are going to make an impact. As I have stated again and again, many problems you cite that would presumably alter my opinion on the quality of the game based on my default standard for the word "good" I have not experienced. I do not regularly have lag, I do not often run into games where the host is switching about etc. These things stand in the way of the game being able to serve as a viable entertainment product, and were I to regularly experience such things I'd probably have a much less forgiving opinion of the game as well.

 

[MR T3D]

well if thats what you think but, When it comes to spitscreen multiplayer MW2 is jesus. me and my friends have been playing it non-stop since it came out. so i challenge you to find a better splitscreen fps

Resistance 2. The split screen mutliplayer is far better, but my feeling is that 80% of people who play MW2 have never played Resistance 2, thus they do not fully appreciate how good mutliplayer split screen can be, and for me, to go back to a game that feels last generation is a large disappointment.

urm...excuse me? resistance 2 spiltscreen is better? i think not, with that its pre-made classes, as far as i know, this is the first game where u can fully custimize your loadouts by ranking up. its the online multieplayer offline, in which case...ace!

R2 you can play spitscreen ONLINE IE two people, 1 console, online.
which is freaking awesome.

 

[Buizel91]

i meant about splitscreen offline, not online lol =P my bad

 

[Valkyira]

It only received so many positive reviews because its 'call of duty'. If it were released under a different name, it would score no where near a 9. I don't think IW bribed critics but I do think they were afraid to give the game the score it deserves incase it upsets the COD fanboys.
I liked the single player but after a while the online play gets so boring and frustrating. I mean choosing where to spawn? Controllable airstrikes where every enemy in the match shows up as a massive red square.
And because of the fanboys, its impossible to get into because of their insanely high levels.

Luckily, so many people saw through the hype and agree that it is a pretty average game.

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

FED. THE. HELL. UP. OF. HEARING. ABOUT. THIS. BLOODY. GAME.

 

[Danish_4116]

I have been playing for about a week on PC. I loved the campaign, I seriously didn't expect half the stuff that happened and the ending left me begging for more. Spec Ops is a blast (literally) and I personally only had multiplayer lag when my sister was hogging bandwidth watching hundreds of YouTube videos featuring the sparkly vampire (Trust me, I hear all about it). Most of the time I get a good connection and find all of the game modes I've tried really enjoyable. While, yes, the server system is a drawback, I can live with it. Also, I think the graphics are a considerable step up from the previous title, although it does drain system resources and I find the gunplay exhilarating if somewhat repetitive.

I personally agree with all the 90+ reviews out there, even though the game has some drawbacks.

 

[Asehujiko]

Average graphics

I think of all the problems you can have with a game, this is one you can't direct at Modern Warfare 2.

Compared to the extra graphical additions to the PC versions of previous CoD games, MW2's direct console copy paste straight out sucks.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

Why did it get 9.0+? same reason Halo 3 did

Fanboys, nostalgia and wanting to be like everyone else?

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Why did it get 9.0+? same reason Halo 3 did

Fanboys, nostalgia and wanting to be like everyone else?

Or it could be the fact that, away from all the hype and marketing and fanboys, it's still a good game? Just throwing that one out there...

It might still be a good game but it's not a great game and by no means deserves the reviews it has gotten especially not on the PC by a long shot.

 

[kemosabi4]

I think MW2 is fantastic. It did a nice job of balancing the feel of the old game, while keeping things fresh with new features and gameplay mechanics.

Like Yahtzee said in his review, I think that the story drifted from the realism of the first one. Nevertheless, it was exciting, fast-paced, and the plot twists were great. However, I think the high points of the story also hurt MW2. It seemed that IW tried so hard to capture the excitement of the first MW, and ended up tripping over their own feet. They tried so hard to capture the same drama, that the story came across as confusing and convoluted. It took a second glance to understand what happened after I finished the story mode. I don't have any lengths about complaints about length, but I suppose that's because I have a life. And if you're an anti-socialite who thinks you'd have no use for the game once you finished story, the spec-ops mode ensures that you have something else to do.

As for the multiplayer, I think that the OP mostly griped about coincidental issues. Server time-outs and migrating hosts are both occasional problems at best. And host migration only happens when a host leaves a game. And the host is always the person in the lobby with the best connection, so server time-outs are rare. As for the lobby system, I think the system couldn't have been any better. If the map could be chosen, it would lead to bickering, repeats, and even more players leaving. The vote-to-skip option keeps things fair by giving players a chance to do something about a map they don't like.

Killstreaks: if they really piss you off that bad, do something about it. Equip "Cold-blooded" and shoot the fucking thing down. IW set up the multiplayer with a system of checks and balances. If killstreaks bother you, you can take them out. Camping enemies can be taken care of with riot shields. Riot shields can be dispatched with semtex. IW beautifully shaped the multiplayer into a massive game of rock-paper-scissors. And how do you expect to get peripheral vison out of a fucking television? Seriously, use your damn brain. Peripheral vison can only exists in living creatures and fish-eye lenses.

Finally, if you think MW2 has average graphics, bad voice quality, too-small games, and generic gameplay elements, you are truly wrong. Pardon my French, but the OP can fuck off. The only reason any sane human being could call MW2 a bad game is if they had impossibly high expectations.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Why did it get 9.0+? same reason Halo 3 did

Because it was a good game.

Why did it get 9.0+? same reason Halo 3 did

Because they were decent games with a sturdy multiplayer fanbase on the console? Am I the only one who belives that Halo 3 deserves the score it got?

No, you're not. But a word of warning, people will troll you on these forums for liking it out of a desire to be in the 'cool crowd'.

It's actually pretty good. And the matchmaking, while I would prefer dedicated servers, aren't that shabby either.

 

[Vrex360]

Why did it get 9.0+? same reason Halo 3 did

Because they were decent games with a sturdy multiplayer fanbase on the console? Am I the only one who belives that Halo 3 deserves the score it got?

You aren't alone, I'm here.

On topic: I don't know if I can really contribute much given that modern warfare 2 was not a gmae that interested me, but clearly there exist people that think the game was good enough and well made enough to at least warrant a somewhat high score. Maybe you didn't like it and maybe they did and that should be the end of the topic really, I respect that you don't like it just as I respect those who do like it. It's all personal choice and really your opinion is no higher or lower than that of a critic, all people can express opinions on things and when it comes to topics like whether or not a game is good there really is no 'right' answer. It's all subjective personal opinion.