Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)

There’s a kinda neat virtual museum thing for the 20th anniversary of Xbox that goes over the brand’s history and then gives you stats on your history with Xbox. Apparently my most played game ever on any Xbox console is… Modern Warfare 2. Sounds about right I guess. I could have sworn it would be Dragon Age Origins, but I’ll settle for the game with dumb weed puns which were very funny as a teenager in 2009. I still remember the guy from the tutorial saying, “Switch to your other weapon, it’s faster than reloading!” which is one of the more useful bits of life advice I’ve ever gotten.

This is the one where you shoot everyone in the airport right? Yeah this is where COD fully lost me. Not because of that particular scene, (that was just the main thing that I remember being talked about), but just because there was almost nothing else interesting about this game. Call of Duty just all started running together at this point. The stories were pure nonsense, there was no personality to any of its characters or its world, and the game itself didn't really evolve in any meaningful way. The multiplayer was fun for a bit, but if you played COD4 you knew exactly what it was: Just more nights hanging with the same friends, sitting on the same couches, smoking the same weed and eating the same pizza. I just felt like maybe I should be... I don't know... studying for finals or making a meaningful human connection of some sort? That's probably way too specific to my life to be relatable in any way but that's the head-space that CODMF2 put me in. I aggressively did not care any more and I wanted out.

Now I love this game. It has a solid campaign, and a lot of replay-ability. Which is obviously why this game is popular. It is why the game is popular. It has a decent campaign, but a bare bones campaign to most games. Now this game does get a lot of hate for being for kids. Well to me I play games to have fun, and this game series is fun to me. If I want a thought provoking story game I will go to the Witcher. However if I want fast paced multiplayer I will go here or one of the many other games. Now I do agree that this game does not have as much content as other games. However this game does have a lot of replay-ability. Now granted this replay-ability is not everyone's cup of tea. However to me it is a game that is very simple, and straight forward. Now I would recommend that you get at the newer games simply because they have more people that play on the multiplayer, but get the games at a discounted price. Since the game does not have that much content, and that means not as much work was put into making it. I think that these games are worth it after it's release date. I don't really think that these games are worth $60. That doesn't make it any less of a fun game though.

I recently picked up this and Black Ops II on deep discount because I used to love the old WWII Call of Duty single-player campaigns and was in the mood for something linear and bombastic. Needless to say, it gave me both. The last CoD campaign I played was Ghosts, and that was terrible. But this one wasn't bad. It has some good set pieces, especially getting to fight on American soil as the underdog. I didn't even bother with multiplayer. If there's anyone still playing it six years later, they're likely much too good for me anyway. I won't be your lamb to the slaughter! It's short (barely 6 hours), linear as hell, but with a decent enough story and some decent actors (who doesn't love Lance Henriksen?). It satisfied the itch. Now on to better things.