X’09 PREVIEW
Modern Warfare 2
By Jorge Figueiredo - October 6th, 2009
At X’09 I snuck into the Modern Warfare 2 room that was hidden behind a thick curtain. There were some other folks there who had made appointments to talk to the Infinity Ward team and to play the game. I hadn’t booked a meeting, but Infinity Ward also allowed a few observers into the room. When I sat down to watch, one of the demonstrators began his spiel about the work that went into the game while the other was taking us through one of the snowmobile levels.
On the big screens set up in this exclusive area, the game looked amazing. Smooth motion and crisp graphics in the demo made for some wonderful eye candy – and as much as I love play over looks, it’s hard to not acknowledge how great the visual of Modern Warfare 2 look. They are miles ahead of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which I already thought was amazing.
Modern Warfare 2 has a single player campaign, and from what I understand it’ll be fairly long. There is also the online multiplayer mode (which promises to be as awesome as ever), and a new co-op mode called “Special Ops”, with small, independent missions that are separate from the main storyline.
At one point one of the Infinity Ward spokespeople was going to let me play, but I didn’t think it was fair to the two who had signed up to play so I just watched as they did one of the Special Ops mission types called “Breach and Clear”. Basically, the objective of the mission was to just make it to the endpoint.
It started off with the four players (they were playing two separate missions on two different Xboxes, two each) in a dingy basement hallway or tunnel. They placed charges on the wall and then flattened themselves against it on either side of the explosives and detonated them. Debris and rubble went flying all over the place as the mayhem began. They all rushed into what appeared to be an enemy locker room. Tiles were shattering and lockers were being destroyed as the battle raged on.
When one of the players went down, another would rush to his aid. The AI of the enemies was pretty neat. Some of them would run back and grab riot shields to defend themselves, while some long-distance shooters would try and distract you as their close-range comrades tried to take you down. One of the guys demonstrating the game mentioned the fact that sometimes even they were surprised at some of the tricks the AI would come up with. This is certainly an exciting title that everyone should keep an eye on.
Modern Warfare 2 is hitting the streets on November 10, 2009.
