[Dilmah G]

Well, MW:1's story wasn't a masterpiece of storytelling either, to balance it out. Sure, it was cool, at times you felt like a real spec ops soldier (without any training, mind you, I think they should've slotted in room clearing procedure during the cargo ship orientation to familiarise your average frat boy with what the hell he's supposed to do when he enters a room after flashing it. On that note, breach sequences should've been in real time at least during Veteran in MW:2. All of them except the last one are piss if you know the procedure for small room clearing.), but I don't think it tugged on anyone's heart strings nearly as much as fighting near and inside the White House did. I'm Aussie and I felt the slightest bit "cooler" playing that mission. (Infinity Ward missed a great moment to kill off Ramirez, Dunn, and possibly Foley with style when the chopper goes down though. That would've made a very nice tribute to Blackhawk Down.)

I think if you look at MW:2 for what it is, Michael Bay's wet dream, and lose all connection to MW:1 in your mind, it starts getting bearable. Actually, I'll agree for the first time here, MW:2 was a poor sequel to MW:1, because it was nothing of what MW:1 was, uber-cool special operations stuff. MW:2 as a stand-a-lone explosion wank fest wins every frakking award in 2009, IMO.

[General Battuta]

Yet it could have been a hundred times better had the explosions been made to mean something, had the Russian invasion been remotely believable, had the plot twists been met with shocked silence rather than snorts and 'man, they are trying so hard.'

MW:1 actually has some extraordinarily clever storytelling in it. MW2 not so much.

[Scotty]

Your-Player-Is-Dead moments:

One:  PFC Allen a.k.a Alexei Whats-is-name via Makarov (optional)
Two:  ISS Astronaut (I don't count this as a player, really)
Three:  Roach via Shepard.

Considering that you play as a total of four people during the story (five with ISS guy), and two of them are still alive by the end of the game (Soap doesn't die, that we know of), that doesn't scream overdone to me, especially considering what kind of stuff the player characters do over the course of the game.

I purposfully left out Ramirez's little arc because it admittedly didn't offer much to the story.  Ranger fights Russians in D.C. pretty much sums it up.  Oh, and on the oil rig you rescue some hostages.  Also left out Allen's little ventures in Afghanistan because they are just there to set up the "Makarov frames U.S." mission.

I just realized which major point I missed. 

Spoiler:

Soap and Roach sneak into a Russian base to steal back a piece of satellite equipment.  Russians manage to copy it before they get to it though, and get a free pass through SatCom defenses.  Interestingly enough, the stolen plans are in Russian for some reason

On that note, breach sequences should've been in real time at least during Veteran in MW:2.

This.  I finished Veteran earlier today, and those breach sequences were six or seven steps below the normal difficulty for each of the levels they are on.

On an only slightly related note:  Those multiplayer woes I kept hearing from Battuta never materialized.  Sure it's irritating if an akimbo '87 guy catches you around a corner, but they're really just easy targets without said corner.

(Infinity Ward missed a great moment to kill off Ramirez, Dunn, and possibly Foley with style when the chopper goes down though. That would've made a very nice tribute to Blackhawk Down.)

Also this.  I noticed for the first time earlier that Dunn DOES get shot, in full view, when you're defending the chopper, but then is up and running around, taking point, no less! in the next five minutes.  I was sort of like

[Dilmah G]

On an only slightly related note:  Those multiplayer woes I kept hearing from Battuta never materialized.  Sure it's irritating if an akimbo '87 guy catches you around a corner, but they're really just easy targets without said corner.

Amen. I don't know what all the fuss with multi's about, I love it. And hell, most of you guys are in America, where 'red bar' games barely exist. Same can't be said for us Aussies.

This.  I finished Veteran earlier today, and those breach sequences were six or seven steps below the normal difficulty for each of the levels they are on.

Yeah, and what's more irritating is sometimes your AI blokes don't fire their weapons and you have to clear both sides of the damn room. Alleviated in Spec Ops when you and a mate can stack up on the same door. Never gets old. 

Also this.  I noticed for the first time earlier that Dunn DOES get shot, in full view, when you're defending the chopper, but then is up and running around, taking point, no less! in the next five minutes.  I was sort of like

I noticed that second time 'round, I just assumed it fragmented in his neck/chest armour and resumed shooting at the 'ruskies'. xD

Yet it could have been a hundred times better had the explosions been made to mean something, had the Russian invasion been remotely believable, had the plot twists been met with shocked silence rather than snorts and 'man, they are trying so hard.'

Fair point with the baysplosions. I could see where Russian justification for an invasion was extrapolated from, I wonder why the US didn't speak up and tell them Allen didn't do ****. It was a little bit of a stretch, but when you have a airport's worth of dead people, I'd say calling it 'remotely believable' is being a bit harsh. On that note, it would've been cooler if Allen could take it upon himself to kill Makarov there and then + the rest of his cronies, like a civilised person would. Now there's a thought. xD I concur, the airport mission was a waste of 15 minutes, I didn't shoot into the crowd at all, above their heads for the most part, and I hip-fired at cops to suppress them and skirted around them.

MW:1 actually has some extraordinarily clever storytelling in it. MW2 not so much.

I wouldn't call it extraordinary, it has its moments, it does the job, and it finishes nicely. Extraordinary for me would've involved the player char's talking.

[Snail]

MW2's storyline was just as bad as Halo 2.

What these ****ing developers have to learn to do is deliver what is expected. MW2 dropped one of the things that really made CoD4 great, which was that the rather fanciful storyline was at least grounded in some semblance of real-life. MW2 decided to just shed that entire part of it and go completely insane with the plot, with hugely implausible bullcrap, laughable shock tactics and completely superfluous plot twists.


I enjoyed the game, but all in all it was a huge disappointment.

[Nuclear1]

The funny thing is, you actually missed some key points in the story. I'll let you see if you can figure them out.  

Spoiler:

You have to look at the entire plotline through General Shepherd.

Shepherd's casus belli for his entire plot is the wanton disregard the world paid to the deaths of his 30,000 men in Baghdad in the original MW.  He hates the ultranationalists for it, and MW2 is the story of him hatching his plot to exact revenge on the now-ultranationalist Russian government.

Shepherd 100% intended for the Russians to invade the US.  In fact, he may have very well delayed sending in 141 to recover the ACS module until he was sure the Russians could crack it.  He gave the Russians a casus belli for the invasion by paying Makarov to pull off the airport massacre.  Makarov goes along with it because Shepherd tells him there's going to be an American in the group that can take the blame for the whole operation.  Remember in the briefing where Shepherd tells Allen "you have no idea what it cost to put you next to him"?  I don't think he's referring to money or lives...more the cost to his own soul.  

While Price letting the nuke fly wasn't necessarily part of Shepherd's plan, it didn't exactly hurt it either.  I don't think Shepherd would have predicted Price simply detonating the nuke in the atmosphere and EMP'ing all of DC; rather, I think he expected the nuke to destroy the city ("We will lose the White House"/"We've rebuilt it before, we'll rebuild it again").  Before the nuke goes off, he gets his blank check from SECDEF to do whatever he needs to do to run the war against the Russians.  Assuming of course that the line of succession is crippled, SECDEF would likely be the next in line.

That's what I think the whole "Raptor" and "HVI" situation was in the Ramirez missions.  Those people you were sent to rescue were members of the government--people in the line of succession.  In fact, I wouldn't doubt Raptor being SECDEF himself.  Notice the POTUS emblems on the HVI's suitcase in the panic room?  The trooper they found dead had to have been from Shadow Company, Shepherd's personal unit.  That whole plot ensured a Shepherd-friendly SECDEF would give the General a blank check to do whatever he deemed necessary.

After DC is retaken, Shepherd sends in TF 141 to hunt down Makarov.  Roach and Ghost retrieve Makarov's files at the safehouse, then Shepherd kills them.  Why?  Makarov likely had information that would've implicated Shepherd in everything that's happened so far.  So since Shepherd used 141 to retrieve the data, they're no longer useful to him.

History is written by the victor.

If a few plot holes had been filled, this could've been one of the best-conceived actions plots in a long time.  What I don't like is that one satellite module allowed the Russians to break through every defensive screen the US and its allies had to offer--Rivet Joints listening to comms traffic, radar stations tracking Russian aircraft, Aegis cruisers, satellite surveillance, deep cover operatives and NORAD had to all be compromised or disrupted to allow the Russians to simply sneak up on the US.  I don't know how widespread the (fictional) Attack Characterization System is, but it just doesn't seem logical that every system in the US/NATO military is hardwired to it.

That was the main issue for me.  Well, that and Captain Price launching a nuke by himself, but I probably could explain that too.  I really actually liked the plot.  Granted, it indeed wasn't as good as the original, but it was still enjoyable.  Suspension of disbelief FTW.

Booyah, story overanalysis done.

[General Battuta]

You've got the stuff Scotty missed.  

Except the one thing - the heavily tattooed HVI you find already dead is probably Makarov and Shepherd's go-between. Both of them wanted him dead. I think that the tattoos may have something to do with the Russian mafia.

Honestly, I was almost okay with the story up until the last few missions; it had a ton of flab and I knew it would be pretty bad compared to MW1, but it had some pretty set-pieces even if it was overall incoherent. But the end was just a tremendous anticlimax.

EDIT:

For Scotty's benefit, count of all the times the 'your player is dead' trick is used, either as a fakeout or full-on:

1) Missing a jump in the level Hornet's Nest. Player is knocked out for a bit, possibly to hide a load?
2) Ramirez, in the crashed helicopter on 'Of Their Own Accord', when a searchlight flares over you and the level ends.
3) Roach, on 'The Gulag', when debris falls on you and knocks you out, to hide a load or to set up a camera angle for a little set-piece.
4) 'Borodin' being killed in 'No Russian'.
5) Roach's death
6) The ISS astronaut

Quite an increase from MW1, where the closest they came to this kind of dicking around was Soap being knocked over by a blast in 'Crew Expendable'.

[Vidmaster]

MW was cool. MW2 was insanely unfocused and totally silly, plot holes, no realism, no narrative logic.
NO GOOD STORY, IT HAD. DISAPPOINTING, MW2 WAS!
The levels themselves, the game mechanics and the scenarios were top-notch, I can't argue about that. It was incredibly fun.
But why not wrap it up in a good story? WHY?
Zero Punctuation's MW2 Review

I think Medal of Honor Modern Warfare looks good. I am more excited for SpecOps: The Line though. Different developer, totally different gameplay style plus it's developed here at Germany. IT LOOKS AND PLAYS AWESOME.

[Fineus]

For Scotty's benefit, count of all the times the 'your player is dead' trick is used, either as a fakeout or full-on:
1) Missing a jump in the level Hornet's Nest. Player is knocked out for a bit, possibly to hide a load?
2) Ramirez, in the crashed helicopter on 'Of Their Own Accord', when a searchlight flares over you and the level ends.
3) Roach, on 'The Gulag', when debris falls on you and knocks you out, to hide a load or to set up a camera angle for a little set-piece.
4) 'Borodin' being killed in 'No Russian'.
5) Roach's death
6) The ISS astronaut

That's the thing though, some of those were more "you just got knocked out, here's a skip to something else that's happening" rather than actually killing you off. I've got no problem with that personally - even if it is just to hide a level load. Perhaps it would help to think of some of the characters you play as throughout the game as *not* being central plot characters. They're a way for you to see what happens but at the end of the day you're not supposed to feel any connection to them, and their deaths don't matter in the grand scheme.

I will say that the Russians did invade the US a bit too readily, there should have been more of a buildup to that - but it's hardly a game breaker. I would also concede that much of the narrative seemed like an excuse to string cool set pieces together but it doesn't seem as implausible as it is being made out to be.. considering it's a game we're playing and entertainment is the key factor.

On a closing note though, the levels I enjoyed the most were the sneaking about ones in the snow. They provided such a welcome change of pace.

[Dilmah G]

Heh, the Favella and White House missions were some of my fav's. The Favella tangos really keep you on your toes, and I just felt so damn cool fighting near/in Whisky-Hotel.

[Scotty]

For Scotty's benefit, count of all the times the 'your player is dead' trick is used, either as a fakeout or full-on:

1) Missing a jump in the level Hornet's Nest. Player is knocked out for a bit, possibly to hide a load?
2) Ramirez, in the crashed helicopter on 'Of Their Own Accord', when a searchlight flares over you and the level ends.
3) Roach, on 'The Gulag', when debris falls on you and knocks you out, to hide a load or to set up a camera angle for a little set-piece.
4) 'Borodin' being killed in 'No Russian'.
5) Roach's death
6) The ISS astronaut

Quite an increase from MW1, where the closest they came to this kind of dicking around was Soap being knocked over by a blast in 'Crew Expendable'.

MW1 did it more than you think.  Forgotten the end level?

1) Al-Fulani
2) Crew Expendable, when Soap is knocked out (you can tell he was knocked out because there is now a significant amount of water on the deck, but it isn't rising at that fast of a rate.
3) Soap when the chopper goes down, although this one just went black and cut to a different character.
4) Jackson when the chopper goes down.
5) Jackson again in the space of ten minutes, when he actually dies.
6) The exploding fuel tank on the bridge in End Game.

[General Battuta]

Disagree with your interpretation of 'Crew Expendable'. I'd call the two Jackson knockouts just one, and the exploding fuel tank was simply an obvious transition into the final quicktime event in which case you need to add the waterfall at the end of MW2. My count stands.

Even using the strictest possible count of real character kills, MW1 had 2 (Al-Fulani and Jackson) whereas MW2 killed off 'Borodin' in its equivalent to Fulani, then killed Roach and the ISS astronaut as well as pulling the fakeout with Ramirez in the downed chopper (which was what really put it over the edge; it felt like intentional exploitation of the series' character-killing gutpunches past.) That's twice as many, with one of them being a disappointing cop-out.

My impression was that it felt far more frequent and contributed far less to the narrative in MW2. The broad criticism of its overuse suggests I am not alone in this. It became something of a joke.

All in all I really hope they pull up the quality of their storytelling for MW3, if they even make it.

[MR_T3D]

All in all I really hope they pull up the quality of their storytelling for MW3, if they even make it.

rumours say they won't.

[Scotty]

Even using the strictest possible count of real character kills, MW1 had 2

And MW2 had three, one of which was optional.  That's hardly throwing it in your face, and certainly not compared to MW1.  If you're going to say "using the strictest possible count of real character kills," it doesn't make sense to include an incident where the player is not killed.

[General Battuta]

The intent of the sequence was to suggest the character's death.

The suggestion that Borodin is optional and therefore doesn't count is completely absurd. The only reason someone would not play that level is because it turned their stomach. The fact that it's optional doesn't make it any less present.

I doubt you'll make an argument that MW2 story's was as good as MW1.

[Scotty]

I doubt you'll make an argument that MW2 story's was as good as MW1.

You are correct.  I'm not going to make that argument.  However, I'm not going to call MW2 a bad game, or even disappointing, for not being as good as one of the best games I've ever played.

[General Battuta]

It was a disappointment for not improving on its predecessor in spite of a massive budget and near-infinite creative freedom.

[MR_T3D]

bump and redirect to the topic:
Played the MP beta AND:
-Pretty cool, but rough around the edges, felt laggy to me, much more noticeable to me than bad co. 2
-mission mode can be pretty neat, scorechains are quite neat, the choice between the quick kills, making room for the objective, or temporary team benefits.
cruise missile>>MW2 tact. nuke, to use, to see, and experience.
weapons are cool, I like how (at least for most levels) are faction-restricted, and just the general guns.
simple, just the good guns.

also, the limited edition will have BATTLEFIELD-MOTHER-****ING-3 BETA invite!

[General Battuta]

I've heard it's a bit dodgy compared to Bad Company 2 (which was the same developer.)

[MR_T3D]

I've heard it's a bit dodgy compared to Bad Company 2 (which was the same developer.)

it is, i can use things like full-auto or snipers effectively in BC2 (love that game) but I rather hope it's the fact that it's beta is the reason for the shakey inner code, its in the try before buy category for me for this reason.  still can be cool when it's working, more fun that MW2, it's about shooting people and not all about the explosives.