Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- Final Opinion.

I had no choice but to play more than a few games at once given this holiday's plethora of titles and as a result I've taken far more time to work through games. I've finally completed Modern Warfare 2 with the full one-thousand points. Modern Warfare 2 is a strange bird for me as technically it's rather impressive but overall I'd have to say I didn't really enjoy it. Graphically the game is gorgeous. It's really impressive looking down to the smallest detail. And they nailed the details. From the way blood and brain matter splatters to how the environment takes damage to how the enemies move. Everything is great and moving at a solid sixty frames per second. The sound is equally as well handled. The voice work is top notch. The pop of the weaponry and the whizzing of bullets all sound lush and spot on. The controls are also rather perfect. No complaints there. If everything seems so great then why didn't I enjoy it? Here comes the hard part because some of these might be considered intangibles or even irrelevant by a lot of people. I had issues with the pacing, the story, the controversy, and the manufactured difficulty. Like Uncharted 2 before it Modern Warfare 2 hits the ground running and attempts to keep the pace of a runaway freight train going down a mountain. Having to constantly feel like you need to save the entire world right this second for hours on end has a dulling effect. It backfires. I don't get more excited, it doesn't become more intense. I grow bored and or annoyed. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't let up at all really from start to finish. The story doesn't help things much as it's so freaking ludicrous and silly that Kojima himself couldn't have done better. I don't wish to spoil it even though I find it to be insulting. You've probably heard about the No Russian mission. In my initial impression I said I got the feeling that they were out to push buttons. Having seen the story through numerous times now for the full thousand, I still come away with the sense that that's what they were going for. And it goes beyond the No Russian mission. Later on in the game you'll be fighting in Washington DC and the score is soaring and you're obviously supposed to feel this massive wave of patriotism. I do understand that in storytelling and musical scoring that manipulation of emotions is the goal. The problem is you want to feel moved, you don't want to feel manipulated. And that's what I felt. I felt manipulated in the most heavy-handed way imaginable. This current generation has really nailed the online aspect, and we've come to amazing graphical and gameplay highs. It's got me thinking that the final frontier of gaming we still need to crack is artificial intelligence and the problem of manufactured difficulty. Just ramping up the difficulty by dialing up the AI's accuracy and field of vision and rate of fire and the like just doesn't cut it any more. I do understand that that's how games are made, but something needs to be done. There isn't a need for skill to finish these games on the hardest difficulties. It's more about patience and a willingness to suffer through it. I don't know how people can find it fun to have it so that when you peek out from behind cover just an inch an enemy from a hundred yards away instantly sees you and fires on you with exacting accuracy even though he's under fire from a vehicle and a few other AI. Somebody needs to figure it out, and the rest will follow. As I previously said, a lot of these criticisms won't matter to a lot of people, but to me they made all the difference in the world. I'm giving Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 a 7. I didn't enjoy it that much but at the same time I can see how a lot of people will call this their game of the year. It doesn't offend me in the slightest. It's not on the same level as someone calling Final Fantasy VII the greatest game of all time or anything like that.