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Quick thoughts on gameplay:
Singleplayer is about 5 hours long on regular. Pretty fun with a wild storyline. I didnt have the energy in me to beat it on veteran last night.
Multiplayer Impressions...
Before everyone hates on me, just understand that I'm a girl who just wants to play games and have fun, and I really dont care that much about dedicated servers.
Match making isnt nearly as bad as everyone made it out to be. So far I havn't had any major problems with it. For some reason it doesnt auto-balance the teams if a bunch of people on the same team leave, I figure this is probably a bug that will be fixed soon. Martyrdom and Last Stand are now deathstreak perks, and frag/semtex/tubes have all been toned down and are not as deadly as before. You also can no longer superman throw grenades so there are alot less random nades. The early nades that do go off are only able to be thrown far enough to kill anyone rushing. Not having lean sucks, but you get used to it and its nowhere as bad as alot of people claim. I have also never had lag problems yet. This includes the people I'm playing against.
Match making pros:
Invite people from your friends list to your party... select game type... play. (editor's note: identical to L4D)
Match making cons:
If the host rage quits, there is around a 15 second delay in getting a new host.
No type of "party chat" when in the lobby. Good thing we have Steam chat/Xfire/TS/Vent. Unfortunately it hinders "networking" with other players.
I can see where having dedicated servers is an advantage for clans and etc., however for the casual PC gamer they wont notice and they also wont care. MW2 multiplayer is definately based on people who just game for fun and are not as serious as clans are. Squish said having dedicated servers would make this game immortal, and that even without them this game still looked like a winner. He is gonna play multiplayer some later today and give you his thoughts. (editor's note: I get to ruin her k/d ratio!)
You also do not have console commands. This is kind of lame and kind of cool. Its cool because there are no longer ways to exploit things like exploiting your graphics to gain an unfair advantage. Its lame because you cant do things like change your max fps, display your fps, or tweak your max packet flow. I'm going to see if I can change my config to allow max packets of 100 and a maxfps over 85. Xfire now supports MW2 so you can use that to display a guess at your fps but it isnt as accurate as the ingame fps meter.
No lean is not noticed except for the fact one of the lean buttons is now your special grenade. As you adjust to not having lean, you sometimes end up hitting yourself in the face with a stun grenade. Fail.
One thing I noticed is that no-sighting really really sucks. You have to use Steady Aim + SMG or a Side Arm to be decent. Any of the assault weapons have terrible accuracy even at point blank range. Aiming down the sights is considered to be so important in this game that the Pro version of Sleight of Hand adds on Aiming Down Sights faster. Aiming down the sights with Pro Sleight of Hand is nearly instant. Getting kills no sighting with an M4 is alot harder than in CoD4. I played against some guys all in a clan and they were bunny hopping like crazy and getting destroyed doing it. MW2 is much more "tactically sound" out of the box then CoD4, its still nowhere close to realistic, but it has alot more to discourage jumping around like a rabbit and spraying.
Anyway enough of that, onto throwing knives, silenced shotguns, and other really sweet weapons... You unlock the M16 at level 41. You unlock the AK47 at level 70. There are new camos like Artic, Urban, and Fall. I saw one guy using Akimbo to duel wield P90s.
In CoD4 at level 5 you've already unlocked the 2 best guns in the game. The M16 and AK47. In MW2, at level 5 you've unlocked nothing. Your default classes are pretty crappy when compared to CoD4 where you had some of the best weapons and stock classes to start with (stock sniper and assault). There are Primary, Secondary, Equipment, and Special Grenade slots.
You unlock customizable classes at level 4. Getting to level 4 happens pretty fast since you get 100pts a kill. However as you level up it takes some pretty big leaps in needed XP to balance getting 100pts a kill.
Primary has Assault, SMG, LMG, and Sniper weapons. This includes weapons like the FAMAS, M4, AK47, RPD, Barrett 50cal, and UMP45. A twist is that some of the attatchments can only be unlocked by using other attatchments. You unlock a red dot sight, well you have to use the red dot sight for __ kills to get the holographic sight. You unlock the silencer, and have to use it for __ kills to get the heartbeat sensor. You unlock FMJ (more powerful ammo) and have to use it for __ kills to get extended mags. The P90 is also no longer a super gun. That can be counted as one thing IW did right.
Secondary can either be a semi-pistol, shotgun, pistol machine gun, or special equipment. Now the cool thing here is that you also have to unlock your Secondary attatchments as well, including semi-pistols. Yes there are silenced shotguns. One thing to take note of; claymores, stingers, at-4s, and etc. that in CoD4 were a perk are now classed as a secondary weapon and replace your pistol/shotgun. This means if you want something explosive, you need to ensure that your primary weapon will have enough ammo to sustain you. You can also silence a shotgun. Thats pretty cool.
There are less perks, however the perks have a "pro" version, which is like 2 perks in one. For example the Sleight of Hand pro version adds on faster ADS, Steady Aim pro version adds in Iron Lungs. Ya'll have probably already read all the weapons and perks lists anyway.
There is also an endless list of unlockable tags and callsigns for your name that you earn by doing certain things.
Modern Warfare 2 Pros:
Fun game. Incredible graphics, fun new weapons, fun new challenges, not boring.
Easy to use multiplayer. Squish says its almost identical to L4D's multiplayer system.
Modern Warfare 2 Cons:
No dedicated servers.
Tougher to have a community.
My summary is if not having dedicated servers is that big of a deal to you, so be it. There are also over 70,000 people playing MW2 on PC multiplayer already, and Steam's just released it for download today. For gamers like me, I'll never notice the difference between having dedicated servers and not having dedicated servers. Alot of people complained about the max limit of 9v9 if you have a large clan, RWC is a large clan but when was the last time we actually had 18 members on at the same time playing the same game? (editor's note: probably a meeting)
I do think IW short changed the serious gamers, but they still did a very good job on the games multiplayer. I'm glad I got it, and this game has exceeded my expectations.
-Vicious...aka...KelKel
