Modern Warfail 2 – impressions

Played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this Saturday at Steams Free Weekend.

The serverless (kinda P2P, although one still servers as a host I think) works pretty good technically wise, but sucks gameplay-wise.

If the host leaves the game pauses and a new host is automatically detected and the game continues from the exact point it stopped.

This takes some time though and the game may close the game if no suitable new host is found among the players. Also, checking all the clients takes some time of course as well as re-synchronisation.

As no real server admin is online, nobody has referee rights, cheaters or abusers, whatever, may not be kicked at all. Although I didn’t meed such players when playing my some hours Saturday evening.

Another issue is the game-searching, which takes very long at times. The system checks available games and players and increases minimum ping in intervals. If you wanna play… Well, with servers you can check servers in a few seconds (even faster if you have favorite servers you play on) and connect to one. You don’t have to wait for a server (or game) to be chosen for you.

What else to say? Ah right. The ranking system.

My first round began really awful. I think I died the first 10 times without firing a shot. That sucked. But it got better then.

Still, the level-system with better and better weapons and gimmicks with increased level did seem a bit unfair to me. Maybe it does motivate players to rank up, but those already experienced with the game will get another big advantage over new or occasional players. Is that necessary?

Emblems and Titles as optical gimmicks were a bit fun though… at least they won’t give advantages to players.

Otherwise, gameplay wise, it was pretty fun. But, especially with the publisher issues at the back of my mind, not worth buying at all. Well, for 5€, ok.

Oh, as we’re just talking about price. I didn’t buy the predecessor Modern Warfare 1 because it did not decrease in price for way too long (over a year), until I did no longer bother. Anyway, 60€ is a joke as well.