Modern Warfare 2 tests our Short Attention Span

Final Thoughts
MW2 is an impressive title with great action, immersive game play and more than a few twists surprises in store for you. IW has done an excellent job on the game play, AI and the tweaked engine. The story line is excellent and compelling. The cast of characters is great with some excellent voice talent provided by people such as; Billy Murray [Captain Price from the original MW], Craig Fairbrass [who played Gaz in the original MW], Kevin McKidd [Trainspotting and Grey's Anatomy], and Keith David [Armageddon, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Transporter 2]. The voices add flavor to the game play and a sense of familiarity that drags you in. I do have a couple of complaints, my first is the way IW handles you being wounded, while I am all for the blurred vision, slowed reflexes and even the jerking that happens [adds realism] I do not like the way they "splash" blood all over the view. It makes it cartoonish and takes away from the game. My second complaint is a little bit of a cheat on the game, as I was supposed to only test this for 30 minutes and ended up finishing the game in two days [roughly 6 hours of play total]; I found the single player game to be way too short. Of course this pushes you to either the multi-player side or to the Special Ops missions. We did not test the multi-player side at all and only briefly looked at the Special Ops missions.

Was it worth it?
I have to tell you that I had some reservations about dropping $60 on a game that had gotten so much bad press over their multi-player choices. I also was concerned with the obvious “console” push the game was taking.  With Ads showing up saying "best played on Xbox 360" and the move to the matching system I had fears that MW2 would be a horrible console port. Thankfully it was not, the game was excellent on the PC. It quickly and easily grabs your attention and gets you into the game head first. It is a little short [single player] for a $60 title. $10 for an hour of gameplay is quite a bad value even when compared to movie theaters - Infinity Ward seriously dropped the ball with pricing. I do not feel that the multi-player functions justify that price completely. The new mix and match service is not to my liking at all [and I am not an online gamer] to me it limits choice and restricts players. It also opens up paths to charging for new content [like console players are charged]. If you are an online PC gamer and used to custom servers, the new multi-player style will be different and probably not to your liking. Console gamers will not notice anything unusual as it is pretty much the same as they have always had. In the end although I loved the single player campaign, I simply do not feel that 6-8 hours of game play is worth $60. Especially when you compare that to the $20 Episodes that Valve pushed out for Half-Life 2. They pretty much equaled the play time and experience at 1/3 the cost.