Modern Warfare was quite the hit for Call of Duty fans. Overnight, the first-person shooter became something else entirely, an action-packed romp through the world of today, cranked up to extremes found only - we hope - in cinema.
A sequel was inevitable, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the first direct story sequel in the CoD series up to this point. What was the story about, again? Was it terrorists or Russians? Both? I can never really remember what goes on in CoD, owing to the amount of strawberry jam I see on my screen...
Let's try and work out what's going on this time out.
Fun Times
These screenshots date back to the first time I played Modern Warfare 2 on the PC, back in 2016. I knew it was on this 1001 list, I knew I had missed it when it came out, and I knew that if it was anything like Modern Warfare, I'd have a good afternoon or two going through its story.
What that story is, I've no idea. It follows on from that of MW, starring much of the same cast, but that still doesn't help me keep track of just which thrilling aspect of war will get top billing in MW2.
Grizzled veterans speak over flashy CGI presentations in the downtime, and then you seemingly inexplicably find yourself zipping from the Middle East to snow-capped mountain bases in search of something or other that requires a James Bond-esque escape on a snowmobile.
You play as multiple mute characters/cameramen on your travels through bombastic set pieces. Stealth, teamwork, attack and defence, invasions, last stands, and the horrors of the Cold War turned very hot, you do it all in MW2, just like you did it all in MW: You're never quite sure where to go or what to do, but you shoot an awful lot of bad guys and blow up a lot of shit. Hoo-rah?
You also do the unthinkable. In a post 9/11 world, a game where you are the terrorist gunning down innocents in an airport was always going to court controversy, and the infamous 'No Russian' level is just that.
By this point in the story - if I'm following it correctly - a young US soldier has shown himself capable of joining a special task force that will change his life. By that, I mean he gets sent undercover as a Russian terrorist to work with some Makarov fella, who I think is carrying on the work of whomever it was we faced in the first MW.
His order as we emerge from the elevator is simple: No Russian. The rest is up to you.
What follows are missions that flip between American soldiers defending the suburbs from Russian paratroops making their first moves onto US soil, and the special forces tracking down evidence that Makarov was behind the attack, in the desperate hope that that will be enough to calm things down.
You'll bounce around the world on this hunt as usual, here in the shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro, which were a bit of a nightmare for me to navigate but did show off the verticality of MW2, where you'll have to look up as much as you look around.
Other than new locations, the gameplay remains much the same. It's a first-person shooter where aiming down the sights and pausing to catch your breath are just as important as running to the objective marker to pick up the thing to launch into the next explosive set-piece.
You won't be shooting into the night from an AC-130 or crawling through the ruins of Chernobyl, but you'll have your fair share of hanging off the side of a helicopter and guiding missiles into vehicles. CoD is no longer about the grand tales of the past, but the explosive moments of the present.
Frustrations
It'd be nice to see some of them without having so much blood on my face. It's not that MW2 is brutally difficult (it might be, but on Easy it isn't), it's just that if you get caught out, you get caught out hard. If my screenshots are anything to go by, you don't get clipped here and there, you get your face blown off.
Whether you can see it or not, the game does look pretty good, and it continues to make use of all the fancy night vision filters to make those moments of the story shine. We end up busting into a gulag somewhere to rescue Captain Price and it is just as over-the-top as the rest of the story. It seems that trying to avoid all-out war is actually incredibly difficult...
Further Fun Times
It is chaos, as you can imagine, and truly is a sight that only CoD can seem to show us. Nowhere else would this make sense, it'd be too unreal. But this is CoD, and it runs wild with its story.
He's killed a few characters, he's sent others on suicide missions, and his actions have lead to what might as well be the Third World War. He gets a knife in the face, pulled from our own chest wound. Sounds about right for CoD, eh?
Final Word
Five hours after it starts, Modern Warfare 2 ends. What happened? In detail, I've no idea. In general, pretty much the same as the first game, only in different places and with more intensity and shouting. It is another epic thriller that is full of visual flair and spectacle, and nothing else comes close to doing what it does.
But, like Modern Warfare, you remember the moments more than you remember the story. Again, you remember the characters, but not quite what they were doing, or why they were there.
I played the Remastered version on the PlayStation 4 whenever it was cheap enough to look into last year, and again had a solid time of things with a controller in my hands, compared to a keyboard and mouse. I recommend either method of input, and either version of Modern Warfare 2 for the simple reason that, for a long afternoon, it'll entertain you on its thrill ride through Hell.
After that, then what? In the day it'd be hour after hour of multiplayer matches with gameplay that defined the first-person shooter, certainly on a console. Killstreaks, perks, custom classes and loadouts. Every match may have been a race to earn a killstreak, rather than playing the objective, but I can't say that for sure. I never played it and never would have stood a chance. That scene certainly isn't for me now.
There are some co-op missions to tackle that pull from locations found in the multiplayer maps, but that's just more shooting, less plot. Maybe that's what you want, or maybe that's all you can do these days - I assume players have moved on from MW2 lobbies by now.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 stood on the shoulders of the first Modern Warfare and bellowed what it meant to be a first-person shooter. This is what the genre aspires to be. If you can't compete with this juggernaut, you will fail.
Time may have changed that, of course, and the CoD series time travelling might have pushed players elsewhere, but there's no ignoring the immense clout these games had ten years ago, and the impact they had on the genre, and video gaming itself.
You will be entertained, and then you will move onto the next thing, and while the moments will eventually blur together so that you don't have a clue which Modern Warfare had what moment, they will stay in your head for a while to come.
Fun Facts
Instead of infinitely respawning until you work out where to go, enemies in MW2 are supposedly smart enough to funnel you towards progressing through the level, such that you can't rely on enemies being in the same place on repeat playthroughs.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, developed by Infinity Ward, first released in 2009.
Version played: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, PC, 2009.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered, PlayStation 4, 2020.