Infinity Ward has finally lifted the curtain on Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode at an exclusive hands-on event in LA. Now we've had a chance to sit down with it here's a quick burst of facts that we've learned so far. More to come later...
NEW MAPS
A quick description of some of the new maps we've played...
Afghan: A rocky desert area with the ruin of a jumbo jet in the middle. We'd avoid hanging around here for too long as it's surrounded by some high cliffs and bunkers that snipers will love. We suspect most of the action will come at the top and bottom of the map where caves and ledges make everything a bit more intense.
Favela: A claustrophobic shanty town broadly divided into high-up rooftops and narrow ground level passageways.
Highrise: A more unusual urban setting, Highrise comprises of a half-finished highrise building with interior and exterior areas and a series of metal beams high above that can be used a sniper points. If you're clever it's possible to work your way from one side of the map to the other without being detected to launch a surprise attack from behind.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Gameplay footage
1:55Multiplayer footage
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Gameplay footage
1:55Multiplayer footage
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Perks are now upgradeable - each perk has its own 'challenge'. When you've completed it you unlock a pro-version of the perk.
There are obviously a whole load of new perks but so far we've seen:
Bling: This gives you the ability to use two attachments on a single weapon, ie. you can tote the red dot sight and the grenade launcher at the same time.
Scavenger: Using this you grab ammo from enemy corpses automatically, ensuring you never run out of grenades.
Commando: Rubbing in the humiliation of a melee kill even further, the Commando perk gives you longer range on your stabbing attacks.
KILL STREAKS
Fist-pumping when you unleash one, potentially devastating when someone unleashes one on you, kill-streaks are back, upgraded and renewed. As well as the unlockable AC130, already teased by Infinity Ward via a much-analysed YouTube video, these are your basic kill streaks:
Get 3 kills: UAV - So how's this different to the last UAV from CoD 4 you might well ask? Ah, well you see, you can shoot this little bugger down.
Get 4 kills: Counter UAV
Get 4 kills: Care Package - By calling in an airdrop with a smoke grenade, a random reward is jettisoned to you. We've seen it give out a simple ammo refill and an instant advanced kill streak. Which was nice.
Of course, these are open to rest of the players on the map too, and show up on their radars. The tactical side of this is they can be used as cannon-fodder magnets.
Get 5 kills: Sentry Gun
Get 5 kills: The Predator Missile - This fly by wire missile not only lays the smackdown on its targets but also gives you a brief aerial view of the battleground.
Get 6 kills: Precision airstrike
Get 7 kills: Attack helicopter
Get 11 kills: AC130
DEATH STREAKS
These are aimed at assisting less able players (read n00bs) and are the opposite of the Kill Streaks. If a player dies four times in a row without scoring a kill they are awarded a bonus (which has to be unlocked first). Here's the two we saw. (We died three times on PURPOSE, of course):
Copycat: This is the first you unlock and gives the player the chance to steal his killer's class for one round. Now they can see what it's like to have a good weapon.
Painkiller: Gives players an extra ten seconds of health after they respawn.
SECONDARY WEAPONS
You are no longer limited to a pistol as your secondary weapon. Available to you are a selection of machine pistols, shotguns and rocket launchers.
We can see this pleasing (spit) career snipers the most, as now they have a more powerful option if they get caught in close-quarters. Those rocket launchers come in useful for blowing UAVs AC130s and choppers out of the sky too.
ATTACHMENTS
These no longer refer to just red dot sights and scopes (which are still there), in MW2 attachments refer to 'skills' as well. The already revealed 'Akimbo' attachment for example allows a player to dual-wield weapons, and 'Rapid Fire' which is kind of self-explanatory. Suppression has also been made available on sniper rifles.
NEW SWAG
To up the ante in the war zone Infinity Ward has added a number of new weapons that you'll be able to use in your special grenade slot. We can see advanced players becoming experts with these very quickly so our advice is get in there early:
Semtex Sticky grenades (Anyone remember how good the sticky bombs were in TimeSplitters 2? No? Oh.)
A throwing knife (Getting killed by this is going to suck.)
A blast shield (Offers greater protection from explosions)
Tactical insertion (Sounds like it should be painful, but actually grants you the ability to chose your own respawn point. Useful for nobbling the person who just killed you from behind).
RIOT SHIELDS
By swapping out your primary weapon for a riot shield you can completely change your strategy. You're limited to using the riot shield as a defensive wall (it takes a fair few bullets) to distract and hold up an enemy but the advantage is you can can cave their heads in with it as well. If you swap to your secondary weapon the riot shield is hoisted onto your back to act as an ass protector.
Incidentally, using the riot shield in objective based matches like capture the flag still gets your team points, even if you are just using it as a distraction method rather than to kill enemies.
CALLSIGNS
Callsigns are a new way of rewarding players. Acting as a kind of big customizable plaque, they pop up when you get a kill or perform a specific action. Callsigns include a title, an insignia (not tied to your level), a background (there are loads of these to unlock) your gamertag and rank. More on these when we've explored them a bit.
HOST MIGRATION
This should stop those baby players quitting out and ruining the game for everyone else. Now games won't terminated if the host switches of their machine. A small, but fairly significant improvement.
I don't know, the game's moving further away from a straight out-and-out military shooter and becoming more of a features/abilities led battle. I hope it doesn't end up favouring snipers too much either as I think this reduces the excitment and thrill of close quarter battles.
As for giving people who die without killing a bonus, I guess this says a lot about how deadly the game allows people to get regardless of skill level. I'd rather see the game just be more equal for all from the start rather than clearly giving low level players or newcomers such a disadvantage the only solution is to hand them the features and weapon set from a better/more experienced/higher level player.
Eventually Modern Warfare is going to have to offer a game style that's just pure shooter without all the frills and extras that are turning it into such an arcade game. Still disappointed Infinity Ward refuse to make a co-op gametype out of the single player game. Lots of other games have achieved this (including the far weaker World at War).
Everyone will want to Red dot/silence the guns, depends what the penalty is for this.
Scavenger sounds good, saves you picking up someone else weapon, just grab the ammo.
Commando seems like the bayonet in WAW
Counter UAV... run.... but sounds ok-ish
Care package sounds ok, once I see what items can come from it.
Sentry gun instead of air strikes~?? or the praetor missile, hmm, not so good, you'll get killed on a sentry gun in no time, well, maybe, maybe theres some sweet spots that snipers and randon nade throwers wont be able to get to you....
Aaaah 6 for air strike cool, 7 for helicopter nice still, and well, that AC130 just looks COOOOOL
Death Streaks is EVEN more reward for noobs! pluurleese, also get rid of martydom! Death streaks though, why reward so highly for being crap!
Sticky semtex sounds cool! lob it in, run to your freinds )
Throwing knife looks cool!! Stealth is cool!
Tactical insertion is going to be bad I feel, spawn camping with a sticky semtex and a grenade or 3, hmm, we'll see how this one turns out, good idea I guess, but surely encourages a spawn camping system and you can move your spawm point on every spawn? then no one can complain that the spawn points are crap though, make your own, sniper heaven?
Host migration is EMBARRASSING for IW to be left in COD:4 STILL!!!!!! I bet it'd take them 1 minute to fix it! So this is good, but should have been ironed out a LOONG time a go.
Obvously this already pre-ordered for me, so, cool, cant wait for it, lets hope the new perks n classes rock eh )
Alot of the features described above sound interesting to me, however I have pre-ordered MW2 primarily for the single player game. Multiplayer in just about any game remains an "add-on" feature for me. It's usually of very little interest though on occassion it entices (ex. CS: Source once upon a time).
Sounds good to me, as I disliked how noobs suffer from lack of perks in the original. Everyone is new to the game at some point, and I suspect it put some players off.
I'm disappointed helicopters are still about, as they used to really **** me off.
I'm also a bit worried about the riot shield. It reminds me of when they added one to Counterstrike.
Umm well I think some of this is pretty good news. I especially like the fact the kill streak for the helos has been increased to 11 kills now but we shall see how this affects the game play.
Everything else to be honest sounds pretty good. More options for customisation is always a bonus but the only thing I may be concerned about is perhaps the use of a riot shield or duel pistols. Since when were they used in real combat?
this game is going to be a sniper fest in about 2 weeks after release.
I actually completely agree with you here. Most of the maps CVG have played sound like they have pretty good points for snipers to own on the battlefields and the option of having secondary weapons too! Surely this will outbalance the snipers as the good thing about them just having a rifle and pistol was always the vulnerability of close quarters combat. Oh well...
It does sound a bit complicated but I bet a tenner they'll include a CoD4 'Pure' mode of sorts for those averse to change. The throwing knife will get irritating though.
The one thing I'm worried about (like everyone else) is the amount of sniper advantages. Can they lie prone with rifle in hand and shield on back? Could be pretty hard to stop them that way.
But since CoD4 was such a massive online success, I have to have faith that this one will be just as good. I thought there was supposed to be destructible content in the multiplayer though - but no mention of it.
I'm a little iffy about this one to be honest. I loved Modern Warfare for its simplicity and balance, and I worry this could become upset with all these new additions.
Still, I'm sure IW will deliver but with the inclusion of riot shields, celebrity voice talent I couldn't care for and a higher price point, my pre-order is close to cancellation. I might just give another title a chance, if I hadn't done so in the past perhaps I would have never played the likes of Okami or Shadow of the Collosus.
Also, I like a bit of sniper action myself and love that felling of dealing death from range yet being incredibly vulnerable at the same time. I reckon suppressing the damn thing may shift the balance a little too far in favour of the sniper (but make you feel pretty cool at the same time ).
I've just been watching several video on another trailer website, man it does look good, the 5 kill streak predator missile looks PERFECT for snipers!! really cool kill streak, and almost gauranteed to get you the 6 kill streak, then thats air strike, which you can get 1 person yourelf or on the strike, then helicopter! maybe all abit too much? looks cool, I'm not cancelling my pre-order! But maybe you have to trade helicopters in for the AC130!! so this would make you more carefull to get those higher streaks, or will it be a noob fest of changing all the streaks to lower ones and have a constant rain of missiles and care packages!
Cant wait for this, but just hope they adust the bullet penatration abit so it doesnt go through soild objects...Misslie silo anyone or thick solid conrete walls but other than that MW1 was amazing and still is, oh and hope they put in a hardcore mode where you can diasble perks or maybe just allow one perk, just something for those who like their games to be a bit more realistic.
Ummm i'm pretty certain I made a custom sniper slot with the primary weapon as a rifle then the secondary with an assault rifle due to the 2 weapon perk. So not really any change there then. It just means that it's not a perk now, just standard.
sniper fest??!!! right, thats my pre-order cancelled, gonna wait for my mates to see if they think its a sniper fest before buying it... i honestly dont know how people enjoy sniping all game in a corner on their own, close quarters stuff is way more fun and on the edge of your seat, sniping has never interested me in any shooter, camping out is hellishly boring to do all game....
There are a variety of new trailers on Gametrailers which show several maps. A snipe fest it ain't, I applaud IW for innovating but clearly keeping the basis of why COD4 was so good. Variation can only add to the enjoyment, even the crap people get a leg up!!
I don't like the sound of all these killstreaks. It will come to the stage when you will be scared to walk out in the open because you will be getting killed from above by missiles, airstrikes and so on. I just hope they get the balance right, otherwise they will ruin this game. This game might just come down to how many people will get cheap kills other than proper kills using there weapons.
"I'm cancelling the preorder I was THINKING OF PLACING".
Wow. That's SUCH a threat. And obviously a lie, on one of several levels at the minimum.
Personally, I am looking for good singleplayer, as I grew tired of CoD4 MP very quickly (except in LAN). So I'm not buying this right off - I want to check it out first. More coop might have made me preorder.
Regardless - would you please listen to yourselves. "It'll be crap" "It'll be good" "I'm preordering" "I'm cancelling". Wait. And. See.
They think it'll be the biggest selling game of the year - not preordering MIGHT mean you have to wait a day or two to play it. WOW. You'll live, right?
Won't this be out on Steam anyways? The number of times I've had to start over on my MP-profile because I reinstalled Windows makes me want to kill someone. PLEASE tell me they've fixed this?
I don't care about 360 or PS3 version of this game.... I'm old school and hope that IW put in allot of time into the PC version of MW2, I hope we get the same perks and upgrades... Give me a Mouse & Keyboard any day... (How good would it be if IW made it so 360, PS3 & PC people could all play on the same server lol) I had a dream lol....
So can't wait for this game roll on Nov 10 or when ever GAME send it to me lol...
Tissue Box, this is why I'm disappointed about the lack of single player campaign co-op. Co-op is always more organised and tatical compared to the headless chickenfest adversarial games turn out to be.
Anyway, I'm not threatening to cancel a pre-order, or pretending to boycott this game, finances have already ensured I won't be buying this on release day. I believe Operation Flashpoint as a military shooter (with proper 4-player co-op) will suit me better. Sadly I think Left4Dead2 will be more up my street too. And Forza3 will certainly keep me busy for a very long time. As has been mentioned, the single player game is of much more interest than multiplayer with MW2.
I don't care about 360 or PS3 version of this game.... I'm old school and hope that IW put in allot of time into the PC version of MW2, I hope we get the same perks and upgrades... Give me a Mouse & Keyboard any day... (How good would it be if IW made it so 360, PS3 & PC people could all play on the same server lol) I had a dream lol....
So can't wait for this game roll on Nov 10 or when ever GAME send it to me lol...
I wouldn't say MW2 is anti teamwork. Surely the greater emphasis on loadouts cancelling each other out is basically creating classes of players which will complement each other in team games? Ergo, teamwork will be essential to success.
cod4 was an arcady shooter and to capitalise on how popular cod4's multiplayer is, they have just added lots of things which were asked for on the official cod4 forums.
i agree with sniping though, could be a bit of a problem, hopefully only noobs will snipe. lol
the end of the day, if you want an actioned packed, full on shooter, with big explosions, manic firefights, crazy perks, get MW2.
If you want a simulation/realistic game which means you will have to use skill no matter what and take your time etc, get operation flashpoint 2.
I think both of them sound awesome and cant wait to get both. Will have the best of both worlds then
The frikkin host migration feature is NEAT! I've been in SO many games where the frikkin host has quit and we've all been booted back to the lobby Thanks IW!
Discuss MW2 over on the Modern Warfare 2 Forums at http://www.codnation.net
i was gonna get this game but not now its like its been made for career cowards (snipers) they've ruined playing cod4 its gonna happen here too they'l make the game a snore fest
Modern Warfare 2 is my most anticipated game this Fall. And since online is a must, I'd rather do it on a PS3 where at least it's FREE. I mean, you can even get an 80gig PS3 online for FREE right now. Just follow the link and follow the instructions and claim your free gift!
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cool, 7 for helicopter nice still, and well, that AC130 just looks COOOOOL
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