Modern Warfare 2 (nee Call of Duty 6) is the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 1: A New Hope, which was a massive hit and also an awesome game. This was partly because COD4 was actually able to transcend the narrative and thematic limitations inherent in the FPS genre in several key sequences in the single player campaign. The two that stick out for me are the one in which your playable character dies slowly and painfully in a nuclear blast and another in which your controllable perspective shifts from a squad under heavy and hectic fire by some or other Russian separatist battalion to a gunner comfortably ensconced in a AC130 gunship miles in the air who comes in to save the day by raining destruction on the attackers from an untouchable height. This sequence in particular, without being too heavy-handed about things, effectively used the gaming medium to contrast the vulnerability of traditional ground soldiering with the eerie detachment of computer-aided remote warfare.
Modern Warfare 2 tries really, really hard to replicate that, but doesn't quite hit the mark. The single player story, which in quick order blends Generation Kill, James Bond, 24, Red Dawn, The Rock, and the climax of Face/Off (which the last level essentially steals wholesale), has a lot of 'wow' moments and high points, but would really have benefited from focusing less on trying to top the original and more on explaining exactly what the hell is going on at any given moment. There is that 'controversial' optional level in which you control a participant in a terrorist attack, which is actually quite chilling and effective until you play further in and realize that the developers have utilized it as little more than a gateway to go completely over the top rather than as the emotional centerpiece of a coherent narrative.
This is disappointing, largely because you can tell that the developers (Infinity Ward, who also created COD4) put in some effort to make Modern Warfare 2 resonate on a level deeper than the average military shooter game. The Call of Duty series' trademark deathscreen historical quotes seem to be skewed more antiwar this go-round (and include at least one choice selection from Don Rumsfeld about the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), the game explicitly sets one level in Afghanistan (rather than COD4's vague 'The Middle East'). and there are several moments that attempt to highlight the perils of war. I think that the decision to directly continue the storyline from of the first Modern Warfare is a big limiting factor in constructing a serious narrative; as ludicrous as the levels depicting a land invasion of Washington D.C. by the Russian Army were, I still thought the game's story might have been able to right itself, until it nuked the fridge completely by bringing back one of the presumed-dead main characters from the first game. The entire final third of Modern Warfare 2 stays in an uninterrupted soap-opera mode, although the gameplay admittedly doesn't much suffer for it.
The single-player campaign is all well and good, but the real reason that Modern Warfare 2 is so hotly anticipated is the online competitive multiplayer. I never really played COD4 multiplayer more than a few times, but I made the mistake of popping online for a couple matches the first day I had the game and was almost immediately addicted. MW2's multiplayer weds the campaign's gameplay mechanics to a relatively standard selection of deathmatch modes, and grafts on a truly remarkable upgrade system whereby the player unlocks a range of weapons and other bonuses through earning experiences points in-game. Mostly, these points are earned by killing enemy players (natch), but there's all sorts of available bonuses and side-challenges to boost your totals. The net effect is a constant stream of positive reinforcement: one of the things that first endeared me to the game is the fact that if you get a kill after a dry streak, your point value for that kill is doubled as a 'comeback' bonus. Also, although the rules are somewhat more complex than similar games like Halo 3, the gameplay wasn't as hard for me to pick up because it tends to emphasize caution and situational awareness over fancy maneuvering and memorizing weapon locations.
As brilliant as the multiplayer is, I think it's also the biggest thing keeping Modern Warfare 2 from saying anything serious about modern warfare. It's simply not possible to postulate within two halves of the same product that shooting the shit out of people (feel free to insert mental quotation marks around that last word) is at the same time (a) a morally charged action with serious political and personal ramifications and (b) an endlessly rewarding competitive sport. In the end, this is the main problem of all video games with aspersions to seriousness: they're bound by the need to be fun as well as interactive. Even if it were possible to create an Xbox 360 equivalent of Casualties of War, who the hell would play it?
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