With all the hype, controversy and anticipation, one thing about Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was spot on: it delivered on a thrill ride, for better or worse not much longer than a Hollywood summer blockbuster.  The single player campaign gameplay is what I expected, short and sweet set pieces.  However I was taken aback by the blatant homages to blockbuster movies, from The Rock to The Terminal to a multitude of Bond films.

System of a Down, Lost in Hollywood

Whereas the first game was full of set pieces I’d not seen on-screen before, such as the ghillie and sniper missions; this game shockingly exposed Infinity Ward’s lack of creativity or more worryingly, lack of ambition.  I say lack of ambition because Infinity Ward are at a level of success (surpassing GTA IV in sales) where they may find it easy to rest upon the formula they know is successful.

This formula is a short single player, redeemed by enjoyable set pieces and a respected multiplayer.  As long as the next game in the series sells as well as this, I only see the formula changing in that even less effort is put into the single player, both it’s set pieces and as evident from this instalment, it’s story.  The story in MW2 is the most ridiculous, short sighted, narrow minded tripe I’ve not seen on screen since the eighties. It very much seems that Infinity Ward watched a load of action films, to “borrow” set pieces from, such as those in The Gulag.  While stooping to this level, they thought they might as well settle for the stupid storylines in these movies too.

Don’t get me wrong I like my big dumb summer blockbuster as much as the next person, but coming off of the believable, real world setting of MW1, I was unable to accept this instalment as one of these.  Especially when I’m expected to believe that the US has been invaded by Russia with full backing from the international community. Add to this the only concrete link to the previous game was the absurd twist; General Shepherd seeking revenge for the deaths of 30,000 of his troops in MW1’s nuclear explosion and you have the fall of what could have been a video game universe to rival Metal Gear Solid.

Peter Molyneux’s assertion that video game storytelling will one day surpass that in films like The Godfather, gives me confidence in bashing MW2 for it’s story.  Of course it’s a game, but it does a disservice to the video game industry when it attempts to implement adult themes such as the slaughter of thousands of innocents, only for that to have been used as an unrealistic reason for war between two nuclear powers.  The whole idea between the conflict seems to spring from Infinity Wards reliance that fears from the Cold War are still inherent in all people, they are not, the international climate has greatly changed since the turn of the millennia.

I felt insulted by the story in MW2 and I hope all adults that play the game feel the same way.  I wanted nothing more than to believe what I was playing could happen, as I’d done with MW1, but alas it wasn’t to be.  If Infinity Ward wanted so badly to have battles on US soil they should have remade IO Interactive’s brilliant Freedom Fighters.  Here’s hoping that more critics have pointed out MW2’s lack of a story and that IW bring their A-game next time and redeem the studio’s storytelling credentials.

For more on what the broke gamers think of MW2’s story, gameplay, spec ops and multiplayer, listen to our special MW2 podcast.  For now, I’m Oscar Mike.

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Image by A Broke Gamer, thanks to http://www.sodahead.com/user/profile/1457389/over-obama/ and http://modernwarfare2.net/tag/call-of-duty/

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