Xbox 360
There seems to be an unwritten rule in first-person shooters that your character has to have a stupid name. In Half-Life you play a bloke with a ginger beard called Gordon, in Halo; Masterchef (or something like that anyway), and in Modern Warfare 2, one of the characters you play as goes by the name of ‘Captain ‘Soap' McTavish.'
Stupid monikers aside though, what can you expect from what's easily the year's most anticipated orgy of destruction? Well, plot-wise, it's the usual gung-ho pastiche of blokey DVD collections, a Tom Clancy novel and some ever-so-slightly-dubious political posturing. The single player game flicks back between several narratives, such as a CIA agent killing guerrilla-types in the slums of Rio, an SAS agent storming a Russian gulag with more than one reference to The Rock and even defending a Burger King from marauding Ruskies. Yes, it's more of the same for anyone who's played its predecessors, but damn it's fun.
As far as the multiplayer side of things goes the developers seem oddly determined to alienate new players. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare featured a clever seeding system, pairing players online against those of a similar ability and experience (XP). Modern Warfare 2 keeps this ranking system - whereby the more people you shoot repeatedly in the face, the more points you earn, thereby providing a better class of weapons, more games, etc. However, first-timers with level 1 experience are now greeted by those on level 68, making much of the online elements pretty impenetrable to all but the most hardcore gamer. It all degenerates into a pretty frustrating barrage of running, jumping, and being shot repeatedly in the head for no tangible purpose beyond mindlessly collecting XP.
As unfashionable as it is to say, playing through the one player Campaign mode at least has a point; it follows a narrative, set-pieces happen, there's a learning curve and a plot. Okay, plot should probably be bracketed by inverted commas, as despite some very stark sections such as the mission where you savagely slaughter innocents in an airport as an undercover CIA agent, it's all pretty incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't completed its predecessor.
This is however, first and foremost, an action game, and the plot is clearly an afterthought anyway, the developers seemingly attempting to underwrite and hint at a narrative rather than explicitly over explaining. Unfortunately this assumes a huge amount of prior knowledge that even those who know the first game rather well may quickly become lost in the jumbled, incoherent story.
Let us not forget however that Modern Warfare 2 remains a truly stunning game. The main single player story hurtles gamers along a breathless, globe trotting roller-coaster ride, lurching furiously between one outlandish explosion to the next from continent to continent. It can overly linear with the developers forcing players along a narrow path with very little chance for deviation or constructive thinking beyond killing the next enemy. Also, as exhilarating as that ride is, it's hurtles towards a startlingly short-lived experience that seems sadly destined for add-on episodes to continue an unfinished story-line.
Still, this is easily one of the greatest games of the year. The co-op missions are a particular highlight where you and a friend can relive some of the games most climatic highlights over and over, whether it's simultaneously, silently sniping a pair of guards in frozen woodland, taking on wave after wave of heavily armed Russians in a sub-base, or jumping over a canyon in a snowmobile, few contemporaries can match the exhilarating rampage on offer in Modern Warfare 2.
In many ways this is a nod back to shooters of old; forget open-ended game worlds, solving puzzles, collecting keys or objects - this is all about the run and gun. The gameplay isn't even that innovative, but, at its heart, it's just pure fun, splattered with a genuinely atrocious degree of carnage and is all the better for it.