Still has issues, still a bit irritating, and still just generally awesome. Hell, I actually cried, and I’ve replayed this a dozen times. Big recommend.
Type Of Review: Veteran Run
Total Story Score: +20
Total Gameplay Score: +13
Golden Number: 102.27
Cheats: No
Total Play Time: 1 days / 6.95 Hours
Time Reviewed: 03-03-2022
Story Positives:
- Voice Acting: Surprisingly good voice acting in general for the main characters…
- Voice Acting: …but also for the NPCs. The US soldiers sound like kids, the SAS sound like seasoned vets, there’s variance in tone and direction depending on outfit, etc.
- Intro: Crew Expendable. Immediately establishes what kind of game this is
- Intro: The car ride. I can’t even begin to summarize the level of detail in this level, and the visual storytelling going on everywhere…
- Intro: …easily earning two positives for what is essentially a barely-interactive cutscene
- Storytelling Mechanics: Briefings. Lots of info is given very quickly and often powerfully in the briefings, and the satellite radar approach helps to sell both the detachment and the modern feel
- MSQ: Proper escalation and foreshadowing in Blackout, with Kamarov and Nikolai
- MSQ: Death From Above. This is probably the second best mission in the game narratively. The detachment, the deliberate lack of music, the total dehumanization of the targets, the dull tones of the crew, the cold professionalism, all seen through the eyes of the person on the radar telling someone else to push a button that kills people…
- MSQ: …easily earning…
- MSQ: …three positives
- Moment: You know the one. Don’t front. This moment… it’s perfectly built up and paid off, it’s literally the fulcrum of the series, and… it hit a lot harder than I thought it would…
- Moment: …earning…
- Moment: …three positives
- MSQ: Shock and Awe
- Cutscene: Shock and Awe
- Banter: Love the banter between the squad mates
- Outro: The Outro does a great job of raising the stakes without getting ridiculous, and feels incredibly tense…
- Outro: …but the finale where we’ve already won, and need to just survive, and finally being rescued by Kamarov, is a great moment
- Brickwork: Really great brickwork in this one…
- Brickwork: …just… everywhere really
- Theme: Modern war… sucks
Story Negatives:
- Writing: A weirdly large amount of ‘just go with it’ slides under the spectacle throughout
Gameplay Positives:
- Intro: Crew Expendable. Good pacing, good structure, good tutorial
- Tutorialization: The obstacle course. Gets across an idea of what to do and how to play, but also encourages the player via score and distinct scoreboard to repeat it just for fun
- HUD: Minimalist (and reactionary) without being obtuse, very helpful on the fly
- MSQ: Blackout, and the gradual encirclement and finally push through the village
- MSQ: Charlie Don’t Surf, and the charge into enemy held territory
- MSQ: Hunted. Night-time sequence that bounces between stealth and loud
- MSQ: Death From Above… a good turret mission, go figure
- MSQ: Shock and Awe… tense, short, and well paced between holdouts, turret sections, and pushing through heavily held territory
- MSQ: All Ghillied Up
- MSQ: One Shot One Kill
- Viscerality: Guns look, sound, and feel fantastic…
- Viscerality: …earning two positives
- Kit: Not the best, but still a decent spread between turrets and guns
- Pacing: Prologue
- Pacing: US invasion of Madeupistan
- Pacing: SAS evacuation of Nikolai
- Pacing: All Ghillied Up
- MSQ: Sins of the Father
- Level Design: American missions (loud, hardware, reinforcements)
- Level Design: SAS missions (quiet, behind lines, outnumbered)
- Level Design: Final missions (somehow combining the previous two)
Gameplay Negatives:
- Raspberry Jam: Yep.
- Sound Design: Very bad audio balancing on the cutscenes
- Difficulty: Boring difficulty
- Encounter Rate: Monster closets
- Visual Distinction: While deliberate, it’s very hard to tell enemies, friendlies, and civvies at a glance
- Bug: Consistent crash on The Bog
- Outro: The Outro… is honestly kind of the worst aspects of the game combined. Terrible visibility, inconsistent checkpoints, lots of enemies, etc.
- Graphics: Entirely too much visual noise and irritation and jarring camerawork
Still one of the best games I’ve ever played (#5 on the list as of reviewing), and one of the best shooters I’ve ever played. Massively recommended.
Type Of Review: Veteran Run
Total Story Score: +39
Total Gameplay Score: +29
Golden Number: 247.36
Cheats: No
Total Play Time: 1 days / 6.57 Hours
Time Reviewed: 03-06-2022
Story Positives:
- Visual Storytelling: The initial, expansive base under Shepard
- Brickwork: S.S.D.D. has an astonishing level of detail going on, establishing tone and scene
- Plot: The core plot of the game is surprisingly tightly knit
- Foreshadowing: This allows the game to have plenty of foreshadowing
- Internal Continuity: And the internal continuity similarly remains tight throughout
- External Continuity: The game also is made much better by how it follows through, both literally and thematically, from Modern Warfare 1
- MSQ: No Russian speaks for itself. It’s everything it needs to be, and for that…
- MSQ: …it gets two positives
- NPC Set Dressing: Excellent usage of NPCs in the cityscape areas to flesh out the story
- Brickwork: Brazil is just… gorgeous
- Doodads: Brazil also has insanely good doodad design
- Doodads: No Russian (the airport) similarly nails the Doodad design
- Storytelling Mechanics: Pre mission satellite briefings are awesome as always
- Moment: The voice acting, presentation, and immediate professionalism of the ACS glitch… followed by the invasion
- Visual Storytelling: Wolverines mission tells a lot just by looking around as the russian troops airdrop into suburbia
- Voice Acting: The main characters are excellent of course…
- Voice Acting: …but the supporting cast nails it across the board
- Pacing: Each Act is very, very well paced. Proper lows, highs, tensions, breathers, and stressors…
- Pacing: …earning each act…
- Pacing: …a pacing positive
- Cutscene: Of Their Own Accord’s intro is one of the more chilling moments in gaming for me. It’s just the emergency broadcast… no fancy, flashy logo or graphics, no epic music, no voice over. It’s chilling
- MSQ: The intro to Of Their Own Accord, by itself, deserves its own positive. The walk through the bunker, the background chatter…
- Visual Storytelling: …and the walk out into Washington DC, and the trench warfare
- Babylon 5 Effect: The story really looks different the second time around
- Brickwork: Contingency continues the brickwork excellence
- Moment: The astronaut watching the nuke go off is very, very well executed
- Sound Design: General. Awesome sound design
- Sound Design: Second Sun gets its own sound positive for the proper use of no music, as well as the muted eeriness of it all
- MSQ: Second Sun of course is amazing, what can I say
- Moment: The finale of Whiskey Hotel. The chilling normalcy with which the rangers speak of revenge upon Moscow
- Moment: Do not trust Shepard. I repeat; Do not trust Shepard
- Characters: Good main cast
- Characters: Good supporting cast
- Moment: Just Like Old Times intro and speech by Price. It’s exactly as powerful and to the point as it needs to be. No grand gesture, no great victory, no ‘beat the bad guy and win’… we’re here for just one thing
- Banter: As usual, great banter throughout
- Brickwork: Suburbia has the usual excellent brickwork
- Brickwork: Whiskey Hotel, ditto
- Consequence Storytelling: A lot of actions are followed through very smoothly and naturally
- Outro: The entire outro is fantastic, up to and including…
- Outro: …the final knife fight, and the dead men in the desert
- Themes: Revenge, what is it good for, absolutely nothin’
Story Negatives:
- Writing: Hollywood nonsense…
- Writing: …more hollywood nonsense
Gameplay Positives:
- Kit: Good gun variety
- Controls: Plays very smoothly compared to its predecessor
- MSQ: No Russian… the optional nature of the earlier mission is nice, but what’s really good is the charge through the airport against entrenched defenders
- Options: The ability to bypass No Russian (twice)
- Enemy AI: Very good AI in general
- Friendly AI: For both friends and foes
- MSQ: Wolverines… you start off fighting through suburbia, have to hit the gas station, then the burger town, and the whole time there’s no feel of arduousness or backtracking. Enemy placement and design varies, as do the tools you have at your disposal…
- MSQ: …earning it two positives
- MSQ: Takedown. Despite the frustrations, it’s still a great showcasing of the new AI and dynamic nature of the firefights
- MSQ: Hornet’s Nest. Ditto from before, but without the irritation this time, plus some excellent variety and pacing…
- MSQ: …earning two positives
- Viscerality: All the same viscerality of the last game, but now with even more…
- Viscerality: …earning two positives
- Pacing: The gameplay in general is very well paced across the board
- Pacing: Act I continues pacing both within and across missions
- Pacing: Early invasion missions are just… awesome
- MSQ: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday is a very fun joint infiltration and assault mission, varying up both
- MSQ: Of Their Own Accord is honestly one of the better mid game missions…
- Pacing: …getting its own pacing positive
- Pacing: End game…
- Pacing: …times two
- MSQ: Whiskey Hotel. Hammer down is in effect
- MSQ: Second Sun. Just… Second Sun. Somehow these missions continue to one up each other…
- MSQ: …making it the best mission to date
- Mid Mission Checkpoints: Very well placed, and reasonably spread
- MSQ: Loose Ends continues the trend of excellent missions. It’s brutal, in all the right ways, gives you a ton of kit, and tons of options for how to deal with the assault…
- MSQ: …earning two positives
- MSQ: Endgame. The final assault, chase, the whole thing is just great
- Music: Excellent music
- Yoshi Drums: And excellent Yoshi Drums
- Replayability: While this exact version (the remaster) lacks the Spec Ops missions, the main campaign continues to be very replayable
- HUD: Same good minimalist HUD design from the last game
- Sound Design: Fantastic sound design, between barks and directions giving you a lot to decide what to do very quickly
Gameplay Negatives:
- Railroading: The ease with which the action setpieces can go badly, completely screwing the entire section, is just irritating
- MSQ: Takedown (geometry and dead ends)
- Raspberry Jam: Not as bad as the original believe it or not, but still there
- Visual Distinction: Same ‘hard to see’ deliberate issue from the first game