Veteran

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: Surprisingly good voice acting in general for the main characters…
2. 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.
3. Intro: Crew Expendable. Immediately establishes what kind of game this is
4. 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…
5. Intro: …easily earning two positives for what is essentially a barely-interactive cutscene
6. 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
7. MSQ: Proper escalation and foreshadowing in Blackout, with Kamarov and Nikolai
8. 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…
9. MSQ: …easily earning…
10. MSQ: …three positives
11. 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…
12. Moment: …earning…
13. Moment: …three positives
14. MSQ: Shock and Awe
15. Cutscene: Shock and Awe
16. Banter: Love the banter between the squad mates
17. Outro: The Outro does a great job of raising the stakes without getting ridiculous, and feels incredibly tense…
18. Outro: …but the finale where we’ve already won, and need to just survive, and finally being rescued by Kamarov, is a great moment
19. Brickwork: Really great brickwork in this one…
20. Brickwork: …just… everywhere really
21. Theme: Modern war… sucks

Story Negatives:

1. Writing: A weirdly large amount of ‘just go with it’ slides under the spectacle throughout

Gameplay Positives:

1. Intro: Crew Expendable. Good pacing, good structure, good tutorial
2. 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
3. HUD: Minimalist (and reactionary) without being obtuse, very helpful on the fly
4. MSQ: Blackout, and the gradual encirclement and finally push through the village
5. MSQ: Charlie Don’t Surf, and the charge into enemy held territory
6. MSQ: Hunted. Night-time sequence that bounces between stealth and loud
7. MSQ: Death From Above… a good turret mission, go figure
8. MSQ: Shock and Awe… tense, short, and well paced between holdouts, turret sections, and pushing through heavily held territory
9. MSQ: All Ghillied Up
10. MSQ: One Shot One Kill
11. Viscerality: Guns look, sound, and feel fantastic…
12. Viscerality: …earning two positives
13. Kit: Not the best, but still a decent spread between turrets and guns
14. Pacing: Prologue
15. Pacing: US invasion of Madeupistan
16. Pacing: SAS evacuation of Nikolai
17. Pacing: All Ghillied Up
18. MSQ: Sins of the Father
19. Level Design: American missions (loud, hardware, reinforcements)
20. Level Design: SAS missions (quiet, behind lines, outnumbered)
21. Level Design: Final missions (somehow combining the previous two)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Raspberry Jam: Yep.
2. Sound Design: Very bad audio balancing on the cutscenes
3. Difficulty: Boring difficulty
4. Encounter Rate: Monster closets
5. Visual Distinction: While deliberate, it’s very hard to tell enemies, friendlies, and civvies at a glance
6. Bug: Consistent crash on The Bog
7. Outro: The Outro… is honestly kind of the worst aspects of the game combined. Terrible visibility, inconsistent checkpoints, lots of enemies, etc.
8. Graphics: Entirely too much visual noise and irritation and jarring camerawork

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: The initial, expansive base under Shepard
2. Brickwork: S.S.D.D. has an astonishing level of detail going on, establishing tone and scene
3. Plot: The core plot of the game is surprisingly tightly knit
4. Foreshadowing: This allows the game to have plenty of foreshadowing
5. Internal Continuity: And the internal continuity similarly remains tight throughout
6. External Continuity: The game also is made much better by how it follows through, both literally and thematically, from Modern Warfare 1
7. MSQ: No Russian speaks for itself. It’s everything it needs to be, and for that…
8. MSQ: …it gets two positives
9. NPC Set Dressing: Excellent usage of NPCs in the cityscape areas to flesh out the story
10. Brickwork: Brazil is just… gorgeous
11. Doodads: Brazil also has insanely good doodad design
12. Doodads: No Russian (the airport) similarly nails the Doodad design
13. Storytelling Mechanics: Pre mission satellite briefings are awesome as always
14. Moment: The voice acting, presentation, and immediate professionalism of the ACS glitch… followed by the invasion
15. Visual Storytelling: Wolverines mission tells a lot just by looking around as the russian troops airdrop into suburbia
16. Voice Acting: The main characters are excellent of course…
17. Voice Acting: …but the supporting cast nails it across the board
18. Pacing: Each Act is very, very well paced. Proper lows, highs, tensions, breathers, and stressors…
19. Pacing: …earning each act…
20. Pacing: …a pacing positive
21. 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
22. MSQ: The intro to Of Their Own Accord, by itself, deserves its own positive. The walk through the bunker, the background chatter…
23. Visual Storytelling: …and the walk out into Washington DC, and the trench warfare
24. Babylon 5 Effect: The story really looks different the second time around
25. Brickwork: Contingency continues the brickwork excellence
26. Moment: The astronaut watching the nuke go off is very, very well executed
27. Sound Design: General. Awesome sound design
28. 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
29. MSQ: Second Sun of course is amazing, what can I say
30. Moment: The finale of Whiskey Hotel. The chilling normalcy with which the rangers speak of revenge upon Moscow
31. Moment: Do not trust Shepard. I repeat; Do not trust Shepard
32. Characters: Good main cast
33. Characters: Good supporting cast
34. 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
35. Banter: As usual, great banter throughout
36. Brickwork: Suburbia has the usual excellent brickwork
37. Brickwork: Whiskey Hotel, ditto
38. Consequence Storytelling: A lot of actions are followed through very smoothly and naturally
39. Outro: The entire outro is fantastic, up to and including…
40. Outro: …the final knife fight, and the dead men in the desert
41. Themes: Revenge, what is it good for, absolutely nothin’

Story Negatives:

1. Writing: Hollywood nonsense…
2. Writing: …more hollywood nonsense

Gameplay Positives:

1. Kit: Good gun variety
2. Controls: Plays very smoothly compared to its predecessor
3. 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
4. Options: The ability to bypass No Russian (twice)
5. Enemy AI: Very good AI in general
6. Friendly AI: For both friends and foes
7. 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…
8. MSQ: …earning it two positives
9. MSQ: Takedown. Despite the frustrations, it’s still a great showcasing of the new AI and dynamic nature of the firefights
10. MSQ: Hornet’s Nest. Ditto from before, but without the irritation this time, plus some excellent variety and pacing…
11. MSQ: …earning two positives
12. Viscerality: All the same viscerality of the last game, but now with even more…
13. Viscerality: …earning two positives
14. Pacing: The gameplay in general is very well paced across the board
15. Pacing: Act I continues pacing both within and across missions
16. Pacing: Early invasion missions are just… awesome
17. MSQ: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday is a very fun joint infiltration and assault mission, varying up both
18. MSQ: Of Their Own Accord is honestly one of the better mid game missions…
19. Pacing: …getting its own pacing positive
20. Pacing: End game…
21. Pacing: …times two
22. MSQ: Whiskey Hotel. Hammer down is in effect
23. MSQ: Second Sun. Just… Second Sun. Somehow these missions continue to one up each other…
24. MSQ: …making it the best mission to date
25. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Very well placed, and reasonably spread
26. 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…
27. MSQ: …earning two positives
28. MSQ: Endgame. The final assault, chase, the whole thing is just great
29. Music: Excellent music
30. Yoshi Drums: And excellent Yoshi Drums
31. Replayability: While this exact version (the remaster) lacks the Spec Ops missions, the main campaign continues to be very replayable
32. HUD: Same good minimalist HUD design from the last game
33. Sound Design: Fantastic sound design, between barks and directions giving you a lot to decide what to do very quickly

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Railroading: The ease with which the action setpieces can go badly, completely screwing the entire section, is just irritating
2. MSQ: Takedown (geometry and dead ends)
3. Raspberry Jam: Not as bad as the original believe it or not, but still there
4. Visual Distinction: Same ‘hard to see’ deliberate issue from the first game