Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Format Xbox 360

Developer Infinity Ward

Publisher Activision

Genre First Person Shooter

14 Comments

Of all the places you could stop for a fag break, this has to be the least relaxing - teetering on an icy ledge, several thousand feet up the side of a snow-covered mountain in the middle of enemy territory. Needless to say, 'Soap' McTavish, the star of CoD4 and now your companion in Modern Warfare 2, is harder than Tyrannosaurus teeth.

You'll discover that MW2 is all about stunning environments, and this vertigo-inducing backdrop that begins our demonstration is a perfect introduction to the sheer scale and beauty of what Infinity Ward is aiming for. Once McTavish has finished off his cigarette, it's back to scaling the sheer cliffs with ice-axes. It's a steady ascent, with Soap charging ahead of your character, Roach, like the seasoned pro he is.

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At one point, the pair have to make a leap over a huge chasm. Soap makes the jump first, but when it's your turn to vault the gap you come up short. There's a heart-stopping moment as you start to fall and start scrabbling to dig in with the axes, but you manage to get close to the top and McTavish offers a helping hand to haul you up.

Once you've reached a plateau on top of the mountain, where the terrorists have sequestered their base, Soap orders you to pop out an Aliens-inspired motion tracker, the heartbeat sensor, that's mounted on your gun to allow you to pre-empt enemies in what are rapidly approaching blizzard conditions.

Inching toward the enemy encampment, you come across two guards on patrol. You're using suppressed weaponry so as not to raise the alarm, but if you don't kill them both at the same time, there's a danger the surviving guard will make a noise. To solve this problem, McTavish counts down from three for a synchronised takedown - a pleasing change of pace from the usual running and gunning.

Once you reach the entrance to the base, Soap scrambles up a small incline and settles there with a high-powered sniper rifle - he's going to cover you while you infiltrate the base.
What follows is a brilliant stealth section through the heart of a swirling blizzard, where patrolling guards crumple as McTavish takes their lids off in a puff of red mist.

Best of all, you control how it plays out - lunge forward and knife one of the guards just as McTavish says "He's mine..." and he'll grumble "...then again maybe not." The game is designed to be adaptive, so while there will be scripted moments that add to the Hollywood atmosphere, the game will shrug off your pesky interruptions with style.

Slinking around the base, your objective is to place a satchel charge on the aircraft fuelling station and then reconvene with McTavish at the entrance to the main building complex. As you burst through the door, Soap sprints ahead and tackles a guard patrolling the corridor, plunging a knife into him. It's moments like these, with their fluid motion-captured animation, that keep the game running rock-solid smooth at all times.

The difference being that, unlike many developers, IW can pull off such flawless action at no discernible cost to the detail of the environment and characters.

After downloading the intel from a nearby console, it's time to make a stealthy escape from the installation, but as you attempt to sneak out of the hangar it's clear that someone has noticed your intrusion into the facility. The huge doors at the end are open and you're confronted with a line of extremely angry insurgents.

Stealth goes out the window as you initiate 'Plan B' which is blowing the satchel charge on the fuel tanks. The entire place is plunged into chaos and the pace changes again - this time it's an all-out firefight as you rush to escape the area with all your vitals intact. You'll still need to take cover, of course, but keeping quiet is no longer necessary.

But with the state of alarm comes a new threat - snowmobiles. These fast-moving vehicles encircle you and rain in machine-gun fire, forcing a hasty, slippery retreat down a steep slope. As the skidoos give chase, you're given a brief moment to pop some of the drivers. McTavish has a more elegant solution, which offers you a means of hasty escape to your extraction point.

Hiding behind a small building, he pops around the corner and clotheslines one of the skidoo riders with an ice-axe to the chest.

Hopping on the snowmobile, you're treated to a frantic chase down the slopes, with enemy skidoos giving chase. You'll be forced to weave through trees, skitter across a frozen lake and avoid strafing fire from a low-flying helicopter, all the while unloading your own bullet-flavoured justice from a pistol. After a minute or so in a high-speed slalom between pine trees and enemies, you'll careen toward the extraction area and the welcome sight of a helicopter ready for takeoff.

It's clear even from this short demonstration that Infinity Ward is taking a rather different approach with Modern Warfare 2 - this is much more like the opening of a James Bond film (Tomorrow Never Dies, specifically) than Generation Kill or Jarhead.

Clearly the decision to drop Call of Duty from the name is a reflection of this more cinematic approach to combat. In spite of this, the game is very much a 'true' sequel from the first Modern Warfare game, continuing the story directly after the death of Zachaev in CoD4.

In the absence of a leader for the Ultranationalists, Zachaev's right-hand man Makerov rises to power, and it turns out he's even more bonkers than his boss was.

The aim of this demo was not just to show off the evolution of Infinity Ward's tech but also the sheer variety of objectives and play styles that are crammed into just a single 15-minute mission.

"It's definitely a balance," CEO of Infinity Ward Vince Zampella told us. "We don't want it to just be all action - there have to be peaks and valleys that emphasise the high points. Maybe there are tense situations like the stealth section with the heartbeat sensor - you're walking around and you see the dots lighting up around you. There's still some tension there."

It's easy just to dismiss this as a matter of pacing, but it's clear even at this early stage that Infinity Ward's approach is much more sophisticated than most developers manage. It's not just a case of tension-building lulls followed by utter carnage, but bite-sized chunks of different activities, each of which will provoke a different, nuanced thrill for the player.

One major change is that the battle has moved from traditional militarised warzones to areas where civilians will be put in the line of fire. This was hinted at in the teaser trailer, which featured imagery from a Russian airport and the sounds of the public going about their business. We were treated to a short sequence from a mission in the slums of Rio de Janeiro where, after tailing a van through the streets, the player vehicle is hammered by bullets.

What follows is a frantic chase through populated streets and into the favelas, hot on the tail of a fleeing arms dealer. "You'll fight against non-militarised combatants," Zampella explained. "It'll be guys in pretty much normal clothing but with weapons and flak vests, mixed in alongside civilians. So you'll have to work your way through, picking targets."

Modern Warfare 2 clearly makes a lot of changes to the core Call of Duty mechanic - turning the action set pieces and scripted sequences into Hollywood-scale moments and ramping up the variety within a single mission - so it's no wonder that Activision and Infinity Ward decided to ditch the old name for this sequel.

Zampella is keen to point out, though, that while it may not be an attempt at absolute realism, the game will remain convincing.

"It's all very story-driven. We consider this an entertainment experience; it's like an action movie that you play, so everything's built around that." He goes on: "We've never gone for realistic, more for authentic. So if you see a soldier, his gear's going to be authentic, he's going to look legit, his tactics are going to be real, but obviously we go over the top on some things where it has to be fun. We're not building a sim, we're building a game." And it looks like it's going to be a hell of a game.

Mike Channell