No regrets in canceling my MW2 pre-order

Since I did wind up enjoying CoD4 more than I ever expected to, there is a part of me that remains disappointed in how MW2 turned out. The other day there was a live chat sponsored by Best Buy on IRC where people could ask Infinity Ward some questions, and in addition to what we already know, here’s some things we found out:

• No dedicated servers even after that petition.
• Maximum player count per game is 9v9 (due to lack of dedicated servers).
• You cannot adjust your field of view.
• Leaning has been removed because the game isn’t balanced for lean.
• No client-side demo recording (i.e. no frag videos).
• IWNET decides who will host; the players have no say (just like Xbox Live).
• In tests under what were likely rather ideal circumstances the developer guys were seeing pings around 100 ms.
• Text chat, graphics settings, and mouse control are the PC version’s sole features.

The last one is real, you guys!

Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?

Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.

At this point it’s laughable. MW2 is looking like one of the worst console-to-PC ports (if not the worst) in the history of gaming. They’re really phoning it in by now — who’d have thought a PC game would have text-based chat and mouse control?!

MW2 is quite literally a console experience via PC. Why anyone would pay $60 for that is beyond me. The multiplayer portion will probably be fucked, and the single-player is guaranteed to be all of six hours, I’m sure. But let’s move on to the real point of this post…

Infinity Ward has learned nothing.

At least as far as multiplayer balance goes. We should all be pretty aware of how messed up CoD4’s air support is. You do nothing at all and you get rewarded for it. You crouch in a corner while your air strike kills two people and you get a chopper given to you for free. That chopper can, in turn, get your next UAV and air strike. Positive feedback loops, no balance, etc. I’ve been over it time and time again.

But check out this new gameplay video. In it you will see the following ridiculous things:

• A burst-fire gun that looks to be more powerful than the CoD4 M16 (which is the gun all console babies cried about).
• A spamtacular automatic shotgun.
• A guy “earning” an Apache chopper with an air strike.
• That same guy going from 11 to 25 kills in 30 fucking seconds using the Apache’s wall hacks.
• Our buddy using the stupidest perk ever conceived — a tactical nuke that automatically ends the game as a win for your team.
• The game going from start to finish in less than four minutes. Seriously, what a waste.

Ho. Ly. Shit. This is the worst example of gameplay balance I have ever seen in my gaming days. There isn’t any balance at all! He got all of nine legit kills before air strikes, choppers, and the nuke took care of the rest of the match. That Apache chopper is far more deadly than CoD4’s… and people whined about that thing incessantly! And then, once you’re finished raping with it, you just end the match whenever you feel like it with your nuke. Bewm. The end. So long and thanks for all the fish.

It’s just… I… I don’t even know what to say anymore. This game has turned into some kind of macabre joke. Whoever is pushing these design decisions has got to be the biggest Real Life™ troll I’ve ever seen.

In the end, maybe Infinity Ward has learned a lot — they seem to have randomly filled MW2 with anything and everything an unskilled, casual gamer would like. Screw balance — it’s all about pulling in players. They have painted the broadest target possible by pandering to every subset of deluded fan, and as a result the game will likely break all kinds console sales records.

It won’t work on me, though. I’ll stick to Borderlands for now and look forward to Bad Company 2. At least that one will have dedicated servers.