Modern Warfare 2 musings

I am now level 27 in MW2. I’m not very good yet but I have managed to figure out how to go positive in most games. Sadly, this involves a lot of playing the opposite way I played in CoD4. However, I’m generally okay with this as my biggest flaw is my inabilities in aiming with a thumbstick. I almost feel annoyingly gimped since I’m so used to 1:1 aim translation that you get with a mouse and I’m actually good at that. It’s been a moderately humbling experience going from always 2:1 (and sometimes something crazy like 7:1) in CoD4 on PC to being happy simply to go +1 on the PS3. My current kill-death ratio is a mind-blowing 1.03.

As expected there is no balance

MW2 has, at best, a basic semblance of balance. In reality it is every bit as unbalanced as I anticipated. Air support is as ridiculous as you’ve seen in various YouTube videos. But the upside of that is most people you’ll come across aren’t good enough to abuse it frequently.

And even if you do happen to be playing with someone going harrier, chopper gunner, nuke consistently, you can always leave the lobby and find new people to play with. That’s the biggest plus regarding a lack of dedicated servers — there’s theoretically an infinite number of places to play. No waiting in line on a full server and no waiting for someone to join an empty server ever again. In a dedicated environment, if someone is hacking or totally owning on your favorite server, there isn’t anything you can do but wait until he leaves or is kicked.

Less grenade spam overall

Grenade spam has been greatly reduced from CoD4 thanks to the absence of the 3x Frag perk and the much smaller throw trajectory. You don’t see people getting UAVs with only grenades much (if ever) anymore. That said, the game does allow for some abuses.

The One Man Army and Scavenger perks both let people restock their explosives — grenades, claymores, noob tubes, etc. In a douchebag’s hand this can cause serious trouble. However, it’s generally only one guy abusing it versus everyone in CoD4 spamming three grenades as soon as they spawn. It’s probably easier to deal with the MW2 guys, especially given the infinite “servers” available to you.

Pew-pew city

MW2 has more guns and many more ways to set up said guns than CoD4. As expected many of them are unbalanced. The number of guns and whatnot is nice and all but it makes the fact that you still only get five custom class slots all the more annoying. You get new slots as you prestige but who has time to level through the game multiple times?

My favorite gun setup right now is probably the FAMAS with a silencer. The M4A1 and SCAR-H are also quite nice. In a recent match I was going 3-9 with the UMP on Afghan, and after I switched to my FAMAS class I wound up going 13-10. Pretty good for a guy who hasn’t played a console since Halo.

Knife abuse is the worst part of MW2

Running the Marathon, Lightweight, and Commando perks whilst wielding an SMG is the most annoying part about MW2. It allows people to sprint an infinite distance faster than anyone else and do a magical knife warp from ten feet out. Sometimes people use the tactical knife with a handgun to increase the speed of multiple knife slashes. It’s all about cheap kills as this setup will easily overpower even SMGs with Stopping Power.

You’ll find at least one of these idiots in every game — someone who has dedicated his MW2 experience to running around extra quickly and knifing people. It’s pretty obvious they’re terrible at the game and this is the only way they can get passable scores. Sadly, there’s not much you can do about it except try and stay away from them. This can be difficult enough on its own, but if they switch out Commando for Ninja and thus don’t make any noise while they’re running around full speed, good luck.

As I seem to die an equal amount from guns as from these untalented knife bitches, I sincerely hope Infinity Ward aren’t too stupid to see the problems with so many people abusing this setup. It would be less of a problem with a mouse in hand; on a console it’s too much. Since I encounter these guys much more frequently than good players abusing air support, I’m calling this the most broken part of the game right now. In theory the air support system is worse but in practice the knife abusing seems to rule.

Internets buddies

If you have a PS3 you can friend me. My “gamer tag” or whatever it’s called is kylegetsspam. For now at least. Maybe I’ll change it later. But maybe not; I am pretty lazy.