Modern Warefare 2

It's finally time to cover one of the most ambitious games this year. It is also the sequel to the #1 Game of 2007, #1 most sold first person shooter ever, and #2 video game of all time in the USA with over 11 million copies sold and growing. That's right, we're talking about Barbie Horse Adventures 2 Modern Warfare 2.

We don't have all the details, but we do have information that is good enough for us. So far, multiplayer has been kept hush hush by Infinity Ward and what has been confirmed for campaign doesn't necessarily mean it will be in multiplayer.

Story
You play as Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson and your captain is Captain John "Soap" MacTavish in Task Force 141. If you remember the first Modern Warfare, you played as Soap, but now he commands you. Ultimately, we do not know enough of the story ourselves, but it definitely continues where Modern Warfare left off. The world is not safe because of a Russian terrorist group lead by Makarov, who is in association with Zakhaev. We'll have to play the game when it releases to understand the story more completely.

Weapons and Equipment
Other than the ice-picks in the E3 demo? Oh, I thought that was sufficient. Alright, fine. Here we go.

•ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle)
•FAMAS (French for Fusil d'Assaut de la Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne which is Assault rifle of the Saint-Étienne's weapon factory in English)
•AUG HBAR (Armee Universal Gewehr—"universal army rifle"; HBAR variant - Heavy-Barreled Automatic Rifle)
•Heartbeat sensor - mini UAV like attachment for weapon
•Riot Shield - You know, for when terrorist riot instead of firing their weapons at you.
•Snow Mobile - a vehicle made for snow
•Returning weapons and attachments - We saw a glipse of a P90 in the demo. The AK-47 and USP are confirmed. The silencer, red-dots, ACOG and grenadier are also easily confirmed.

Other weapons, attachments, and equipment (returning or new) are unknown as of now. This includes within the E3 gameplay demo an AUG HBAR which was simply deemed as "scoped."

The ACR seems to be the newest weapon (shown in the game and in real life) seems to be a very impressive weapon, which is why there is a video below describing it in more detail.

Since this video, Bushmaster entered a licensed agreement with Magpul to take over production, future development, and sales of the weapon. It's now known as the Bushmaster ACR.

Campaign
The game itself is not just more single-player content using the same game engine as COD4. It's promised to have improvement, but what has definitely been improved? Well, there were two things that were complained about in COD4. One of them was the constant spawning of enemies until you reached an unseen barrier. President and CCO of Infinity Ward, Jason West, agrees that it wasn't the greatest way of having enemy NPC's and they are planning on eliminating the problem.

The other fan criticism was the length of the game. Personally, I thought it was fine and Infinity Ward is planning to stick to the length they plan. Their idea is not stretching out single-player into repetitiveness. Even for Modern Warfare, the story determined the length and Infinity Ward told the story they wanted to tell. MW2 will no doubt continue the story, but we can't say it will be shorter or longer. However, IW plans to make it another awesome, memorable experience.

Multiplayer
We only know a mere fraction of this. We can only assume what weapons have been confirmed for campaign will be in multiplayer, but in what manner, we don't know. Other than that, things such as the heart beat sensor or vehicles in multiplayer are not confirmed.

However, co-op is available, but limited. Infinity Ward will introduce the Special Forces option in the game. According to Infinity Ward, giving the entire campaign the ability of co-op would take away from the single-player. They paced the campaign the way they believe it should be for a single gamer. That's why Special Forces was created. Special Forces will have it's own levels specifically designed for co-op, such as the shower level, and possibly special moments from the campaign that would work with two players. We don't know the details on offline or online, however.

Other Elements

Jason West also claims that IW has a technology solution to updating the online experience without full patches. It will allow for tweaking spawn logic and other aspects of the maps, helping make the online gameplay more enjoyable. Another online element would be what West mentioned as "making people famous." It was an element that was in development during Modern Warfare, but wasn't close to completion. They plan on having it in MW2. Basically, when a player does something noteworthy, it's repeated in a way that's easy to remember. Robert Bowling has also been talking about some changed melee elements, so we hope this will be a wonderful improvement.

Editions
Now for the moment of truth. There will be different editions that the gamer could buy. Always, there is the standard single disc edition. Just want to play? There you go. However, for the true fan there are other editions. Take a look at Robert Bowling's video for the unpackaging of the Hardened Edition and the Prestige Edition.

Now, the Hardened Edition seemed standard when it came to a collector's edition, but the Prestige Edition with the night vision goggles is something. I have to admit it. It beats out the helmet you got with the Legendary edition of Halo 3. So far the standard edition is priced at $59.99. The hardened edition will be 79.99, leaving the Prestige Edition with a price tag of $149.99. We did hear a more expensive tag on this, but let's hope it doesn't go up any. The game releases on 11.10.09.