As the single player campaign picks up, we get reintroduced to MacTavish, "Soap" from the previous game, now a member of a special Task Force designated 141. However, this time out players take on the role of a character with the code/nick name of Roach, so you'll be partnered up with Soap for the majority of the game, but won't be playing as him this time out. Along with the Task Force 141, you'll take on control of Private First Class Joseph Allen, and you'll spend quite a bit of time in the shoes of Private James Ramirez, a member of the Rangers. Like the previous Modern Warfare, the mission's hop around from player to player depending on the different story points, so there's no real linear progression through each character's story.

Without spoiling too much of the campaign, Allen's section is really short, and while he does partake in the more "shocking" section of the game, it failed to elicit much of an emotional reaction from me, in part because I had no real connection to the character (as opposed to the surprise nuke scene of the first game). And in reality, that's one of the few issues I have the story this time out. I feel like a lot of time is spent trying to recapture the "oh shit" moments of the first game, so you get a lot of these bombastic big scenes for nearly every missions, but they fail to stick with you after you're done. That doesn't apply to everything, I think a few sections, like Gulag and Oil Rig are pretty awesome, but at the same time I felt like it was just trying a little too hard to wow me. I'd liken it to more of Michael Bay's version of movie war as opposed to someone like Spielberg and his take on the subject in Saving Private Ryan or even Munich. A little more time spent on characterization would have went a long way with me, but at the end of the game I was still having fun with the core experience.

The single player section is pretty short, clocking in at around five hours. You still have the four difficulties to choose from, Easy, Regular, Hardened, and Veteran. There's also a little training section much like the first game that'll suggest a difficulty for you before the game actually starts up. Basically, there's enough things that are familiar and identical to the first game that fans will have no trouble jumping in and doing just as well as they did the first time out. I do think the difficulty seems to be a little scaled back though, jumping into Hardened for my first play through I thought you could see a noticeable difference in how many enemies will swarm you and how often they'll toss out grenades, it's not nearly as annoying to deal with as it was in the first game. There are still those invisible lines to cross to keep enemies from spawning, but this time out it's not nearly as telegraphed as it was in the first game, making the experience feel a little more immersive than the first MW.

Of course, there's going to be a huge number of people that simply skip over the single player game to jump right into multiplayer, and I really can't blame you for that. This time out it's just bigger and better stuff, with more perks, more levels, and the addition of titles and emblems that unlock after completing certain tasks. The title system is remarkably similar to what Street Fighter IV used, with little art based titles for different things, like shooting down a Helicopter in a match will earn you the title of "Fly Swatter", which you can then opt to display with your gamer tag in lobbies and what not. It's a simple addition but it causes me to try different things just to get some of the unlocks for these titles.

Of course, there's the ability to enter the barracks section and check out challenges, many of which return from the first game, and then the ability to create custom classes to allow you to take whatever weapons load-outs you want into battle. There's a big group of modes to check out in multiplayer, with returning favorites like the Hardcore stuff, and new additions like the Third Person mode games. It seems like most are still gravitating towards the Deathmatch / Team Deathmatch modes, which isn't particularly surprising, but you should have no issues finding players in any mode you choose. The game also tracks your kill score, kill totals, accuracy, and so on, which you can then compare against the world leaderboards, or against friends, with a little ticker at the bottom that compares your score and rank to your friends that are currently online.

The maps this time out seem to be really well done, outside of a couple that I feel are a little too sniper heavy for my tastes. However, you're bound to find a few favorites out of the list, and you still have the option to vote out a map prior to game start. The experience and prestige system of the first game return here, and while I have quite a ways to go before I hit that point at level 21, it's far easier to gain experience this time out than it was in the first game. Not only will you gain it for kills, but also you'll gain bonuses for consecutive kills, coming back from a losing streak, and so on. Finally, kill streak bonuses return, along with the addition of death streaks, which give you a starting bonus if you die a few times in a row in an effort to give you a fighting chance.

There's a new mode tossed in this time out, the co-op heavy SpecOps mode, which is basically a series of challenges with star rankings for unlocks and completion. There are various requirements and goals for each challenge, ranging from basic time completion to something that's more akin to Horde mode in Gears of Wars 2, requiring you to take on waves of enemies from a central location. Just finishing a challenge will usually net you one star, but getting top times, kills, or going at it on a harder difficulty will generally get you more, which you'll need to unlock additional challenges. It's certainly a hard mode to attempt to play by yourself, which you can do, but obviously it's balanced more for two players than anything else. I was slightly disappointed that it limits me to inviting friends instead of just doing an open search on Live, but it's no different than the matchmaking in ODST for it's co-op mode.

All together, I think Modern Warfare 2 is a great follow-up to the original, and it manages to capitalize well on what made the first so much fun, both with it's single player campaign mode and the multiplayer side of things. I think SpecOps is more of a take it or leave it thing for me, it wasn't a huge draw when I was playing, but I did enjoy it, however I wouldn't have missed it's absence in the slightest. There are some issues with the story that would require me to get into some spoilers, which I'm not going to do, but lets just say that it takes a bit of a leap in believability at certain points, and if you're the type to get hung up on that in your action games, then it could be a minor issue for you. The multiplayer side of things is still a blast though, I've been playing that every night since my review copy showed up last week, and I plan on continuing to do so for quite a while. So basically, it's well worth picking up, and even if you missed out on the original, there's no reason you couldn't pick this one up and enjoy it just as much as the rest of the fans, making it one of the more accessible "hardcore" FPS experiences out there.

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