Akom of Cazic Thule
11-11-2009, 01:48 PM
How is there not a thread on this already?
Picked it up yesterday. Had some trouble installing (Vista x64), but was able to resolve that pretty quickly.
I have not yet played the single player, so I can't give my impressions there. So far, I am pretty impressed with the multiplayer, though.
I played a couple multiplayer games while a couple of my friends were finishing their installs and was pleased to find that it ran as well (if not better) than the last game. I hadn't tweaked many settings, letting the system choose the "optimal" for my system (though I did change the resolution to 16x10... I'll probably do 19x12 in the long run but I wanted to hop in the game as quick as possible without having to tweak settings).
Game play is almost exactly the same as Modern Warfare 1, so hopping right in and knowing how to do almost everything was great. I say almost because some of the standard key mappings from the last game I was used to changed. Nothing huge.. like calling in your killstreak bonus is 4 instead of 6 by default now. Switching to grenades on your gun is 3 instead of pressing the weapon button again. Just a couple things that took a little getting used to.
I have to say though, where I was most impressed was with grouping with friends and match-making. Previously in FPS games my friends and I would have to find the same server with enough room for all of us, and then pray we were put on the same team. MW2 has a "grouping" system where a player can invite their friends and they form a group, then the person who did the inviting starts a game and the system fills out the rest of the group (we were doing standard Team Deathmatch which supports up to 12). It keeps people in groups on the same team, which I appreciated.
Note: if you're playing solo and don't want to risk being pitted against stacked teams, there's a game mode called Mercenary Team Deathmatch that doesn't allow groups.
The matchmaking system seems to work really, really well. After I chose team deathmatch as the game type we were matched in a matter of seconds and in game shortly thereafter. I don't know what it uses to decide who to pull in and who to put on what teams, but in the 15 or so matches we played last night I never really felt like the teams were too stacked. Sure, at times we got stomped, but I blame my friends who haven't played any FPS games in the last 6 months or so (heh).
When I'd read pre-release that the PC version would be limited to 9v9 at max, I was a little disconcerted, since when I played MW1 I would always look for the 15v15 games. I always found more people was more fun. I have to say, though... even though we played 6v6 all night, I didn't really notice a difference. The maps for Team Deathmatch are very well balanced around the 6v6 number. Any more would be overly crowded. I haven't played any of the larger maps since we stuck to Team Deathmatch last night. I have no complaints about the limit of people per game (at least as of yet) which is really surprising to me.
On the no dedicated servers thing... the game played really well on most of the matches I played. That said, there was some problems. On two occasions the game "lagged out". The game started we started running around and then everything just kinda went wacky; no control of your character, etc. That lasted about 10 seconds both times, then it gave a disconnect message (I would assume to everyone, since it happened to my friends and me and the same time). Joining up to a new game was easy enough. So, while the system is not perfect, it definitely seems to work well enough.
On the game itself... like I said, it plays almost exactly like the last game and has some really great maps. Opinions may vary, but I feel so far that it is a great sequel. I was not left with the "this should have been a content add on" feeling, and thats just from the multiplayer experience. There are a LOT of added features. I hadn't really done any research on what was added prior to playing, and was pleasantly surprised.
-The killstreak rewards are really cool and compelling. Being able to unlock new killstreak bonuses and customize which ones you get is nifty.
-The weapons seem well balanced (so far; I'm still unlocking stuff).
-The new perks are amazing, and actually makes deciding between perks a much more difficult choice.
-Being able to have a real weapon as your secondary, rather than just a pistol that you're just going to swap out asap is great.
-A little added feature that my friends and I all liked was the "winning kill" kill cam at the end of the match. Everyone gets to watch a slow-mo replay of the final kill.
I'll give you my impressions of the single player once I've played it.
Picked it up yesterday. Had some trouble installing (Vista x64), but was able to resolve that pretty quickly.
I have not yet played the single player, so I can't give my impressions there. So far, I am pretty impressed with the multiplayer, though.
I played a couple multiplayer games while a couple of my friends were finishing their installs and was pleased to find that it ran as well (if not better) than the last game. I hadn't tweaked many settings, letting the system choose the "optimal" for my system (though I did change the resolution to 16x10... I'll probably do 19x12 in the long run but I wanted to hop in the game as quick as possible without having to tweak settings).
Game play is almost exactly the same as Modern Warfare 1, so hopping right in and knowing how to do almost everything was great. I say almost because some of the standard key mappings from the last game I was used to changed. Nothing huge.. like calling in your killstreak bonus is 4 instead of 6 by default now. Switching to grenades on your gun is 3 instead of pressing the weapon button again. Just a couple things that took a little getting used to.
I have to say though, where I was most impressed was with grouping with friends and match-making. Previously in FPS games my friends and I would have to find the same server with enough room for all of us, and then pray we were put on the same team. MW2 has a "grouping" system where a player can invite their friends and they form a group, then the person who did the inviting starts a game and the system fills out the rest of the group (we were doing standard Team Deathmatch which supports up to 12). It keeps people in groups on the same team, which I appreciated.
Note: if you're playing solo and don't want to risk being pitted against stacked teams, there's a game mode called Mercenary Team Deathmatch that doesn't allow groups.
The matchmaking system seems to work really, really well. After I chose team deathmatch as the game type we were matched in a matter of seconds and in game shortly thereafter. I don't know what it uses to decide who to pull in and who to put on what teams, but in the 15 or so matches we played last night I never really felt like the teams were too stacked. Sure, at times we got stomped, but I blame my friends who haven't played any FPS games in the last 6 months or so (heh).
When I'd read pre-release that the PC version would be limited to 9v9 at max, I was a little disconcerted, since when I played MW1 I would always look for the 15v15 games. I always found more people was more fun. I have to say, though... even though we played 6v6 all night, I didn't really notice a difference. The maps for Team Deathmatch are very well balanced around the 6v6 number. Any more would be overly crowded. I haven't played any of the larger maps since we stuck to Team Deathmatch last night. I have no complaints about the limit of people per game (at least as of yet) which is really surprising to me.
On the no dedicated servers thing... the game played really well on most of the matches I played. That said, there was some problems. On two occasions the game "lagged out". The game started we started running around and then everything just kinda went wacky; no control of your character, etc. That lasted about 10 seconds both times, then it gave a disconnect message (I would assume to everyone, since it happened to my friends and me and the same time). Joining up to a new game was easy enough. So, while the system is not perfect, it definitely seems to work well enough.
On the game itself... like I said, it plays almost exactly like the last game and has some really great maps. Opinions may vary, but I feel so far that it is a great sequel. I was not left with the "this should have been a content add on" feeling, and thats just from the multiplayer experience. There are a LOT of added features. I hadn't really done any research on what was added prior to playing, and was pleasantly surprised.
-The killstreak rewards are really cool and compelling. Being able to unlock new killstreak bonuses and customize which ones you get is nifty.
-The weapons seem well balanced (so far; I'm still unlocking stuff).
-The new perks are amazing, and actually makes deciding between perks a much more difficult choice.
-Being able to have a real weapon as your secondary, rather than just a pistol that you're just going to swap out asap is great.
-A little added feature that my friends and I all liked was the "winning kill" kill cam at the end of the match. Everyone gets to watch a slow-mo replay of the final kill.
I'll give you my impressions of the single player once I've played it.