Death Knell

Modern Warfare 2 has run it's course, Infinity Ward has had ample time to address their games shortcomings. A broken leaderboard, exploits and glitches, imbalanced weapons and perks. Killstreaks that break teamwork and encourage camping and soloist behavior. At the heart of every problem are the developers themselves. When you disect a game, and examine it's problems, you often find out just what kind of people the developers are, and how they like to play. In fact as a player, a small part of quickly mastering a game isn't so much the other players on your server, but sizing up what kind of people the developers are. They leave you clues in the game they created, little reveals here and there.

To me, those people most responsible for the finished product are in my opinion, timid gamers. The kind who don't wear headsets, the kind who hide off to the side, and have low survivability. If you take all the perks, map layouts, and killstreaks, you see exactly what they are. People who miss often, so they need their bullets to do more damage, players who can't find cover as they move so they camp, people who think high kill to death ratio equals indication of skill. Indeed, most of the team oriented modes are mere distractions, put in the game so people can solo and farm the team-minded. No penalty for those who wander off and act as an individual.

But Modern Warfare's time is drawing to a close. Today is January 25th, 2010. Tomorrow, mw2 will die, so that Massive Action Game may live on. It's death may take time to register, but make no mistake, it will be dead. Real players of FPS will finally have a true title to play.

I would call on all videographers who will be playing MAG fulltime, to make tutorials explaining the 256 player modes, as I will be. YouTube and other video resources on the internet are the first place people look before purchasing a title if they have even the slightest doubts. If people have the minor details explained thoroughly to them via video, they will get past the new user interface and begin to appreciate the gameplay mechanics. MAG will enjoy a surge of players on the first day, BUT the bulk of our community will come later. There will be those who rent and decide to buy, those who view YouTube and decide to buy, those who play at a friends and decide to buy. It will come in stages. Then there will be those who finally lay mw2 to rest and join us.

If Zipper Interactive is truly visionary, they'll have quarterly or bi-monthly tourneys. A title this big can't be hosted on even 1 dedicated ps3 server. So gamebattles is a negative for competition, but if Zipper hosts tourneys, then that won't matter.

Tomorrow I'll be posting a Bluray review, and a brief MAG review. Match replay uploads will begin on Wednesday, Jan 27th. I'll see you all online in MAG tomorrow.