Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2
Your brain is friggin fuggled-up from too much Halo nonsense. I got stiff reading that post. This game will rule so much of your face it's side-splitting. What's worse, you'll feel some arbitrary reason to denounce the game out of loyalty to Bungie and dissect every aspect of why, to you, Halo is better. You know what, I've changed my mind, do not get this game. Stick with Halo, leave this one to us.
Alright, then, let's do this.
* Customizable Kill Streaks. Possibly the most anticipated new feature is a pretty darn cool one. You now unlock kill streaks as you rank up, and though you can still only take three into a match with you at one time, you can at least have some control over how many kills you need to rack up to use them. Some of the kill streak rewards require three, four, five, six, seven, nine kills… In addition to old favorites like the UAV, there are things like a care package that's parachuted in and grants you a random upgrade; stationary sentry guns you can put down to beef up defenses, especially in objective-based games; and of course the AC130 gunship, which requires 11 kills to use (and which, consequently, I did not see). Best of all, it seems like kill streaks stack, since I was able to use my five-kill Predator missile, then immediately activate the four-kill care package right afterwards.
This is simply mentally challenged. Let's say I'm playing and having a good time. I'm running around killing people. How am I supposed to know that some dude on the other team is on a kill streak? So, I can come around a corner expecting a fair fight between me with my gun and some dude with his gun, but instead I run into stationary sentry gun that wasn't there two minutes ago when I was in this location? How is that fair?
Since these kill streaks "stack" as indicated above, once some team gets a kill streak, they're going to be sending Predator missiles up the other teams' butt the whole game from then on out.
Games aren't fun when things aren't equal.
* Death Streaks. Death streaks? Yes, you will now be rewarded for dying too many times in a row, in an effort to prevent frustration for those just getting into Modern Warfare 2. The only two in the demo I played were Painkiller, which starts you with a triple health boost after you're killed three times without making any kills of your own, and Copycat, which lets you use the loadout and perks of the last guy who killed you for one life.
This is even dumber than above. So, just by accomplishing nothing but sucking at the game, you get an advantage that other players don't have? Triple health, just for sucking? That'll be loads of fun to run up against randomly. How will you even know that the guy you're fighting has triple health? Maybe if you knew you could at least plan accordingly, even if it isn't fair. But the way this reads, you'll just be randomly running into to juggernauts without knowing why or when.
The fact is, they are tipping their hand with these "improvements." This game is designed for people who suck. It's designed for people who have no interest in winning on merit. It's the gaming equivalent of kids soccer -- everybody runs around and doesn't get embarrassed for sucking because the game is just a hodgepodge of random mayhem.
Could it be fun? Yes, there could be moments of enjoyment. But if you have even a smidgen of competitiveness in you, frustration will ensue.
I can see French people liking this game. But not Americans. We're supposed to favor a meritocracy. It's in our renegade, outlaw genes. Games like this are turning our youth into puddins.
You want to lose you go live in Russia. I want to be John Wayne. I want to grab a root and hold on.