Modern Warfare 2 Hands On

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Traditional indicators like pre-order figures or column inches aren't what tell you how big Modern Warfare 2's going to be this Christmas. It's the way other titles have quietly disappeared from its release window, giving Soap MacTavish and his bristly-chinned friends a clear run for their deadly assault on Santa's base camp. It's almost as if Infinity Ward has been staging a brutal deathmatch with its competition over the past few months, blasting triple-A titles deep into Q1 with frightening efficiency, until only a handful of other giants - like Bungie's Orbital Drop Shock Troopers - remain on the battlefield.

While the single-player campaign promises to be a typically zippy thrill ride in which bombs will fall, tracer fire will bisect the sky and grim-faced commando types will make last-minute escapes on Skidoos, it's the multiplayer that should truly frighten the competition. COD's main campaign is always brilliantly-staged cinema but, inevitably, there are only so many times you'll want to sit through it. Multiplayer is more like a sport - and you can play sports forever.

With Special Ops handling co-op duties via a series of high-action mini-missions, standard multiplayer has the unenviable task of building upon something that's already staggeringly comprehensive. COD4's online arenas remain intense and often hilarious as they hurtle players through a gauntlet of stylish warzones. Their tumbledown walls and smouldering tanks present vivid snapshots of chaotic battlegrounds, while the devilishly manipulative levelling system is always on hand to provide you with that illusory sense of actually having achieved something.

Luckily it seems that judicious iterations are one of the things that Infinity Ward excels at. A recent chance to mess about with a handful of Modern Warfare 2's new multiplayer maps suggests a game that balances continuity with strategic expansion, and a developer that is absolutely certain it knows what it's doing.

It's hard to judge in a LAN session, but Infinity Ward is promising a migration system to stop you getting dropped if the host leaves.

Customisation appears to be the main thrust, and the theme is expressed in a number of ways. A new system for Killstreaks leads the charge, with the game allowing players the ability to unlock new varieties as well as pick and choose which ones to take into battle. There's still a fairly rigid structure in place - if a particular reward requires nine kills to access it you can't suddenly reassign it to a five kill slot, unbalancing the game in the process - but this time there are multiple Killstreak types available to you at every juncture.

And, as you'll be choosing a load-out of just three, it will be important to decide between a cluster of relatively tame low-body count 'Streaks, or a collection of much deadlier weapons which will need prolonged bursts of seamless murder to unlock. Whichever you go for there are a few potential classics amongst the new options, ranging from Care Package, an aerial drop marker which allows you to call in ammo or random goodies from a passing chopper (possibly bringing the crate down violently on top of an unsuspecting enemy while you're at it), to a player-controlled predator missile attack. This leaves you vulnerable as you call it in via a laptop, but can be unusually deadly whenever opposition team members cluster together during objective-based games.

In turn, Killstreak choices feed into the expanded Create a Class options, which, besides including new weapons and attachments for primary and secondary slots (early favourites are the weighty, potentially unwieldy, .44 Magnum, presumably shipped in from World at War, and the ATA4, a portable rocket launcher which needs no more introduction) now has space for one item of miscellaneous equipment, and a selectable “Deathstreak”.

Taking a leaf from Street Fighter 4, callsigns pop up on screen whenever you do something clever.

The latter is a simple piece of yin-yang game balancing, giving players who die a lot a gentle advantage in the form of perks. These range from respawns with a slightly longer health bar to the ability to steal the class loadout of whoever just plugged you.

The equipment slot, however, is more of a game changer. Straightforward items like throwing knives or a Semtex grenade may provide nothing more than a touch of unruly colour to familiar offensive options but a tricksier offering, such as the 'Tactical Insertion' flares that can be placed around the map and turned into spawn points, is going to take some getting used to. It has the disconcerting power to bend rules which have so far been inflexible, in this case potentially putting enemies straight back into your territory seconds after you've just killed them.

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