GameGuide » Blog Archive » Open Letter To Infinity Ward
Dear Infinity Ward
We love you. We really do. You gave us two years of joy with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In fact we’d happily still be playing it if you only gave us some more maps.
But that’s not going to happen, because you’ve created a new game, understandably named Modern Warfare 2. It has the ability to be better than Modern Warfare, but it’s not there yet.
Like Microsoft trying to stay ahead of Apple, you’ve released the game too early, without enough testing. We’re not sure why you decided not to go the way of public beta testing, but apparently you figured you were too smart to need Joe public’s help in ironing out the bugs.
In hindsight this may have been a little mistake.
What I loved about Modern Warfare was the ability to jump on (to steal a Microsoft phrase) and play with a group of friends. Party chat was great, because it meant our gaming experience wasn’t ruined by trash talking ten-year-olds.
But with Modern Warfare 2, party chat is disabled in all but a couple of modes. You say it’s to stop people cheating, we say there must have been other options (we can think of a few).
But party chat isn’t the biggest problem when it comes to party dynamics, getting into a game is. It’s bloody frustrating when you spend half the night just trying to get everyone in the same game, when Modern Warfare 2 randomly kicks half your party into an empty lobby, instead of allowing them into the game you’re about to start. Though some nights this never happens, it’s a big enough problem to piss people off.
And then there are the glitches. I’ve discovered – quite by accident (I’m not one of those people that go round trying to find game winning glitches) a couple of glitches, one that helped me out, and two that had the potential to totally ruin my game.
In Favela I discovered that whilst standing under power lines, a Harrier could hover above me, all guns blazing, but was unable to hit me. This was quite surprising, as Harriers and such usually have the superhuman ability to hit me whilst I’m hiding in the corner of a building on the other side of the map. Just not through power lines.
I’ve also discovered two glitches that will trap you, leaving you unable to move, one on Skidrow and one on Afghan – needless to say, these were both annoying to find, leaving me helpless until killed by the enemy.
These are in addition to all the glitches that you’ve so far fixed, including the still bloody annoying akimbo 1887 shotguns. Do you really think that soldiers in modern combat are really going to run around dual wielding guns?
I’m hoping that 2010 will be the year that Modern Warfare 2 finally gets fixed – at least the online side, it’s probably too late to fix the blandness and oh too short single player campaign – but with twelve months in a year, I’m worried that Modern Warfare 2 won’t really become the game it has the ability to be, before you’ve made some more money through a new map pack and some more DLC missions.
But that gives me an idea, as a way of saying sorry for releasing a half baked game, and then taking your time to iron out all the issues, why not give the Modern Warfare community something back. Why not make the first map pack free?
Four free new maps, along with another update that irons out a few more glitches would go along way to making 2010 the year we fall back in love with Infinity Ward.
Cheers
GameGuide
