I wanted to let you know that despite the ridiculous 60 dollar price tag to purchase the PC version of Modern Warfare 2, I gave in and purchased the game, and as I am thoroughly ashamed to admit, enjoyed it very much.
That being said, I have a concern about the game that I would first like to portray using a visual aid.
As you can plainly see here by this scientific diagram, there seems to be an issue with the difficulty settings of the game. Allow me to show the same diagram with the same criteria on a different game series: Splinter Cell.
As you can see, as the difficulty of Splinter Cell increases, the happy face increases proportionally until it reaches it's apex at the awesome face.
Now, while I heavily favor the stealth action genre, incidentally due it's sheer majority over my favored series, I've played plenty of first person shooters, most relevantly Call of Duty 2 (finished on Veteran) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (finished on Hardened, Prologue complete on Veteran). I managed to complete Modern Warfare 2 on Veteran, and while the increased damage and sheer pants wetting intensity of the hardest difficulty mode, one thing stood in my way of thoroughly enjoying myself: The game's AI. You see, while it is still slightly fantastic (root word: fantasy), the Call of Duty series is renowned for its attention to detail and overall realism of the storytelling and gameplay elements. Or at least, that's what I'm led to believe. In any case, when a series is noted for such things, one goes into the next installment expecting certain things. One being consistent controls (I want my lean buttons back dammit) and the other being realistic Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, Infinity Ward, the enemy AI is more on par with Cryengine AI, or colloquially known as bullshit AI.
At this point, I would like to make a list of things that ruin the realism aspect of the game in terms of the artificial intelligence on Veteran difficulty.
1) The enemy magically knows where every square inch of my supple arse is at any given moment in time.
2) The enemy magically has the ability to hit said supple arse while running, shooting from the hip, or my favorite, shooting from the hip while being pointed 90 degrees the wrong way.
3) The enemy has telescopic x-ray vision and can hit you from 250 yards, while you are over 70% covered by an obstacle. Not only that, the enemy can also put a bullet through a 6 inch opening and into your spleen at 100 yards...while they are laying down in high grass. In case your playtesters haven't noted this, you can see two things while prone in tall grass on a level field. Jack Squat, and your mum.
4) And finally my favorite, the ever realistic "I shot you, no you didn't" argument of the hit boxes. I cannot tell you how many times I have saturated an area roughly the size of an enemy soldier's character model and they run off without so much as a scratch. This is not S.T.A.L.K.E.R., gentlemen. This is a standard FPS with standard ballistics. In laymen's terms, I point my cursor at it, and I know exactly where my bullets are going. In addition, I would humbly suggest that the development team do a little more research on what happens when bullets enter juicy torsos. Yes, the Russians are wearing flak jackets, but I highly doubt they can afford Dragonskin body armor for all of their troops. Getting shot hurts. Getting shot anywhere on the rib cage area will most likely put you into shock.
Now, while I've ragged on what I didn't like about the difficulty, I am however, not without suggestions for possible solutions.
1)Make the enemy tougher-Now this may seem contradictory, but when I say tougher, I mean physically. Keep the awareness and tactics at the Regular setting, they are good there. But, perhaps give them improved body armor, and make the headshot/killshot boxes smaller.
2)Limit player resources- I don't know if any of the development team has ever tried to carry 600 .223 rounds, but one thing should be kept in mind: Ammo. Is. HEAVY. Like, really heavy. A box of ammo approx 1'x 2'x 8" carrying 7.62 rounds easily weighs 70 pounds. Now, imagine carrying that, plus your gun, which weighs about 8 pounds, give or take, plus your sidearm and it's ammo, and whatever secondary equipment, and your looking at a character loaded down with around 110 pounds of equipment. Not exactly realistic. So, limit the resources. 10 clips of ammo is a lot to carry, but if you're on hard mode, 240 rounds should last a long time.
3)More realistic cover mechanics- Put simply, as a bullet goes through anything, it's gonna veer off course. However, bullets can penetrate a lot of shite. So make more materials more permeable to fire, and make it less likely to hit exactly where it was pointed. This should inspire a more tactic oriented mindset and encourage more player creativity to win.
4)Give me back my goddamn lean buttons. If you're going to make AI that can target a supple arse, move, aim while moving, and shoot it off in a space of .35 seconds, give players the ability to minimize how much of it they expose. This also gives the player to quickly assess the situation without possibly getting their arse shot off in less time than could be called reasonably human.
Send Captains MacTavish and Price my love.
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