truegaming

The Border Crossing and the Chaos of Map Splatter

I would need to say this first: Border Crossing is the type of map that will make you laugh, curse, and change how you think about Call of Duty and where you stand on it. Imagine having exploding vehicles, skinny corridors, and having no- and I mean no- place to hide. It’s as though being trapped in a Michael Bay flick, but you are the extra in the backdrop and not the star. It’s pandemonium out there, and if you’re the sort of person who loves surprises, Border Crossing will be your version of Disneyland.

But not everyone loves chaos, and that’s where MW2’s map design appeals to people better than, let's say Doom: The Dark Ages, to name a game about which I wrote just a few months back. The Mexican market is Iconic as well as full of life, with its ambush enabling stalls and narrow corners. Then there is the Shoothouse style training box, in which decision-making and raw strength dominate in a small-scale combat. These smaller maps feel like pressure cookers and aid in boiling over to pure adrenaline-fueled action.

The Competitive Side of Gaming: Getting Nostalgic

Maps such as Hotel, and F1 influenced Raceway are served at MW2, and at the far end of the range. A clean, almost surgical map for the more methodically competitive players out there, Hotel is designed for surgical gameplay. Each corner, and the sightlines for that matter, is meticulously planned. Meanwhile, Raceway appeals to the deep, fast-paced charm of nostalgia with maps such as Express and the classic CoD. The F1 engine roars in the background and somehow adds to the tension, making every firefight feel like a race against time.

But here’s the catch: not everyone will like every map. Fans of the more conventional games, such as Modern Warfare 3 or Black Ops 2, would be frustrated by CoD’s slow shift to more tactical games, and the lack of slide canceling, one of the divisive mechanics of recent games, can be infuriating. For myself, I found myself missing that fluidity when catching an enemy during the heat of battle.

MW2 in Terms of Balance: A Spectrum of Chaos

Tactical gameplay – these words alone bring forth strong sentiments, whether good or bad. Modern Warfare 2’s moves towards tactical gameplay are a biased decision, according to the user. Each bomb squad's technique is more deliberate, more aggressive, and more powerful – worried Eisenhower. This is a welcome change from all the earlier series of Call of Duty when tactics involved shelling and hosing – or bewailing ‘Spray-and-Pray’. Still unsure about how to feel about this.

As the user recalls, there exists a specific instance that justified the shift towards the tactical direction of things. While playing, the user remembers being on the Mexican market map and being approximately ‘hugged’ by a butterfruit stand, or pinned down. Tension ran high as bullets were blasting the mango crates to shreds, and all the user could do was try to silently peek and listen for the right moments to help him stay alive. The user recalls feeling like an action hero after blasting a grenade into a room full of tension-filled people before charging in. This is the sort of feeling that one aims to have when playing Call of Duty, and for a split second, the user was able to achieve it.

However, even the user states that the feeling fades relatively quickly. Some matches and removals can be painful, like having no slide-cancelling or related movement hacks at one’s disposal. This sense of glumness is relative to feeling slow on the draw. Since pace is always a deciding factor, this may depend on what the player wishes to achieve in Call of Duty, which can be difficult for some.

The Price of Nostalgia: Is It Worth $70?

50 years is a lucrative price for a game. But looking at it from a distance of $70, true fans have almost divorced themselves. However, fans of Modern Warfare who thought they didn't have a real choice can try Buygames or G2A. They can either buy the product post-purchase or pay a king’s ransom to buy it physically. And let’s not ignore that purchasing this historically is equivalent to buying Scrooge’s money.

Modern Warfare 2 is the latest addition to Call of Duty and some kind of rite of passage for those who buy PS5 FPS games. Set decades after the first in the series, my friend Julio and I found copious amounts of red flags lying over the cash box. Adding multiple tentacles, cringe-inducing campaign simulations that seemed more like an episode from the A-Team rather than a game, brought our concerns to rest. And lined up towards the horizon was us bowing down to Michael Bay’s Mighty Vision.