I have spent pretty much my whole life playing video games. It is one of my longest standing hobbies and while I don’t get to play them as much as I used to, I still like to squeeze in a few hours a week to play. This past holiday season I got a couple of new games and they have been occupying some of my free time, so I thought I would share my thoughts on them. Here they are in no particular order.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
One of my favorite types of games is the first person shooter (or FPS for the uninitiated). I like to play FPS games on the PC, not consoles. My reasons for this can fill a whole other blog post (and I will write one eventually) but the short version is that I prefer the keyboard and mouse to a controller for this game type. You can’t talk about FPS games now without talking about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It has been called one of the best shooters ever made and for the most part I would agree with that statement. I have been playing MW2 since it was released in November and been addicted ever since.
Now I am not a stranger to the Call of Duty series of games. I have played every edition of the game and each one has gotten progressively better. Infinity Ward, the games’ maker, has certainly figured out what it takes to make a consistently solid game.
While MW2 is an amazing game, unfortunately I do not believe it is as good as its predecessor. There are many people that would disagree with me but they most likely are coming from a different perspective. My problem with MW2 is that it is not a PC game. It is clearly a console game that was ported to the PC. This is a clear departure from previous Call of Duty games. The first Modern Warfare game was definitely made for the PC. It had all of the classic signs of a PC game and it allowed its users to customize and extend the game new maps, mods. Users could also host their own dedicated servers and play offline in LAN only situations. These features are very unique to the PC world since consoles are mostly closed environments maintained by the console manufacturer. MW2 dispensed with dedicated servers and custom maps in favor of a much more console like experience of matchmaking players and P2P server hosting. There are many people furious with Infinity Ward for making these changes. I don’t think that I am angry as much as I am disappointed. With all of the previous Call of Duty games I set up a dedicated server on one of my Linux servers so my friends and I could play during LAN parties or if we didn’t want to play on public servers. I no longer get to do that with MW2 and that is unfortunate. And due to the tremendous success of the game, it only communicates to game companies that there is no need to create dedicated servers and extensible games. I think a large part of PC gaming culture will die if the user is no longer allowed to extend and customize the game and for that I am disappointed.
I am beginning to accept the fact that PC gaming is in decline and the console slow march towards gaming dominance is now starting to consume the FPS but I intend to hold on to my keyboard and mouse as long as I can. If that means accepting a few changes and flaws in MW2 then I guess that is what I have to do.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
The other game I have been playing is much more casual than my current PC addiction. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a modern sequel to some of my favorite games of all times. I am a huge fan of the classic Mario games for the NES and this new version has stayed true to the classic genre while adding some cool new moves and upgrades (as well as making it much nicer to look at on a big screen. Have you seen an 8-bit Mario on a 52″ HDTV. One word: pixelated). One thing I noticed about this new version of the game is that it is much more difficult than I originally expected it to be. I guess the 20+ years of muscle memory on the old Mario Bros games makes me think they are much easier than they are. Not knowing where the next goomba is going to appear in these unfamiliar level adds an extra bit of difficulty I am not use to. If you have a Wii, you need to get this game.