I don’t mind playing MW2 much like I didn’t mind MW or WaW but for me it doesn’t have the lasting effect that the Battlefield series provides with the map size and a somewhat different experience each round because everyone has different tactics or abilities. MW2 is generally linear in terms of what’s going to happen.

My final note… Anyone not buying this game because they can’t run a free server AND still plays MW2 needs kicked in the groin.

Comparisons:

Global Stats:   BFBC2
Dedicated Servers:  BFBC2
Kicking Hacks:  BFBC2
Map Size:  BFBC2
Vehicles:  BFBC2
Paratroops:  BFBC2
Veteran Privileges for Prior Games in the series:  BFBC2 (when it works)
Individual Stats:  Both
Weapon Unlocks:  Both
Game Modes (Number, not quality): MW2
Unlocks: MW2 (Good and bad, it gets crazy trying to figure out what you want to choose)

What to do? Well I wish that they’d offer ground games without this crap.  Oh wait, you probably could specify this if they had dedicated servers but alas they decided to be cheap assholes and not put any time into the development of the PC version while charging $10 more.  Sorry, I forgot for a second that Activision and Bobby Kotick (who cares nothing about gaming) cared about quality over money.   Bobby Kotick should be the person at the end of single player that gets the knife to the head, hell he probably doesn’t even know that’s how it ends.  I personally would love to see the game move to someone else but unfortunately with the sales of MW2 he’ll remain in control until a fan does toss a fatal knife into his skull.  I look forward to (and God I never thought I’d say this) EA taking back the reins of a game with the Battlefield series.  Unfortunately I’m not sure how BF1943 is going to play out since we’re still 6 months on the PC without it, so I can only hope that Bad Company 2 compares to BF2 or even BF2142.

Edit:  My continued rant on 1/3/2010….

A few more things that pisses me off about the game I love at the moment.

1. The lack of control of hacking and kicking.  WTH were they thinking? People rape people in this game and you can’t kick them. I had a game tonight with a guy who went 85-5 and I left 1/2 through the game.  Sure they did something a while back by kicking 2500 people they said were hacking but we’re at 2 months now and it runs rampant.  Granted some are just campers that rack up scores but not 85 kills to 5 in less than 10 minutes?
2. When you can’t connect there’s no way to exit.  So it attempts to connect and can’t, it sits there forever.
3. It throws you into a map that you can’t change during the load screen, so it forces you to accept the map. Exit after it loads and you lose the match.  A lot could care less but I’m a stats freak which is what does keep me playing, I love the unlocks by WORKING for them.  The Quarry map in particular, who the hell likes that map???
4. I already said this but … People who play Domination like it’s TD. Played a map tonight where the guy just sat around knifing people outside our base.  Didn’t attempt to take the point, just knifed.
5. I already said this too but … Again, air combat in domination from people out for personal score who could care less about points.
6. Inability to play maps you want to play.
7. The party system… It’s a double edged sword.  Unfortunately it stacks players and more than that clans.  Even in most dedicated servers this isn’t a problem or at least you can find another server. Not in glorious MW2.
8. Join delays.  L4D offers that when you’re kicked or exit a map it won’t put you back into that game.  Not in MW2, you pop right back into the server with the assholes hacking or the clan stacked server you just left and get another loss.

Most of these are, gasp, easily avoided in dedicated servers… You kick hacks and you chose the map/server you want to play, admins could turn off air attacks and most of this crap is gone.

Game play is great, the hierarchy, bonuses and unlocks are great but the administration of the game sucks worse than any game I’ve played.  Even BF2 had some restraint by having a single “commander” that did the air support piece. Granted there were hacks in BF2/2142 but they were a lot less frequent, and you could kick people.  I get that things in WaW and MW were out of control in terms of just point hacking but trading that for a gaming experience ISN’T the answer.  It’s backwards thinking…rather than specifying rules like EA did with BF2/2142 “official servers” you just say screw everyone and STILL have no control over hacking.  It reminds me of the RIAA mentality.

Let’s throw in the extremely engaging and riveting but extremely short single player mode (7-8 hours) and the $10 more for a PC game.

As for the dedicated servers on MW2, I’m not noticing much issue so far, although I’m not a daily player or spend all my free time gaming.  The fact that there are people already with prestige makes me wonder, can someone really do that in a few weeks unless they’re playing constantly?  I guess I know some that do it in WoW so anything is possible.  It is nice that people are “supposedly” earning their achievements unlike the debacle that World at War was.  I admit I played on some of the servers that had an ungodly amount of points for a kill, etc. but it grows old but so does having games like MW that casual gamers got the hell beat out of them because they didn’t play daily.  The nice thing with MW2 is they have perks for casual gamers who aren’t great (AKA me! heh).

Anyway, I need to do something with screenshots since I have 100′s that I’ve not uploaded including stuff from these two great games.  I have a crap load on my xFire profile which I’m finding is more and more useful as a gaming social site even though a lot of gamers don’t use it.  It keeps all my shots in their 1920×1200 glory so that’s a bonus and does the uploads in game rather than having to do anything with them here and spending precious space.  Still using FRAPS tho and have that subscription.   If you’re not into xFire, you should at least check it out.  Cheap product for a lot of usefulness… Videos, Frame Rates  & Screenshots.

Check out the xFire Screenshot page.

It initially started on the beta.  I had a few days of fun with the beta and suddenly one day it started crashing after getting partially through the map load screen…the screen would flash and then crash.  There was an error message but the brilliant minds at Treyarch didn’t think to allow the error to show over the game executable dialog so I have no idea what the message was, just showed an error dialog that couldn’t be viewed.  I played with settings and found that if I disabled Crossfire on my dual ATI Radeon 3870′s, and clicked on restore factory defaults (I didn’t change anything but did it anyway) it worked.

I had a working system.  I bought the Collectors Edition, had the same issue and did the same “fix” and was able to play the full game.  I started having horrible lag and issues in both multi-player and co-op.  I dropped the resolution down to 1680×1050 (from 1920×1200) and it seemed to help.

I removed my 3870′s and upgraded to a 4870 this past week along with a Corsair 750w PSU.  The problems all started over.  Constant crashes but this time I had no second card to disable to fix it.  I tried the restore factory defaults to no avail.  I attempted to find some resolution at the forums but alas the search on Callofduty.com (still) didn’t work… neat.

I uninstalled my X-Fi drivers, ATI drivers, the game.  I ran driver cleaner to remove all folders and directory references to both Creative and ATI.  I went through manually and removed a few others that I found based on some forums.  I reinstalled the ATI drivers, rebooted, reinstalled the X-Fi drivers, rebooted, updated the X-Fi drivers, rebooted.  I reinstalled DirectX 9c and rebooted.  I reinstalled the game and started to get a direct3ddevice9 error as soon as MP launched.  I was also getting an unhandled exception error on SP.

Search seemed to finally work after nearly a month on callofduty.com and I found a thread that about having .NET Framework 3.5 sp1 installed. I updated to this and reattempted.  Wow! Now I can launch the game and as soon as I connect to a server I get the direct3ddevice9 error.  I backed down to Radeon 8.9 drivers (from 8.11) and attempted another reinstall of DirectX 9c November release.  I actually got in a game and it seemed faster than ever before and things were looking up.

I attempted single player and it crashed with a black screen, no message.  I did the reset video and it loaded to the menu.  I changed video back to my normal settings, launched the game and no audio on the dialog with the opening scene (but audio worked on the intros).  I exited SP, restarted and got missing textures (like the head of the Japanese general and the private he’s burning with a cigar) and the audio still didn’t work.   Textures were all screwed even after starting.  I tried backing down graphics and back to the black screen on load.

Screw it, I’ll stick to MP I thought.  I launch MP, select a server, the map starts loading and I’m back to either the direct3ddevice error or I get an unhandled exception after I had hope that I could at least play MP.  The next time I launch, I get an error that CoDWaWmp.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

I reinstalled the game another time tonight.  I launched and got the same CoDWaWmp.exe is not a valid Win32 application error.  I applied the 1.1 patch since I hadn’t done that after installation but I still get the invalid Win32 app error.

What I really love is the people on callofduty.com that probably haven’t had an issue before and are completely clueless on computers other than what they’re told replying to threads calling people idiots because “it works fine for me”.  Since I’m reading that some people are running fine and suddenly get one of these issues (as I did with the beta), I look forward to seeing these same people eat their own words.

I guess my next step will be to update to the ATI 8.11 drivers again and retry.  If that doesn’t work I guess I could reinstall XP for ONE FREAKING GAME not working.  Everything I play works fine including Call of Duty 4.  I opened a ticket on Activision’s site and we’ll see how they respond.  They asked for a dxdiag log so we’ll see.  The most piss poor implementation of a game I’ve ever seen.

Far Cry 2, while having SECUROM DRM as well, has been additionally under fire for game play.  Seems some things need to be worked out in the wideopen sandbox environment created in the African forests.  Complaints have included repetitive missions, excessive rebel re-spawns and damage to the rebels as the only means to increase the difficulty of the game,  and lack of gamer immersion.  Graphics are truely a sight to behold but if a game isn’t compelling, most gamers will simply shelve the game and move on to the next.

Today we’ll see Call of Duty: World at War hit shelves (or coming off shelves as we speak).  The hype following this game is the opportunity to do 4 player co-op through missions.  After playing the multi-player beta, the co-op is will save the game.  In all honesty, multi-player moves just like Call of Duty 4 and feels almost like a clone with new graphics.  I truly miss the days of Call of Duty and CoD 2 where it felt less like a game of Quake and more like what most combat shooters felt like.  So if co-op doesn’t turn out to be all that it could be I’ll be quite disappointed.  For MP I would rather just stay with CoD 4 and it’s player spamming.  Maybe some of the additional maps will have some redeeming value but who knows.  I’ll post back later after I

I initially thought that I hadn’t done anything to warrant the concern but downloaded and installed a few spyware apps and Spywarefigher found an executable residing in my Program Files that looked like an MS patch that it reported as a trojan as well as a few tracking cookies.  I did the clean up and viola the crashes went away.  While it wasn’t a hard lesson learned, it was a lesson learned that running Virus protection is vital for the integrety of even gaming.

Thought I’d post that even if you think you’re privy to something like this, you may want to think again.  I’m still not sure what I did that allowed this to happen but I went ahead and installed AV even with the hit it takes on resources.