This image is from one of the moments in Modern Warfare 2 where I just sat infront of the PC, having an insanely good time. In this mission, you start out climbing a mountain, infiltrating a base at the top and getting out in a fast-paced snowmobile race, culminating in the giant leap over a gap shown in the picture. The different modes and paces go from one to the other with perfect timing, and every second is filled with action.

This mission is then followed by the infamous “No Russian” mission. My personal opinion is that it certainly has a large impact and leaves you with an ungood feeling about the whole thing, but it’s also too much over the top. In the German version, you must not shoot civilians yourself, and to be honest, I didn’t really miss that aspect.

What makes this mission so intense is also what makes the whole game very intense: there is an incredible amount of detail in the game. The game’s engine is not absolutely top notch, it has nice effects, but it is all made up by the details. Everywhere you look, there is something going on, civilians fleeing, vehicles driving or very detailed interiors. On top of that, the game guides the player very well through the levels. So all in all, I don’t think the price for the game (at least the lowered price as opposed to what was announced) is ok, since the game feels like several action movies packed together in one.

Steam and Language Settings

(Short foreword, usually I am quite happy with Steam)

I have one major issue with the game, and that concerns several related problems. First of all, I bought the game a day early, yet couldn’t install until the Steam servers were set to allow this. The error message I got at first made me think that my key was invalid.

When the game installed a day later, I found the first real problem: The German version (and also the Russian one, as evidenced by the Steam forums) only features German text and voices. The German translation is horrible, especially for someone who plays most to all games on English. The issue here is that it’s possible to have a multi-language version of the game (the UK retail version has English and German included), yet the German retail does not allow this! I was quite shocked since I had always valued the feature of freely choosing the language in Steam highly. Steam and Activision posted some stupid explanations that they weren’t allowed to publish the english language versions in Germany, which is far from the truth to say it mildly.

Aside from that, the move to Steam was intended to ward off cheaters and pirates. This must be a joke, since pirated versions as well as cheaters were around mere days after the release as published in the gaming media. Worse, they are now banning users who legitimately bought the cheaper retail versions, e.g. from Russia. The joke here is, I read a post by a Steam employee who posted that buying from places that only sell the CD keys is quite dubious. Someone answered very rightly that Steam is then the most dubious of places: You don’t even get a CD key there…