Call of Duty Modern Warfare... 2

[Jason Tandro]

Yeah so my sister borrowed this game and there is a lot to like about it.

Climbing icy slopes and snowmobiling to safety, using predator drones to knock out massive groups of targets, sniping from the side of a helicopter, breaching doors and slo-mo capping hostage takers on an oil rig... it's just a freaking awesome game so far.

The terrorist scene while pretty intense on a "I can't believe they made that a mission" level is no more violent than my average shooting spree in Grand Theft Auto (although granted with less people crawling for their life while blood pours out of their ears or trying to drag their loved ones to safety.)

Frankly the scene I found more freaky was the Red Dawn-esque scenarios in the US, because I live in Virginia and i'm sitting here thinking "wow... this could be my hometown."

My favorite thing about this game, however, is that in Multiplayer you now have all the perks and training of XBOX Live available locally, which means my sister and I can create custom classes. Last night we spent about an hour getting in what we referred to as "Riot Training". Both had custom classes that featured a Riot Shield and Shotgun and just went to town. Turns out you can rack up a lot of XP by letting yourself get shot while holding the shield.

One beef: The knife is no longer a one hit KO in multiplayer. My rush-in, take-down strategy no longer applies (granted I can still use a shotgun but I liked slashing throats and then laughing maniacally into my headset).

Anyways, rambling. thoughts?