The Call of Duty franchise has always raised the bar when it comes to visuals in a first person shooter and Modern Warfare 2 is no different as the game’s graphics are once again outstanding. Using an enhanced version of the Call of Duty 4 engine, Modern Warfare 2 is simply a stunning game and Activision has another Call of Duty title that they can be very proud of. Everything from the impressively detailed Russian Airport terminal to the claustrophobic Rio de Janeiro shanty town areas, Modern Warfare 2 is a game where your jaw will drop more than once. From the moment you put the game into your console of choice, everything is eye-popping and a lot of the animations are overwhelmingly good. Modern Warfare 2 runs at 60-frames per second and as a result plays silky smooth, and this includes when playing online in the cooperative or adversarial modes. Even during some of the most chaotic moments with enemies everywhere, bullets whizzing by, and explosions blasting from all angles, the game runs better than I could have imagined.
Similar to previous COD instalments, the environments in Modern Warfare 2 are incredibly detailed and look very good, not to mention you get a great deal of variety as well. Modern Warfare 2 does not limit you to one desert-like setting or slap you in a WW2 country for the entire single player campaign. Instead, mission settings in the game include Afghanistan, Rio de Janeiro, Siberia, and Washington D.C. From one mission to the next, you get a completely different look and the result is stunning featuring plenty of eye candy. Whether it be a blizzard-like environment or the streets of a Washington, D.C. suburb, Modern Warfare 2 never has you sitting back and yawning while you wish the end of the level was near. Modern Warfare 2 also features some realistic looking character models and even the enemy AI characters look great. My only concern with the characters is the lack of customizable options. I would have liked to have been able to modify the look of my player; however what you do get is impressive and this is only a nitpick point. Otherwise, the character animations this time around are incredibly realistic and very life-like.
To say the battle combat is intense in Modern Warfare 2 is an understatement. The explosions, high speed ski-doo scenes, tight quarter combat, destructible environments, and all the intensive battles around you, everything you have come to visually associate in Call of Duty games are in all their glory in Modern Warfare 2. Bottom line the combat feels real and is comparable to something out of a Hollywood movie. Everything is a bit better this time around and it really shows as Modern Warfare 2 is as good as it gets as far as games which push the next generation consoles graphical hardware