Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Preview

Ice climbing, snowmobiles, heartbeat sensors, and sweet, sweet explosions abound in Modern Warfare 2′s first gameplay demonstration.

What’s new for E3? This is the first time since the NBA finals that we’ve seen the game. It’s also the first time we’ve seen continuous gameplay for longer than a couple minutes. In this demo, Roach and Soap (man alive, as much as I love Infinity Ward, I do wonder about their naming choices; I expect their next game to have a dude named Taco or something) are in Kazakhstan obtaining intelligence on Makarov. The mission closely echoes the “All Ghillied Up” scenario from COD4, but instead of MacMillan guiding Price, Soap dispenses aid and advice to Roach.

The mission starts with the two soldiers scaling a cliff (you just alternate trigger pulls to simulate each arm/icepick digging in for the climb), and at one point Soap has to rescue Roach. Then they unholster their weapons, revealing suppressed assault rifles equipped with heartbeat sensors (which look a lot like the motion trackers in Aliens) — two little tweaks to the gunplay in COD. The troopers use these tools, along with the fact that there’s a blizzard raging around them, for basic stealth mechanics. Roach can pretty much get behind anyone without them suspecting and quickly use either a knife stab or a burst of suppressed fire to take them down.

Early on, Soap advises Roach to plant some remote explosives at a fuel tank for “Plan B.” An action that gains greater importance when, after Roach finds a mission critical computer and downloads some highly sensitive data, Soap gets discovered by the Russians. As Soap surrenders, Roach remotely detonates the explosives — providing enough of a distraction for both of them to counter-attack their assailants and make a hasty retreat. No need for heartbeat sensors and suppression; it’s all about killing bad dudes while planes explode and sweet power chords swell up in the background (okay, that last part doesn’t actually happen, but that’s the way I imagine it).

Infinity Ward ended the demonstration with a sweet snowmobile chase ripped straight out of The World Is Not Enough. Besides being fast-paced and different, the snowbound sequence displays one other quirky element: Roach fires his pistol sideways while driving the snowmobile. When pressed for a reason, community manager Robert Bowling answered, “We want to implement a new ‘baller meter,’ and felt that firing his pistol sideways would add an incredible boost to his ‘baller’ status.”

What’s our take? It’s the next Call of Duty title from Infinity Ward — it’s pretty easy to figure out how we feel about it. While the ice-climbing threw us for a loop, and it didn’t have quite the dramatic “Oh shit!” impact of, say, watching MacMillan suddenly stand up during the beginning of “All Ghillied Up,” the overall demonstration gave us a satisfying taste of the game. It’s a well-paced, variety-filled segment of signature Infinity Ward-style gunplay, visual aesthetics, smooth framerate, and, “Wow, that’s just damn cool!” moments. Of course, we still want to see more, of both single- and multiplayer.