WW2 #28: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized
Somehow even worse
This review was posted to Twitter on February 19, 2020.
Initial release: November 10, 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: n-Space
Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiist. The things I do for an audience I’m not even sure exists. Does anyone actually read these things? Or did I just suffer through a lousy game’s even lousier sequel for nothing? Sometimes the worst thing about reviewing bad games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Mobilized is that I’m often left wondering why I’m the only one who hates these things. I mean, the Metacritic score for this game is 73. 73! And the original is 75!!
HOW!?
For comparison, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, one of the very fucking worst games I have ever played in my entire life, a bug-ridden mess of bad level design, worse gameplay gimmicks and just generally being janky garbage, sits at a very pretty Metacritic score of 80. Who is reviewing these things that they get such high scores? What is wrong with them, that they have such low standards and poor decision-making skills? Do they vote? is it a just system that allows these people to vote? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized is a game with a mild case of colon cancer in its title, and a terminal case of sucking ass. While in some respects it’s an improvement over the original, several other aspects are objectively worse. On a technical level it’s not bad, I guess. The levels have more detail, the textures are a little higher-resolution, there’s some nice graphical effects, someone on the design team is a wizard with lighting. The music is pretty good, mixing in some decent electronica. Everything else, though? Everything else is unmitigated shit. Somehow the controls are even worse — because now instead of doubletapping the stylus for ADS, you have to tap an entirely different button on the screen. Whoever came up with this, I want them to die.
You have all the health of a wet napkin, which would be fine if this was a tactical shooter a la Rainbow Six, or if the controls weren’t terrible. But alas, you’re just gonna die over and over because an enemy popped up and killed you almost instantly. Your only real solution is to hide behind your AI companions — you spend most of the game with at least two, and they’re invincible, so you can basically let them do most of the work. This is one of the few things that make this game tolerable.
I am not even going to dignify the plot by telling you what it is. It’s got zero connection to Modern Warfare 2 whatsoever; it’s one of the most generic terrorists/stolen nuke/whatever plots ever written. It’s garbage, it’s pointless, and this game has no reason to exist.
So many things in this game feel like a step down from its predecessor; even the requisite AC-130 mission is rather simplified. The hacking minigame is by far the most irritating part of the game, though — and it’s the minigame that appears the most. Here’s how it works: you pick three numbers off a pad of 0–9 and the game tells you how how many numbers are correct and in the right spot, how many are in the wrong spot, and how many are wrong numbers. It doesn’t tell you which ones are which.
There is no reason for this game to exist. There is no reason for its predecessor to exist. There’s no reason for any of these hand-held Call of Duty games to exist. If you count Roads to Victory, I’m three games deep into the handheld Call of Duty franchise and none of them are good.
One can discuss the artistic value of the main games, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized is just straight up violent imperialist propaganda for your little brother. It has nothing interesting to say. I’m gonna put it on a rocket and fire it into Uranus.
