Modern Warfare: Mobilized

Not all Modern Warfare releases are made equal.

Posted 3 years ago By - Joe Law

As most of you don’t need to be told, Modern Warfare 2 has been a phenomenon in gaming history. It has shattered sales records, online play records, and soon will more-than-likely shatter content download records. Modern Warfare: Mobilized is a DS incarnation of the Modern Warfare series set to capitalize on the release of Modern Warfare 2, however, is Mobilized something noteworthy for DS owners or Modern Warfare 2 players or a game lacking substance designed as a cash-in on Modern Warfare 2?

Gameplay

Modern Warfare: Mobilized is a first person shooter for the Nintendo DS, ground on which few games have successfully tread. Mobilized is no exception to this rule unfortunately, as it plays like a needlessly complex version of Metroid Prime: Hunters. It uses the same mechanics as Hunters, aiming with the stylus, using the shoulder buttons to fire, and utilizing the D-Pad and regular buttons to move. However, in an attempt to emulate the actual console games, Mobilized adds in various other features which just overcomplicate things.

The touch screen feels extremely cluttered as, not only do you aim on it, but you also use it to reload, swap weapons, aim down the sights or cancel aiming down the sights, switch to a grenade, swap grenades, and interact with items or terrain. Then you have the D-Pad/buttons which also have multiple functions including tapping ‘forward’ twice to sprint and tapping ‘back’ twice to crouch. This may seem innovative in theory, but in practice it gets fairly annoying when you’re trying to make calculated moves.

The game also lacks any kind of auto-aim or aim-assist, meaning aiming down the sights is almost always required for picking off single shots. And even when you are using your iron-sights it seems enemy hit boxes are ridiculously small, which usually means that unless your targeting is dead-center on an enemy, you won’t hit them. Additionally, weapons with silencers attached do absolutely nothing. The instant you kill an enemy with a silenced weapon every comrade nearby is alerted, defeating the purpose entirely.

The AI in the game is also severely lacking for both the enemy and friendly AI. Enemy AI will always seem to target you, even if your teammates are right there beside you. Adding to the frustration, enemy AI tend to spawn ridiculously close to you, rendering the radar on the touch screen redundant. The spawning is also a bit ridiculous at times. Sometimes it’ll spawn several enemies when you’re out in the open forcing you to spray and pray with whatever weapon you happen to be using at the time. The friendly AI isn’t much better unfortunately and is of little to no help. There have been multiple times where I’ve caught one of my teammates standing still and firing at a wall when there are no enemies around.

To make matters worse the game isn’t very intuitive either. There will be times when you’re standing there waiting for some hint and the game does not telegraph your next objective one bit. For example, in one mission you’re required to sweep through three buildings to find a nuclear device that was stolen. After the second building you are faced with a dilemma: an anti-infantry vehicle right where you have to go. Not only does the game not tell you what you have to do to down the thing but it also doesn’t provide any hints or insights as to what you should be doing, leaving you to try to figure things out by the tried and true fashion of dying a lot.

The story isn’t much better either and feels very slapped together and played out. A nameless, faceless faction steals a nuclear device and plans to use it and your job is to stop them from using it. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, in about a hundred other novels, movies, and video games. The mission briefings are dry and bland and leave your wondering when this game is going to get interesting. Additionally the puzzle segments during some missions are either stupidly easy or complex and require you to guess a lot, which begs the question as to whether or not the puzzles were just thrown in there to try to make more use of the touch screen.

In any case, I kept on playing, hoping that the vehicular segments were the meat and gravy of the game. Much to my dismay the gravy was flavorless and the meat was pretty much all grisel. The vehicle segments are either extremely boring or easy to the point of being unexciting. The first vehicle level you encounter lets you pilot a UAV, destroying SAM Trucks and detecting radiation levels in buildings. On paper that sounds fun, but it’s incredibly slow paced and you only end up destroying about three or four vehicles. I’m sorry to say but the later vehicle levels aren’t much of an improvement either.

Graphics & Audio

One of the games only saving graces is its graphics. As far as DS games go this one looks pretty tight and polished. Most DS games tend to use more polished, older graphics engines like those of DOOM 2 or Duke Nukem, however it seems n Space actually went out of their way to construct a pretty great graphics engine for the game. In a nutshell, the graphics look like a polished version of Metroid Prime: Hunters and it’s definitely one of the games only saving graces. While the 3D engine may not be up to par with even the last generation’s consoles, it’s still better than most of what’s been on offer so far on the DS.

As for the sound, once again n Space went out of their way to give us a very good sound experience. The gun sounds are actually pretty good and not tinny at all. Add to that the fact that the game is fully voice acted by actors who aren’t half bad and you’ve got the other half to this game’s best features.

Value

At a price tag of $34.99 I can safely conclude that you should avoid this game. While the graphics and audio are definitely a show of what the DS can do, the gameplay and story leave a lot to be desired. Even renting this game at $10 would be asking a lot of the consumer. Fans of the Call of Duty and Modern Warfare franchise definitely won’t get much enjoyment out of this game, let alone the average hardcore or casual gamer. The game in and of itself has very little replay value aside from multiple difficulties and with how frustrating the easiest game setting is I wouldn’t recommend playing through anything higher than that.

Conclusion

To me it feels like whatever budget this game had was blown on the audio and visuals in the game, leaving the story and design team scrambling with what little finances they had leftover to make a worthwhile game out of it. Unfortunately for them, the game comes up feeling pretty shallow. While I give it props for having an expensive looking sheen, it’s definitely not a noteworthy DS game in any other respect. Do yourself a favor and leave this one to gather dust on the shelves.