Review:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized

Following hot on the heels of the DS port of Modern Warfare, which was shallow, nonsensical, and short but with good shooting, and the DS port of World at War, which was also shallow, nonsensical, and short but with good shooting, comes this latest DS port of its big console brothers. And guess what? Mobilised is yet again shallow, nonsensical, and short but with good shooting.

It works as a kind of remix of various levels and objectives taken from the Modern Warfare 2, except strings them into an utterly bizarre story which is told as simply and blandly as possible between missions. Presumably the focus is meant to be on the action, but if that’s the case, why bother with a story at all?

As always, you flick between playing as a crusading white American Marine murderising brown people in the name of justice and a crusading white British SAS officer sneaking around blowing shit up in the name of justice. Unlike its counterparts, neither parts really outshine the other because they’re both practically the same, just with a slight difference in map design and voices. The Yanks get to trudge through a very brown pseudo-Iraq, bellowing about how well they’re killing people with antiquated weapons, while the Brits get to see oil rigs and snowy landscapes and mutter in suspiciously American accents about the locations of the enemy.

If there is one thing that really needs to be brought to light about the single player campaign, it’s that the AI of both the enemy and your team mates is utterly appalling. At one point an enemy and an SAS squaddie were separated by an open doorway and neither managed to hit the other, yet every shot that was aimed at the player struck dead-on. This wildly inconsistent intelligence in one of many irritations, but certainly the one that is destined to bring the most grief.

Other problems include the game’s hideous visuals, which sport pixels so wide you could redecorate a bathroom with them. This means that enemies are only really visible when a) they wear bright red hats, or b) they open fire on you. While you’re busy contending with the enemies and the eye-watering graphics, you’ll also have to contend with some really poor map design. Having a whopping great arrow the map screen all the time is pretty useful, but most of the time you’ll have a hell of a job trying to figure out which way is up.