christiangamer

It’s just SO GOOD. I invited a good friend over for some split-screen co-op today. We played through about 19 of the Spec-Op missions on Hardened difficulty and I honestly can’t remember when a split-screen game has been so much fun. The smooth controls and sweet level design, along with very good (sometimes annoyingly so) enemy AI make this one of the most rewarding shooters in existence. It’s very fun, and will be something I know I’ll get tons of replay value out of.

The addictiveness of MW2’s online multiplayer leveling-up is replaced by the addictiveness of absolutely having to use teamwork and strategy for survival. And the harder it gets; the more fun it is to win. Most missions were fairly easy on hardened difficulty (with 2 players, mind you). A few of them were quite hard and forced us to rethink strategies a bit. I’ve played and beaten one mission on veteran and it only took us, what, ten tries? Failure did nothing to thwart my desire to keep playing til we won.

There are 20+ missions and you unlock them in groups as you earn stars for each successful mission. What’s really amazing is that each one feels unique; even the ones that are played in the same areas. You might have to breach and clear a prison shower room full of enemies. You’ll be calling targets and synchronizing sniper shots in the snow. You’ll be fending off waves of troops and vehicles in a desperate survival scenario. There are even a couple of racing levels (which were my least favorite, but still fun)! Then the fact that there are a couple of great missions inspired by COD4 thrown in for good measure (remember “Death From Above”?).

I would love to see the next Spec-Ops update support four players, but for these maps and missions two is definitely the sweet spot. Infinity Ward would have to up the difficulty considerably. At any rate; they’ve consistently hinted at updating Spec-Ops with new stuff… I will be there to scoop it up day one. This mode rocks.