Having owned the PS3 since launch, I have seen games come from sub par ports to well polished hits. Just look at Vegas 1 compared to Call of Duty 4. I bought the first Vegas expecting a well rounded company such as UBISOFT to have put a lot of effort in it, but no. This time around I was sure they wouldn't bite me again.
Where should I begin? Well let me start with where I started. I picked up my pre-order and slapped it in my PS3. When the disc loaded it was a screen covered in purple with some shots being fired, was this a cue to what was to come? So I started the game, to my surprise, the opening menu seemed more polished than last time. I selected online match and that is where I will start.
So, for me, the online factor of any game is huge. It was something i felt was a downside to Assassin's Creed, which got boring quickly. Well it turns out UBI didn't learn much from Vegas 1 on the PS3. The servers were not even close to ready for people to play. Rooms would show up as having people in them but people could only join one out of 20 rooms. It was quite irritating but the most irritating part was the UBI was slow to respond to the problems. I'm glad to say as I'm typing this the servers are much better. Most people can now get in to rooms to enjoy the game, which leads me to online game play.
The online game play is not comparable to Call of Duty 4. I know most people will say all games are comparable to each other, but these shooters are very different. This is a 100% tactical shooter. Cover and teamwork is of the utmost importance. The addition of sprint is nice, making it more realistic to reach cover as opposed to getting shot trying to reach cover. But there are multiple downsides, shotgun snipers are back, with a vengeance, the 500 Tactical will take your head off from any place on the map. They also decided that multiple respawn locations was not important, which leads to.... yes you guess it, tons of spawn-camping. There are some great new maps but they felt it was easier to just add some old ones instead of making all new ones out of the gate and later allowing downloads of old favorites. There are multiple "kids" who think the kick button is for anyone they don't know, or some one that they know is better. Multiple times I have been kicked out of a game after pulling some nice kill streaks. I personally don't mind it in the lobby but would like to see it corrected for during game play. All in all the online is fun, but in DESPERATE need of a patch, hoping full ubi doesn't slack much longer on that.
Next, I'll tell you about the game play, those who followed the story from the first will wonder how this one is starting. I personally don't like the jumping about the game does, and for that I fault the story telling. The controls are not as customizable as they should be, you can invert and go between a few set ups, but if you want to make it how you want, you're out of luck. The addition of ACEs is a nice way to rank up on and off line, but you will quickly achieve the highest ranks of 20 per level well before you get to being an elite rank. The A.I. is still dumb, and I mean dumb. Overall if you played the first you can expect a lot of the same this time around.
Graphically, this game isn't even close, nothing about this will scare COD4 at all, but in its own way, it looks good. To me, it doesn't meet the next gen hype. The way the game comes together makes sense. The annoying machine gun sound glitch is back with a vengeance. When it happens it gets louder and louder, then randomly stops(if your lucky). There are some frame rate issues, but like I said, this isn't a graphical masterpiece.
Overall the game is a nice change of pace from those playing Call of Duty since its launch but its not about to better it anytime soon. This game is a tactical masterpiece which constantly falls short of perfection. FPS fans will find this to be a great change of pace, but not a game to drop everything for. On a scale of skip rent or buy, I would say buy used. And keep your call of duty, you'll want to go back to it occasionally.