Modern Warfare: Reflex — Takes More Than It Gives
Amidst the cheers and gunfire that have been resounding as a result of Modern Warfare 2 hitting store shelves, the guys over at Nintendo recently released a Modern Warfare of their own. Modern Warfare: Reflex is a conversion of Modern Warfare to Nintendo’s more innovative but less graphically powerful console, the Wii. It is more than obviously an attempt to show hardcore gamers that the Wii can hang with the big boys … but can it?
One of the key points of the Wii’s design philosophy was that graphics aren’t getting much better these days. While other consoles were warring over who could render what faster, sharper, and more eye bleedingly beautiful in HD, the Wii decided to barely upgrade its graphics hardware from last generation and instead focus on an innovative motion based control scheme. As a result, the Wii’s core selling point beyond the natural Nintendo exclusives is its use of this new control scheme, in the hopes that good gameplay will beat out pretty graphics.
This is the biggest issue with Modern Warfare: Reflex. When all is said and done, the Wii doesn’t really add much to the Modern Warfare formula. Waggle controls don’t actually increase the game’s immersive nature, and pointer controls, while generally better as a whole as far as first person shooters go, are made mostly moot with Modern Warfare’s snap-to aiming system. A second player can now join in on the main campaign, but he is little more than a second targeting reticule on the screen, and one that is hard to see at that.
Though Modern Warfare: Reflex is certainly one of the prettiest games on the Wii, it pales in comparison to its Xbox 360 or PS3 counterpart. Everything looks bland and choppy and though it is a far step up from last generation’s technology, you still can’t help but wonder if the Wii isn’t capable of a bit more. The sad truth of the matter is, it isn’t, and it is finally starting to show.
The whole single-player campaign is there and you can play the original Modern Warfare’s story from start to finish, with very few changes made along the way. The controls, as said before, are pretty much the same, snap-to aiming at all, with a couple waggle motions added in for good measure. If there is anything that can be said about Modern Warfare: Reflex it’s that it uses the Wii’s control scheme well. As I said before, the waggle controls don’t really add to the game at all, but the customizability of the pointer controls is actually a treat. Once again, as I said before snap-to aiming makes this mostly moot, but the game does feature all the customizability that The Conduit had, with bounding box and turn speed options and much much more. You always feel like you are in control of your character in Modern Warfare: Reflex, which is good, because insensitive waggle controls have ruined many a Wii game in the past. If anything, the pointer controls will let you fire from the hip more effectively, but you will rarely be firing from the hip when you can look down a gun’s sights.
Of course Modern Warfare is all about online play, and Reflex is no exception. All the great (and no so great) stuff from the original is there, so you are free to gain experience, unlock new guns, and eventually set the Martyrdom perk on you so you can piss off all your friends. Speaking of friends, the Wii’s family centered online policy rears its ugly head again through the use of friend codes. Instead of simply being able to find your friends by screen name, you will need to swap these codes to play with any of your friends online, and there is no way to add the random people you play with in pickup games to your friends list. There is also no voice support, which makes it extremely hard to coordinate with your team. In fact it is impossible to coordinate with your team, and you just hope that everyone is on the same page as the game goes on. Add this to the 10 player restriction for game rooms, and the online experience starts to feel very isolated. It’s nearly identical to playing a multiplayer map with computer controlled enemies and teammates. Well, at least you won’t have to hear the rampant insults and immaturity you get over Xbox Live.
Modern Warfare: Reflex also suffers from rage quits extraordinaire. There is no server migration, so if the guy hosting the room starts to lose and quits out, the game ends. In fact, this has given birth to a really shitty method of “winning”, by which you host the room, take the lead, and immediately quit out as soon as possible. Scores are final when the host drops, so particularly dickish players have found no end to the dirty tricks they can pull with server manipulation. You get all the maps that Modern Warfare had on disk in the original version, but you don’t get any of the DLC maps that were released later. You shouldn’t hold your breath for these to come to Modern Warfare: Reflex considering Nintendo’s sucky policy regarding DLC thus far. Add to this the Wii’s tendency to lag like crazy during online play, and you can see that online multiplayer is a mere shell of its former self. Even so, it is still fun if you haven’t been playing the original, or its much improved sequel.
Modern Warfare: Reflex is not Modern Warfare. It is, at most, a watered down yet still complete version of Modern Warfare. If you can play Modern Warfare on any other console, skip Reflex altogether. If, however, the Wii is your only choice, than you actually should pick up Reflex, because it’s as good as you are gonna get. Frankly, I think the Wii should stop trying to port other console’s games to its hardware and focus more on forging its own unique motion controlled identity. However, I am not a businessman, and I am sure that Modern Warfare: Reflex is making some whiney fratboy gun-head somewhere very happy, so as far as expanding the Wii’s demographic goes, Modern Warfare: Reflex succeeds … in as much as it will offer a hardcore alternative to hardcore gamers who only own a Wii and no other console … if those even exist.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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