Review – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized (DS)

Submitted by Jayson on Thursday, 10 December 2009No Comment

Is Mobilized all flash and no bang?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the recently-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been making waves on current generation consoles. Taking advantage of Modern Warfare 2’s popularity, Activision has simultaneously released a similarly-titled DS version. There’s good reason to be wary of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized; it’s the handheld edition, so people expect it to be watered down. Is Mobilized just a flash in the pan, or is there a worthy shooter lurking under the pretty sheen?

Since Metroid Prime: Hunters, first-person shooters on the DS have employed mostly the same control scheme. The camera/crosshair is manipulated on the touchscreen; movement is through the directional pad, and shooting by way of the L shoulder button. Other commands (iron sights, reload, etc.) are mapped on the touchscreen, and while they take a bit of getting used to, the layout is reasonable enough. What doesn’t work very well is the need to tap up or down twice to sprint or crouch, especially in the heat of a furious firefight. Another inherent problem with DS shooters is when dealing with enemies from far away. Obviously, they’re harder to hit, not only because of the distance, but because of the small screen. It certainly doesn’t help that enemy hit boxes are smaller as well.

Riding a tank is sometimes fun. Note: “sometimes”

The biggest culprit that saps all the fun out of the experience is the complete absence of AI, especially among your teammates. For some reason, these soldiers can’t shoot enemies standing right in front of them—you’re going to have to shoot these enemies yourself. But hey, this should be fine because you wouldn’t want your teammates to play the game for you, right? It gets better. Your companions would sometimes rush headlong into an ambush, or in other occasions, they insist on staying behind and let you walk up to foes lying in wait. This however isn’t the problem. When bullets start flying, these “helpful” buddies would suddenly scramble to your aid, only to block off your path and preventing you from getting to cover. The result, you get shot down needlessly. The worst part: it’s not an isolated case. This happens every single time.

Don’t let the pretty visuals fool you—when the shooting gets intense, the framerate starts stuttering, leaving you vulnerable to enemy fire. This happens mostly in open areas; thankfully, some environments are smaller than others, so there would also be stretches when the graphics would impress. Mobilized is fully voiced, which is quite impressive for a DS game. Admittedly, Mobilized is a shooter so it isn’t as verbose as an RPG, but squeezing in all the spoken lines into one tiny DS cart is an achievement nonetheless.

If you somehow had the stomach to finish the single-player campaign and want to extend the game’s shelf life, there’s always multiplayer. All you have to do is find five other friends who each own a copy of Mobilized and frag each other over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Better yet, you can stick to local matches for smoother play. The modes are pretty standard—there’s deathmatch, capture the flag, and other similar assault-type games. Of course, the game’s multiplayer can’t be compared to the console versions, but it’s not bad for a handheld.

Do yourself a favor—stick to Modern Warfare 2 on the consoles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized is a wasted attempt in putting together a compelling experience on the DS. The controls may be generally sufficient (except perhaps a couple of missteps), but the action is marred by terrible AI and an inconsistent framerate. Mobilized may be coated in an attractive luster, but not everything that shines is gold.

6/10

Popularity: unranked [?]