Modern Warfare played!

[Ed. note: While we normally stick to movie news here on the site, we occasionally like to cover events that we think have some major crossover appeal. One of those things is CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2. It’s a video game but it was developed and is being released as if it were one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. And hey, we did get some scoop on who they’d like to see in a MODERN WARFARE movie…]

Last night, I had the enviable task (if you believe my Twitter feed) of checking out the upcoming CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2. Whether you like first person shooters or not, this is one of the biggest games for the holiday season. Before they let us get our greedy little mitts on the controllers, they made a few announcements. First off, the limited edition CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 Xbox. We reported this early this morning, but in case you missed it, here are the details for your letter to Santa. For $399 (or being a very good little boy) you get two controllers, the game and a CODMW2-themed Xbox. Check out our report HERE.

Next we got some info on the game. In multiplayer mode, you can now get customizable Kill Streaks. The more consecutive kills you log, the more perks you get. (You can only take in three at a time thought.) We saw two. Four kills gets you “Care Package” which drops a box with random upgrades from the sky. Five kills can get you a stationary sentry gun or a predator missile.

If you suck…ahem…if you’re new to the game, there are Death Streaks to help you out, including Copycat, which allows you snatch the weapons and abilities of the last guy who kicked your ass. If you wipe out three times without killing anyone, you get Painkiller, which gives you a triple health boost. (And a lollipop to make you feel better about sucking big time…kidding.)

The game now gives you secondary weapons as well, upgradable like your primaries, and all kinds of fun shit to throw at people. Throwing knives, grenades (those were there before, of course) and…this is by far my favorite bit of coolness…Tactical Insertion, a baton that lets you choose where you’re going to respawn.

While checking out the Favela map (a Brazilian slum, complete with a view of O Cristo Rentor on the mountain above), I got a moment to ask Infinity Ward’s Drew McCoy about the graphics. “Probably the biggest thing we’ve done is our texture streaming, which allows us to stream very hi-res textures to every environment and objects close to the player. This gives us two main benefits. One is much larger worlds and the other is much more detailed worlds. So they look better, they react the way you would expect.”

He told me that his favorite addition to the game is the AC130 kill streak, which allows you to “call an AC130 gunship from the sky during multiplayer and rain down death from above. You feel like you’ve got the finger of god. Boom, dead, boom, dead. It’s great fun. I always have a huge smile on my face as soon as I get it.”

By the way, I know this is a movie site, and I did ask about any plans to turn the game into a film. McCoy told us this sort of thing was above his pay grade, but that he’d love to see Bruce Willis in something like this.