Modern Warfare 2’s border crossing map Santa Sena has caused a lot of frustration for fans and developer Infinity Ward has finally responded to the feedback.
Speaking to Dexerto, multiplayer design director Geoff Smith explained that Infinity Ward didn't necessarily aim to create a perfectly balanced map with Santa Sena, but instead just wanted something fun.
“Map-wise, we try to have a balance between experiential maps and the more competitive maps,” he said. “Not all of them are super sweaty, balanced ones. There’s ones where ‘hey, it’d be really cool to fight over a border crossing.’”
The map was criticised due to its narrow layout but also because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic. All of the cars are also destructible, meaning they can unexpectedly explode at any given moment.
According to Smith, it was supposed to channel one of my favourite films – Sicario. “I know that map’s not super popular in certain groups, but we like to keep it fun and it’s really neat to move through those cars, channelling Sicario,” he said. “So, we try to keep it fun and switch it up, but there’s a balance.”
Smith continued: “You know, our user base is so huge. We try to balance as much as we can. I think it’s important to have these fun, experiential maps, and we obviously have enough for the CDL to have their play space.
“[We aren’t] trying to ruin people’s fun on every single map. I think we even looked into keeping those cars from blowing up every round in search and destroy because that gets really old. We kind of just make adjustments as we go, but I think it’s important to have a wide variety of experiences. Not everybody’s into super sweaty matches, so we kind of balance it for everyone. We do our best.”
IGN’s Modern Warfare 2 review gave it 8/10 and said: “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the most fun I’ve had in CoD multiplayer in a good long while. It’s taken what was already a mechanically solid multiplayer game and improved on it with a weapon customization system that's almost limitless in its possibilities, and its new focus on bigger maps with tons of players has paid off big time.”
Want to read more about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? Check out how much Call of Duty games cost to make as well as why fans aren’t happy about a recent Warzone 2.0 bundle.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.