Modern Warfare 2's armour piercing rounds no longer pierce armour

mw2 spec ops — (Image credit: Activision)

A new patch to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has finally fixed one of the game's long-standing glitches. After remaining unchecked since the game was released, Modern Warfare 2's armour piercing ammo doesn't pierce armour anymore. Wait. What?

Yes, you read that right. Amid a bunch of patch notes consisting of bog-standard bugfixes and balance tweaks, Raven has slipped in a baffling adjustment to the way MW2's AP ammunition works. The patch has "Removed damage multiplier against armored opponents," which means it'll now do as much damage to armoured enemies as regular ammo. Welcome to a new world of armour-respecting ammunition.

Okay, the patch hasn't made AP ammo totally useless. You can still use it to deal more damage against enemy vehicles and killstreaks, but you've got to admit the name makes barely any sense under this new configuration. MW2 would have been better off changing the name to something less deceptive. As it is, a lot of players are going to be stuck wondering why their anti-armour rounds are plinking off their enemies like BB gun pellets.

Whatever the reason for it, players in the Modern Warfare 2 subreddit have wasted no time making fun of the change. A user named Bstempinski predicts that the next update will read, "Hollowpoint causes the enemy to move faster and enables slide cancelling," while the announcement thread's top-rated comment simply reads, "It's now just ammo". Because this is the internet, some are just pounding the keyboard in a fit of rage, but very few are welcoming the change or the (lack of) messaging around it.

It's not that Modern Warfare 2 doesn't need patching, after all, just that this is a strange update to make. In the last few days alone, players have been exploiting bugs to turn themselves into speedy, murderous primates when they haven't been glitching their way into straight-up Superman-style flight. To be fair, those glitches might be too fun to fix, but hopefully future patches will consist of bug repairs and not, you know, making tracer rounds harder to see.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.