Overview:
-Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10
-Offline: 50 (1000)
-Online: 0 (0)
-Approximate amount of time to 1000: 20+ Hours
-Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1 (However two are recommended)
-Number of missable achievements: None!
-Glitched achievements: None!
-Do cheat codes disable achievements?: No Cheats
-Does difficulty affect achievements?: Yes

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game is extremely enjoyable and will challenge even Veterans of its predecessor. The game receives a difficulty score of 7 because although difficult at times, there’s no reason that anyone should be unable to max the game with a little bit of patience and practice.

Introduction:
Welcome to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2! This game has a total of 50 achievements, all of which are obtainable in offline modes. Although the game sports a very extensive multiplayer system, it does not require you to play it for any achievements. This is very nice because it allows you to play online with people that aren’t doing strange things to earn achievements. The achievements themselves are awarded for playing through the campaign and special ops mode, collecting intel and killing enemies in a certain manner. If you do not have Xbox LIVE you will need two controllers to complete some of the Special Ops missions in split screen. The game does not have any glitched achievements. Additionally, the game’s mission select feature makes it impossible to truly miss any achievements.

Many feel the need to do their first play through on recruit and collect intel items at that time. I would discourage that though if you want to get the 1000 as fast as possible. Playing through the campaign on Veteran is a better option because you can use the mission select feature to collect intel items afterwards. This means you don’t actually have to do two full play throughs of the game.

Step 1: Play Through on Veteran Difficulty
The Veteran difficulty on this game is not as difficult as previous Call of Duties, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t have some challenging portions to it. Here are a few tips to help you through this difficulty.
- Don’t collect intel items. Although it is possible to only have to play through the campaign once if you do this, you’ll cause yourself a lot of unnecessary stress and probably waste more time than if you had just done Step 2 of this road map.
- Don’t use the mission select feature until you’ve completed the entire game on Veteran. I say this because if you’re in the middle of a level, using the mission select feature will erase your progress and force you to replay the entire level again.
- Be Patient. Unless you’re being timed, do not rush. Unlike its predecessor, MW2 does not have unlimited enemy spawns. This means that you can take your time and methodically kill everyone before moving up.
- Let your teammates do the heavy lifting. The main characters in the game cannot die. As such let them charge into rooms and clear them for you. I was pleasantly surprised how effective my teammates were in killing enemies in this game.
- Don’t forget your grenades. Too often I found myself neglecting my flash bangs and frags. You get a new load of grenades at the end of every level so feel free to use them whenever you think they’ll be effective.
- Watch out for explosions. Vehicles and explosive barrels will kill you instantly. Be sure that if you take cover near one that it has already exploded. Otherwise you’re in for a very annoying surprise.
- If you’re truly stuck use YouTube. MW2 is so popular that the internet is littered with videos showing a variety of methods to beat every mission in the game.

With the tips out of the way, let’s get some of the miscellaneous achievements out of the way on this play through as well. In the very first level called “ S.S.D.D.,” you’ll run through a training course with metal targets. Refer to the achievement guide here and go for the Pit Boss achievement. You can run through this course as many times as you like so do not worry if you don’t get it on your first try. Next, when you get to the level titled “Cliffhanger,” refer to the achievement guide and go for the Ghost achievement. Last, when you reach the level “The Hornet's Nest,” again refer to the achievement guide and go for the Colonel Sanderson achievement. If you fail to obtain any of the three achievements listed above, you can try again by loading the previous checkpoint or just playing the level again with the mission select feature.

Step 2: Collect All of the Intel Items
If you didn’t take my advice and collected all of the intel items on your Veteran play through then congrats, you can skip to Step 3. If you didn’t then this is the time to collect all of the intel items in the game, 45 in total. Intel items look like green laptops. Although the game sometimes tries to disguise them, they’re usually very obvious once you know where to look. It is important to note that you do not have to do another play through to get these items. Instead, we will use the mission select feature.

First, pull up the Intel Locations Guide located HERE (I prefer the YouTube video personally). Next pull up the mission select feature in the campaign menu and select your desired mission. Select Recruit as your difficulty setting since difficulty has no bearing on intel items. Now simply play through the mission collecting all of the intel items for that level. Once you find the last intel item, simply quit out of the level and repeat this process for the next mission. Do this until you unlock The Road Less Traveled and Leave No Stone Unturned achievements.
NOTE: If you think you may have missed an intel item on a mission you can check by pressing start while in the mission and looking in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.