The Modern Warfare brand has always been the most iconic one of the Call of Duty franchise. It’s the one that really put the franchise on the map and had every first-person shooter on the market follow in its footsteps. Now twelve years after the original was released, Infinity Ward has reimagined the series for the present day with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a far more realistic and gritty game than they’ve made before. The game lives up to the legacy of its namesake for the most part, but ultimately doesn’t reach the same heights.
Modern Warfare brings back a single-player campaign, something that was missing from last year’s Black Ops 4. This is definitely one of the better campaigns that the series has had. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of the general plot of the story, but it’s one of the more fun and interesting ones to go through in recent years. Dangerous chemical weapons have fallen into the wrong hands, so it falls to Captain Price and his allies to find who has them and stop them from causing an international disaster. Just as in the past you play as multiple characters, but the story remains easy to follow and understand. A big reason for this is because of the new way that Infinity Ward handled the storytelling. Similar to how things were in their last game Infinite Warfare, the transitions between cutscenes and gameplay are largely seamless. This goes a long way towards keeping you immersed in the game’s story and never feeling like you’re being taken out of what’s happening. A lot of the cutscenes are also impressive pre-rendered scenes that appear to be made by the famous visual effects company Blur Studio. These cutscenes are well acted and produced, and they really got me even more invested in not just the story, but the characters too.
I played on Veteran difficulty (the second highest) and over the course of the 5-6 hour story, I never found myself doing one thing for too long and was moved along through the story at a nice brisk pace. Some of the missions are about 10-15 minutes in length, which is far shorter than ever before. Call of Duty campaigns are also known for being these bombastic spectacles that wouldn’t be out of place next to a Michael Bay movie. This game takes things back to how it was with the original Modern Warfare. The explosive moments are still there, but they’re balanced out by the more numerous quiet, intimate, and serious moments. One of my favorite missions in the game is “Clean House.” The mission has you slowly and methodically make your way up through a town house in the dark to find out the location of the campaign’s main villain. It’s a tense mission as you can hear the residents scurrying around in the rooms of the house, but you don’t know who’s a civilian and who’s an enemy. My heart was pounding the entire time and I loved every second of it.
As part of Infinity Ward’s mission to strive for a more realistic and gritty game, something else that the campaign tries to do is show you some of the harsh things that happen in war. It wants to make you think about your actions and whether or not you’re crossing the line to get the job done. The thing is, the game only lightly dips its toes into the well, as opposed to going all in on it. A lot of the time, it’s just a rating that you get at the end of each mission about how well you did in regards to harming civilians. But there are times where crossing the line and these terrible acts of war becomes a more direct focus, whether that be in what you can do in a given missions, or just as part of what happens in the story. These moments do have some weight to them, but there’s not enough to actually make you reflect on things in a way that something like Spec Ops: The Line did all throughout the course of that game’s campaign.
Everyone knows though that multiplayer is the main attraction of any Call of Duty game. It’s where players spend the next year of their life shooting away at other people in the pursuit of a high kill/death ratio and new content to unlock. This year’s multiplayer offering is good, but there are some things holding it back from being really great. When I played the game’s Alpha and Beta, I was really excited for the final game. Now that I have the final game though, I’m still liking the multiplayer, but not as much as I did then. Before I get into the not so good things about the multiplayer, let me first start off by saying what’s great about it.
Create-A-Class drops the Pick 10 system that’s been standard in the franchise for a couple years now, and returns back to how it was back in the day. As much as I liked the Pick 10 system and the balance that it brought to multiplayer, it’s actually very freeing to be able to fully kit out my weapons, and have grenades, and all my perks as well. I don’t feel like I’m handicapping myself because I’m restricted to only a certain amount of items that I can use in each match. What’s really exciting though about Create-A-Class though is the brand new Gunsmith system. As you use a weapon, it levels up and unlocks a new attachment or perk for it. And there are A LOT of different attachments for each weapon. Honestly, it’s almost overwhelming how many attachments there are. Every attachment changes how your weapon handles in controls in one way or another, meaning that there are a multitude of different combinations that you can come up with to make your weapon unique to you. This level of freedom and creativity is great and is something I can’t believe we didn’t have for all these years.
A new thing that you can pick for your classes are Field Upgrades. These are abilities that you can activate during a match once they’ve fully charged up. I like being able to pick an extra item or ability to bring into the match that may be able to help me hold down a capture point or sneak in and eliminate the enemy team without them hearing me coming. Field Upgrades are balanced well too, with each one having a different recharge rate.
Also a nice new addition is the ability to filter what game modes you want to play. It’s nice to be able to just jump into a quick play lobby and know that I’ll only be playing a selection of game modes that I want to play, and not have to back out of the lobby every time a mode that I don’t like pops up. Speaking of game modes, you have your standard ones that you would expect from Call of Duty, in addition to a couple new ones. Cyber Attack is similar to Search & Destroy with the added twist of being able to revive downed teammates before they die and are out for the round. I’m not a fan of game modes like that so I’ve generally stayed clear of it. Gunfight is a fun 2v2 mode on much smaller maps. It’s tense and fast paced, with matches going by in the blink of an eye. It’s fun and definitely plays better if you go in with a friend that you can communicate with because that’s essential to success.
Ground War is probably my favorite of the new modes. It brings back the classic mode and greatly increases the scale with 64-player battles being possible on large scale maps. It’s Battlefield meets Call of Duty and it’s a lot of fun. There’s also Realism mode which strips you of your HUD, and NVG (Night Vision Goggles) mode that puts you on select maps at night time. NVG is unique in that while you have night vision activated, you can’t aim down sights. You instead have a tighter hip fire shot that’s aimed with a laser sight. Everyone can see the laser though if they have their goggles activated, so you have to be real smart and careful about how use it and move around the map. It’s different from the norm and I have some fun with the mode.
Cross-play is also a big new feature for Modern Warfare. It’s the first time it’s ever been available in Call of Duty, and will hopefully be a sign that many more third-party games will be incorporating cross-play into their games. I haven’t been in too many cross-play lobbies, but when I have been it’s never been a bad experience. The connection was still smooth and I wasn’t getting hosed by mouse & keyboard players. It was all still fair and fun, and felt like I was still playing against console players. For those who don’t want to be in any cross-play lobbies though, you’re able to opt out of it in your settings.
Perhaps the best thing about the multiplayer is the fact that there are not going to be any loot boxes in the game at all. Not at launch, not a month after launch, not six months after launch. There will never be any loot boxes in the game at all. All new maps will be added for free for all players and all new weapons or attachments can be earned just by playing the game. The series will instead be transitioning to a Battle Pass system a-la Fortnite. Some cosmetics will still be available as micro transactions, but nothing that affects the balance of the game can be bought with real money. This is something that the fans have been asking for for years, as the loot box system was getting out of hand. It’s great to see that Activision is willing to make a change and not keep going down the loot box hole just because they make money.
Now is when we get into the not so good things about multiplayer. Challenges work a bit differently this year. There are daily challenges that change every day, and then there are missions that function like challenges always have in Call of Duty. What’s different with missions is that they are now more like challenge streams. You pick a mission set that you want to do, and upon activating it, have to make your way through it one challenge at a time. I’m not the biggest fan of this change because it means that you can only ever make progress on one specific challenge at a time. I prefer to be able to make progress on multiple challenges at once instead of being limited to one at a time. It’s a minor thing, but it’s one that I’m just not that big a fan of.
The biggest problem with the game is unfortunately the map design. When I played the beta, I had said that I liked the added complexity to the maps. It’s a nice change from the three-lane design that we’ve been getting from all the multiplayer maps for the past few games. I still like that it’s providing a nice change of pace, but at the same time it’s also harming the experience by bringing about a lot of camping. It’s incredibly common for the following to happen: you run into a building and get killed by a claymore, only to go back into the building and then get killed by a camper sitting in a corner with a shotgun. You then decide to ignore the building and go down a different route, only to get popped by someone that was sitting in a window and shot you from a distance. This can happen multiple times a match.
What also happens a lot is that you’ll check all your corners and visible windows for enemies and see no one, only to step out to move and then get shot from one of the spots you just checked. These things combined make for a very annoying and frustrating experience that takes a lot of the fun out of the game. I don’t want Infinity Ward to only make three-lane maps, but I do think that if they’re going to continue making maps with more complexity to them, that they should maybe dial down on how much complexity there is.
The spawns also aren’t the best either. This was a problem in the Beta, and it persists here as well. I’m still being spawned within feet of enemies or even within the line of sight of others. It’s not something that happens every single time I spawn, but it happens enough that it’s a problem. On top of all this is spawn trapping. It can be very easy to get spawn trapped in this game, and when it happens you’re at the mercy of the spawn system hopefully dropping you somewhere else that’s not the same place you’ve been spawned at over and over and over again. It’s one of the more frustrating aspects of the multiplayer and one that I really hope Infinity Ward addresses as soon as possible.
Even with these issues, the multiplayer is still overall a fun time. I’ve been having more good times than bad with it, and I’m excited to keep on playing and leveling up to unlock new things.
Rounding out the content Modern Warfare is the co-op content which consists of the round based Survival mode, and the mission based Spec Ops mode. Spec Ops mode originated in Modern Warfare 2 and it was great. There were different missions of varying difficulty but they were highly repayable, with you earning up to three stars upon reaching a certain criteria. The missions could also be completed pretty quickly too, which made them more enticing to play over and over again. The mode has been completely overhauled in the new Modern Warfare, but it’s not as good.
Taking place after the main story, there are four missions to complete with up to four other players. Each mission has multiple objectives to complete and take place on large maps. It’s fun at first, but these missions get tough pretty quickly as the game sends increasing numbers of enemies at you. I honestly wish the mode was more like the original MW2 version of it as that was far more fun and enjoyable to play. As for the Survival mode, it’s just like it was in Modern Warfare 3. You have to survive on multiplayer maps against waves of enemies that get tough pretty fast. Just like with the Spec Ops mode, it’s fun to play once or twice, but it’s not so exciting or interesting that it’ll have you hooked. What is nice though is that any progress that you make carries over to multiplayer mode, so you can continue to level up here as well.
On a technical level, Modern Warfare is without a doubt, above and beyond every other game in the series. This game looks absolutely fantastic.
I don’t know if I would’ve used that word to describe how a Call of Duty game looks before, but it’s just the right word to use this time around. Textures are well detailed, lighting is great, and the faces are just amazing. It’s just a showpiece all around. Sound design is another high point as well. The weapons all sound like powerful tools of destruction, something that’s never been the case before. When you add these elements onto the fact that the gunplay feels so tight, you get a game that feels really good to play.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a good game that overall falls short of greatness. It’s campaign is the best the series has had for a while now, even if it doesn’t dip as much into the seriousness as I would’ve liked. The multiplayer can be a lot of fun thanks to some great customization, fantastic gunplay, and fun modes to play, but it’s held back by some noteworthy issues. The co-op is good for a fun time once in a while, but isn’t anything to write home about. Infinity Ward has been pumping out updates for the game at a pretty consistent rate since launch and seems to be listening to the community, so I’m sure that things will only get better over time. As it stands right now though, Modern Warfare isn’t completely the grand return for the franchise that we had hoped for.
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