Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: 28th October 2022
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation & Steam
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
▫️ Code provided by the publisher ▫️
“Call of Duty is shit”
“No chance I play Call of Duty”
“Real gamers don’t play Call of Duty”
Six months ago, those are the sort of comments I’d have made about Call of Duty, for you see, I am no fan of Call of Duty, and never really have been. My only experience of Call Of Duty is Modern Warfare 3 on the Xbox 360, which I purchased and played out of peer pressure. Even back then, I had no real desire to play, and that thought process hadn’t changed for over a decade.
But, something changed this summer, June the 8th to be precise. The first announcement trailer for Modern Warfare 2 was shown, and to say this trailer caught my eye would be an understatement. The Call of Duty I know and remember didn’t look like this, didn’t look well, real to be honest.
Upon receiving the campaign code, I couldn’t wait to jump in and play, I did no prior research, I didn’t know what the story up until now, didn’t know the characters or any backstory for them, but one thing I can say is: that doesn’t matter, I don’t think you need too, you can treat the story like any real 80’s action movie and not get too bogged down in deep character arcs.
Modern Warfare 2 is a globe-trotting affair, starting off in the Middle East, the fictional Al Mazrah, and onto the beautiful Amsterdam (I’m sure you’ve seen the videos: Dony’s MW2 trip to the ‘Dam), Mexico and Chicago. If you saw the same video I did in June, you’ll also know there is a frantic and exciting mission aboard an Oil Rig. What all this does is, it keeps missions fresh by offering a variety of locations and settings by adjusting day time, or night time, stealth, or all out gun-fight – Infinity Ward have done a great job of making each of the 17 missions not feel like the same.
I enjoyed the setting and characters in Mexico: the story has us getting embroiled in an ongoing saga between The Mexican Special Forces, headed by the fantastic Alejandro, and the The Cartel, who are aiding the games antagonist, Hassan, who has stolen US Missiles and plans to use them to attack US Cities. Anyone who has finished the campaign, I’m sure is looking forward to being interrogated by Valeria again…
One of the earlier missions you control a gun ship, and you need to take out the enemies in an area with civilians, and you have to use your surroundings to take out enemies, but you cannot kill civilians. I found this mission quite frustrating and challenging, and kept failing due to killing civilians, which is ironic given I’m controlling British Special Forces.
A later mission, clearly inspired by Uncharted, has us jumping from vehicle to vehicle in a large convoy, after having a section of hanging upside down by rope off a helicopter, whilst trying to stay alive and stave off enemies with only a handgun. It’s a tense and exciting caper, something I wasn’t expecting. In my ignorance I assumed every mission was go here, kill them, go there, kill them, rinse and repeat for 17 missions, yawn yawn yawn.
There’s an incredibly tense mission near the start of the game, whilst controlling Gaz and supported by Price, your job is to infiltrate a base, armed with Sniper Rifles. The tension begins when enemies come towards you, you’re tasked with hiding your gun and lying in the long grass and blending in with your camo outfits. As the enemies approach they are literally walking past you, whilst if you’re on PS5, your dual sense is vibrating like a panicking heartbeat.
Near the end, there is a mission called ‘Alone’ controlling Soap, unarmed, you have to survive getting from A to B in a tight, confined town, either avoiding enemies, or crafting materials to stealthily take them out, to make your way back to the waiting Ghost. You can pick up materials to craft weapons, akin to The Last Of Us. Some trial and error is required if you want to do this completely stealthily, again, another tense and rewarding mission.
Despite not knowing who my characters were, I can say with great aplomb that Ghost, Price & Soap are fantastic characters: they are well written, incredibly voiced by all, and each offer a different narrative to the missions they are involved in. The mocap and voicing, character details and graphics are as good as any AAA game, this probably took me by the most surprise playing Call of Duty over a decade later.
Obviously, being Scottish, I am biased, so Soap, our Scottish contingent, is obviously the best. Previously he was voiced by Kevin McKidd, but either Kevin was too busy, or too big these days, but he no longer voices Soap, instead he is voiced by Neil Ellice. Some of the banter between Soap & Ghost is hilarious and Scottish authentic.
“It’s pishing of rain out here”
“English, Soap?”
“It’s raining fuckin’ heavy”
I’m delighted the writers kept Scottish colloquialisms in, and didn’t try and Americanise our beautiful phrasing, to use the words of Soap; “You can boil yer heid”, with that.
Ghost might possibly be the coolest character I’ve seen in gaming, if you’re unfamiliar he’s the guy with a skull face mask that is never removed. Full of mystique and intrigue, Ghost acts as a mentor to Soap, his guidance over comms was always extremely welcome to me, the player, and always appreciated his input, especially in the aforementioned ‘Alone’ mission.
The gunplay is terrific, guns feel weighty and realistic, I’ve often said nothing is close to Destiny 2 for gunplay, but MW2 comes very, very close. Sadly, I do feel your backpack is underused, apart from specific reasons, and throwing the odd flashbang, I felt I didn’t have too, or need to use any backpack accessories. I didn’t use C4 (except when needed for THAT battle…) and only used the heartbeat monitor when the game suggested too, so I would have appreciated more reasons to use support equipment.
The game isn’t perfect by any means. The biggest flaw for me is the checkpoint system. Normally I appreciate a good checkpoint for when I undoubtedly die, but Modern Warfare 2 has too many, far too many. To the point where many times I died, or maybe did something wrong, and the game respawned right at the event again, right to be shot by the same enemy, who just killed me. I much prefer set respawn zones, or just cut down the number. I’d rather have to re-do 2 minutes of a game, than be killed over and over at an unfortunate respawn/save point.
I played the game on regular difficulty, and I found this a good fit for my FPS abilities. There were some periods where the difficulty spiked, quite significantly, and some people may not enjoy this. I won’t pretend I wasn’t frustrated at times, but the overall challenge is good at these spikes.
The last point to make about Modern Warfare 2 is the visuals. If you had told me that one of the best-looking games of 2022 would be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I’d have pished myself laughing. But it is, it really is. From the detail of the world to the character design and visuals, it’s a fantastic representation of AAA current-gen graphics.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, the game plays out like an 80’s action movie as I mentioned, it’s never going to be the most sophisticated game, but do you want that, really? Mission variety is refreshing, visuals are outstanding and characters are realistic and a key reason why this is a brilliant offering.
-Dony
