Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Review
The violence in Modern Warfare 2 is relentless and shockingly graphic. It’s not like Infinity Ward has deliberately taken Call of Duty into simulation territory, but the shorter time-to-kill has brought the series into an uneasy alliance with the genre. The end result is a fast-paced first-person shooter in which every shot matters and failure to react quickly enough to a reload can be fatal. That tension creates thrilling theatrics throughout the campaign, and it leads to both frustration and elation in multiplayer, with the pendulum swinging from one emotion to the other with each earned respawn and killstreak.
Call of Duty’s culture shock is that a few bullets can mean the difference between life and death, a shock made satisfying by the game’s weapons, ballistics, and animations. The small- and medium-caliber weapons (SMGs) snap, the assault rifles really roar, and the marksman rifles are incredibly powerful. Placement and positioning are more important, as is controlling the urge to make erratic movements and fire at moving silhouettes. While playing Modern Warfare 2, your character will become weaker, it will also have access to more powerful weapons and equipment.
Rather than completely rewriting the rules of engagement like its brilliant predecessor did in 2019, Modern Warfare 2 tries to reaffirm and improve upon them. Use stealth and speed to your advantage, and think strategically to gain an edge. This is the foundation for a remarkable 17-mission journey throughout Mexico, Spain, Amsterdam, and beyond. In addition to the polished set of mechanics and systems that are introduced gradually throughout your campaign to stop another global catastrophe, the IW 9.0 game engine also serves as the basis for the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer experience and Warzone 2.
Modern Warfare 2 is viewed as a showcase for the franchise’s future in many ways. Even though they have a lot riding on their shoulders, Infinity Ward has shown no signs of cracking under the stress. After a tumultuous few years, Modern Warfare 2’s campaign proves that the series is finally on the right track. Considering that Black Ops Cold War bombed and Vanguard was just a stopgap to keep up with the rest of the industry, this new shooter is a breath of fresh air.
The visual fidelity is so impressive that it deserves its own paragraph. One of the best-looking new-gen experiences is Modern Warfare 2, which does a fantastic job of showcasing the capabilities of the Xbox Series X and PS5. Infinity Ward does everything it can to hide the fact that its playspaces are little more than wide corridors with incredible draw-distances, but the cutscenes are rendered at near photorealism and the character models find solid ground in the uncanny valley. The use of light and shadow is awesome, as is the contrast drawn through night and interior levels.
Over the course of 20 years of Call of Duty campaigns, players have done everything from snipe enemies between space asteroids to crawl through dirt after a nuclear explosion. While Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t introduce any truly original scenarios, it does breathe new life into fan favourites. The campaign kicks off on a high note with an updated version of “Safe House,” which ushers you down cramped hallways lit in the grainy hue of night vision goggles. Modern Warfare 2 avoids QTE-torture and, thankfully, never returns to its predecessor’s worst tendencies from that point on.
True renditions of songs like “All Ghillied Up” and “Death from Above” are what you’ll find instead. Incredible assaults on wonderfully staged military compounds, prison complexes, and oil rigs, and a tight mixture of scenarios that emphasise the necessity of a change in strategy for survival. Computer-controlled foes press positions relentlessly, flanks are tricky to break through, and recoil management is just as dangerous as armoured foes. The original MW2 made headlines in 2009 thanks to a controversial mission called “No Russian,” and it’s worth noting that MW2 doesn’t produce anything as thematically ambitious as “Liberation” from Call of Duty: WW2.
Despite the campaign’s expertly crafted, formulaic familiarity, its success lay in the amount of personality Infinity Ward gave to Task Force 141 and their allies in Los Vaqueros. Modern Warfare 2 focuses on the blossoming friendship between Soap and Ghost, with Price and Gav taking more of a supporting role. A timed dialogue option gives you control over the tone of the conversation as the two sneak through hostile territory without any supplies, creating makeshift weapons and bad military jokes. At a later time, you and Ghost are guiding each other through a compound via CCTV cameras while exchanging colourful, if occasionally obscene, words of encouragement. In a show where character rebirth and bonding opportunities are so rare, this is a refreshing change of pace.
If the campaign of Modern Warfare 2 finds its groove when you’re methodically rationing rounds and reacting to threats on little more than a hair-trigger impulse, then the multiplayer will find a groove that’s strikingly similar. The Call of Duty series has never asked its players to slow down; since 2005, in fact, it has actively encouraged players to sprint between firefights with one eye pinned to the mini-map. However, Modern Warfare 2 is quick to punish those who instinctively lean on the left stick.
Due to the rapidity of TTK, mistakes are difficult to rectify. In all game modes, from Team Deathmatch to Hardpoint and Domination to the newer but less exciting Prisoner Rescue and Knockout, strategic positioning and restrained firing are crucial in order to achieve victory. When you’re surrounded by soldiers, sprinting is like sounding a death knell. Although reloading after every shot can provide a satisfying snap, doing so too frequently can leave you unprepared to deal with unexpected threats.
These modifications make multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2 enjoyable, until they don’t. Since players can’t use the mini-map for basic navigation without an active UAV, the skill cap has been significantly raised; the shorter, sharper engagement time is more intimidating, if not downright punishing, at times. An intriguing metagame has also begun to develop, in which a Pistol can feel more viable than a Shotgun in close quarters if aimed above the shoulders, and a specialised Marksman Rifle can feel more flexible at medium range than a well-balanced SMG. True to form for Infinity Ward, the Assault Rifle is still the most powerful weapon in the game, regardless of the distance between enemies.
It’s fair to say that the 10 default maps included in Modern Warfare 2’s core 6v6 multiplayer modes are a mixed bag. Some stages significantly deviate from the standard fare of Call of Duty map design, but others, like Mercado Las Almas, Crown Raceway, Breenbergh Hotel, and Zarqwa Hydroelectric, showcase Infinity Ward at its finest. You’ll miss map voting especially when the nightmare arena Santa Sea Border Crossing enters the rotation and displays all of IW’s worst tendencies.
The days of spraying and praying are over in Modern Warfare 2; all it takes is one or two well-placed trigger pulls to move closer to calling in a killstreak. The pace will pick up, and you’ll probably like it if you can get on board with the more moderate approach to action. Even though there is a chance that the disparity between players in matchmaking will widen significantly due to unnecessary complexity in weapon customization and progression systems. Too many choices are buried deep within too many complicated menus.
Weapons have a maximum of five attachments, which is more manageable than Vanguard’s ten but still so disorganised as to be useless. Modern Warfare 2 makes you play with weapons you don’t like to unlock attachments for the ones you do, while some attachments are universal across weapon classes while others aren’t. It’s easy to get flustered when customising your loadout, and I’m never sure if the weight or balance changes I make to my weapons actually improve their handling. That’s made worse by the fact that, once you’ve maxed out a weapon, you can further fine-tune its attachments; this leads to a lot of min-maxing, which can get old fast. The new system of Perks, in which two are equipped passively and two more unlock at certain thresholds mid-match, can also be criticised for being too restrictive in comparison to the leeway you’re otherwise given.
The mainline Call of Duty games have lacked focus since Warzone’s release. They seem to have had trouble living up to the bar set by Modern Warfare and competing with a battle royale mode that flourished when given time to expand upon the groundwork laid by Modern Warfare. If you’re looking for a great place to jump into Warzone 2, look no further than Modern Warfare 2, the logical progression of where Infinity Ward left off in 2019. Not everyone will enjoy the game’s faster, more unflinching approach to firefights, but those who do will have a blast.
