Call of Duty’s had its ups and downs in terms of quality over the past few years. As the setting and gameplay became ever-more futuristic a large portion of gamers were yearning for a return to the boots-on-the-ground combat that made COD such a staple. Luckily, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare breathes life back into a franchise that’s slowly losing steam.
Modern Warfare acts as a soft reboot or reimagining of the brand. Captain Price- arguably the series’ favorite character – is back and thrust into a global conflict that slowly reveals itself to be a proxy war. We see this battle from three different viewpoints, the first being Alex, an operative of the CIA, Kyle Garrick a member of S.A.S., and Farah Karim a commander for the Urzikstan Liberation Force. The result is a campaign that I believe to be the best since the original Black Ops.
The three different perspectives provide for an interlocking, globe-trotting adventure. Missions are quite entertaining and inventive. One mission in particular features a military takeover of a town from the perspective of a young child. Another sees Price clearing a house floor-by-floor with you in the tail, making for a tense experience. In retrospect, some missions in this game stayed with me in a similar way to CoD 4: Modern Warfare’s “All Ghillied Up”.
These missions are complimented by Infinity Wards enhanced engine. Gun sounds rival that of Battlefield and have a hefty impact, while shadows can pinpoint an enemy if closely observed. Facial/motion capture is also stunning, with minute attention to detail in each character that never felt uncanny to me.
That isn’t to say the campaigns without flaws. The main crux of the story is saying “war is bad”. War is bad, but the general message Infinity Ward is trying to tell sometimes gets overshadowed by the gamey aspects.
For example, the game begins with a tense cutscene involving a suicide bomber, this is a subject that should be treated seriously if you’re wanting to make a point. What ends up happening is a mission that involves various bombers that run at you and blow up, if you die a mission tip pops up advising you to shoot bombers in the head to take them down. In any other CoD, this would be acceptable, but in contrast to what the story means to tell, it’s a slight misstep.
Much like Modern Warfare’s campaign, multiplayer is a breath of fresh air. Infinity Ward took a step back and re-evaluated what made the studios multiplayer so great in the past. All the favorite modes players have come to love and expect are here, it’s in the engine and gameplay that makes this multiplayer standout, however. The addition of mounting your weapon against walls, crates, barrels, make for more tactical gameplay.
With the new additions to the engine, the ground war game mode feels big. Big enough to feature tanks, ATVs, and helicopters. There’s some inspiration from the Battlefield series. You can spawn on members of your squad, parachute in from a helicopter, or camp with your sniper and rack-up killstreaks if you so choose. These changes with weapon leveling make for immense replayability.
However, there are two things that I found somewhat disappointing. Maps in standard modes are slim, and the quality of these are divisive. There’s also the quality of connection with the server. Multiplayer challenges sometimes don’t track so it’s confusing when you don’t know how close you are to completing it. The issue happens with gun attachments and leveling.
Besides these complaints multiplayer still provides intense moment-to-moment gameplay, especially during objective-based modes. There’s also the ability to personalize your identity in traditional CoD fashion. Calling cards, emblems, sprays, and weapon blueprints can be unlocked.
Spec Ops act like a continuation of the campaign of sorts. You can partner up with your squad and complete missions that range from horde to objective-based missions. In all honesty, this game mode broke my heart. As a person who religiously played MW2’s Spec Ops and enjoyed the tense, relentless gameplay, Modern Warfare’s iteration loses that appeal. The most notable cause of this is technical performance.
Matches that were played with strangers were interesting, to say the least. Falling through the map, hard crashes to the dashboard, and disconnection were some of the issues I ran into, with the crashes being the most prevalent. Another reason why this game broke my heart is the level of difficulty found within. It’s almost too punishing to the point of being unfair. This could be a personal problem since I’m much older from the days of playing MW2 in high school.
Technical issues aside Modern Warfare is a return to form for the franchise. Featuring the best campaign and multiplayer in recent memory as well as an enjoyable – yet flawed – Spec Ops mode.