Despite its initial shortcomings I did end up spending quite a bit of time in Black Ops 4, the gun play being good enough to keep me interested for far longer than I had originally anticipated. I was even playing over the christmas break, reveling in the time when all the new players came on board and I could have my fill of lobbies overflowing with people who weren’t running builds as highly optimised as mine. Of course over time it got reduced back to the stable player base, the one that is typically far more skilled and, as a consequence, much more challenging to play against. Honestly though that’s COD and I’m fine with it as by the time that happens there’s usually another title coming along I want to dig into.
I never actually played the original Modern Warfare, only coming into the series when the sequel came out. I figured if it followed the formulas of the latter, mixed in with a little bit of the nostalgia for the characters and the story, then we’d likely have the makings of a solid COD entry. Whilst that’s mostly true for the campaign I can’t say that there’s any aspect of the multi-player that’s really grabbed me and I really don’t have much motivation to find out if I ever will.
In 2019, during a covert operation to recover shipments of dangerous chemical gas headed for Urzikstan, CIA SAC officer “Alex” is intercepted by unknown hostiles who kill the Marine Raiders accompanying him, and escape with the gas. Alex’s handler, Station Chief Kate Laswell , requests the assistance of SAS Captain John Price in recovering the chemicals and de-escalating the situation with Russia. Twenty-four hours later, a group of suicide bombers, affiliated with the terrorist organization Al-Qatala, attack Piccadilly Circus in London. SAS Sergeant Kyle Garrick is dispatched to contain the situation with the assistance of Price and local police forces.Afterwards, Alex is sent to Urzikstan to meet up with rebel leader Farah Karim, who agrees to join forces in tracking down the chemicals, in exchange for his aid in overthrowing Russian forces led by General Roman Barkov.
COD is always this rather odd mix of cinema level visuals in their cut-scenes which is then strongly contrasted by the not-quite-cutting-edge visuals of the game itself. This is a design decision of course, done in order to keep the game running smoothly so that your fast-paced action adventure doesn’t ever turn into a slide show. It’s also interesting to note that this Modern Warfare also brings with it a new engine as the previous one had been powering COD games since 2005. Apart from it being the engine for COD going forwards there’s scant details about what it actually improves, apart from 4K support.
Some of the levels are quite well done, although most of them are unfortunately shown at night so you don’t get a real chance to appreciate them. The game still suffers from the usual visual confusion that goes on with these kinds of games with enemies blurring into the scenery and background objects. Over time you do get used to it somewhat but after getting hit for the thousandth time from something you can’t see it does start to get a little old. Other than that there’s not much to say about Modern Warfare’s visuals, they’re just fine.
Modern Warfare follows the standard corridor shooter tropes pretty closely with only a few little different bits here or there to show off a new mechanic the game has or to have you play through what’s effectively an interactive cutscene. The single player campaign is straightforward, offering you no influence over how the story progresses and continuing at a rapid pace throughout. There’s been a ton of work in the multiplayer with the revamped Ground Warfare mode (which used to be just larger teams for the standard game modes) feeling an awful lot like Battlefield’s conquest mode. Really there’s not much more to it than that and so if you were a fan of the original then it’s a pretty good assumption to make that you’ll like this one too.
Combat is the same as it always was, fast paced with a hail of bullets always coming your way. There are times when the combat just flows and you’ll find yourself stomping your way through a level without much being able to stop you. Then there are the times when you’ll get nailed time after time by something until you figure out the exact sequence of events you need to do in order to get through. It can be a little jarring at times when it feels like the game is pushing you to rush but doing so quickly ends up with you dying. Of course the game is running completely at your pace and does a lot to baby you through sections. Indeed it got so bad that at one point I started seeing just how far the limits were on certain things like walking into trip mines when they ask you to defuse them (protip: that doesn’t work). Still I don’t play COD games to be respected and challenged as a player, I play them so I can shooty shooty hurr durr gooooooooood.
When it comes to COD games I’m a rusher. A dumb, low skill build rusher. I play that way because COD is one of the few multiplayer shooters that enables people like me to play in this way with the tiny maps, near instant respawns and certain guns that just shred people up close. This time around though it seems like they wanted to expand the map sizes a bit more and downplay the rushing angle considerably, making my kind of playstyle not particularly viable. That’s also due to the current meta which is focused on 2 guns, the M4A1 and the 725 shotgun, both of which shut down rushers pretty damn hard. I tried my hand at Ground Warfare and I honestly just found it too frustrating to play, the large maps with numerous sniper nest spots making it a game mode that just held zero interest for me. Now given I never really got into COD multiplayer much back in the day this might be a return to form for the series, I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that this isn’t the kind of COD I like to play.
The story is fine, yet another grab bag of various war stereotypes thrown in together to give you a bit of motivation for killing the bad guy of the day. I won’t comment on the politics of the story as that’s already been done to death by multiple different authors who are far more qualified than I to comment on it. Really it’s par for the course for COD games: pretty predictable with some memorable characters and it sets up for a sequel in the most obvious fashion it could. Suffice to say I’ll be interested in comparing and contrasting COD: MW2 to its decade old predecessor.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is exactly what you’d expect from the series today. Everything follows the pattern that’s been well trodden before with the changes coming in the multiplayer, most of which are for the worse in my opinion. However I might not be the kind of COD player that this instalment was catering to as I’m very much a fanboy for Treyarch more than I am for Infinity Ward. So really there’s nothing particular wrong with this instalment in the franchise, it’s just that the changes they’ve made to formula aren’t to my taste this time around. Who knows, maybe next time they will be, and it’s not like I’ll have to wait long to find out.
Rating: 7.5/10
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC right now for $99.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 8 hours play time.
