This year’s entry in the Call of Duty series has been unique when compared to the last few games. This time around Call of Duty is having a soft reboot, taken on by Infinity Ward. Modern Warfare looks to return to the basics of what made COD great in the first place. It looks to be more simplified than the likes of Black Ops 4 and Infinite Warfare, and upon first glance, Modern Warfare (2019) looks very similar to the Modern Warfares of old. After finishing the campaign and putting around 40 hours into the multiplayer, I’m here to say, it works. This year’s COD is significantly better than at least the last 4 entries in the franchise, not that those games were particularly bad, Modern Warfare is just much better. Modern Warfare feels just plain right, not to say there isn’t anything wrong with it though. Here is a breakdown of the bad, the average and the good.
The Bad: Gun Balancing and Camper Friendly Maps
Upon the release of the beta, there was one clear and obvious choice for what gun to use, the M4A1. It had little to no recoil and was a killer in the trenches, as well as long distance. Once you were level 4 in the beta, it was the only gun you could choose if you had any hope for a positive kill/death ratio. This had players worried about a “one gun to rule them all” situation in the game. When Modern Warfare was released, the M4A1 had little to no difference than the beta’s version. The only thing that had appeared to change was the recoil, which was marginally increased. The gun was eerily similar to that of the beta version. If I had to put a number on it, I would say I am killed 40% of the time by the M4, which would only be higher if it were not for the next gun.
The 725, you can’t talk about Modern Warfare without bringing up this over under shotgun that is primarily used for sport shooting in real life. Talk about one of the most broken guns in the history of modern Call of Duty, I mean, this gun was terrifyingly overpowered. At its peak, I found myself being killed by this shotgun around 75% of the time, and that was on a good day. The 725 had the ability of sniping (yes sniping) enemies from 60 feet away without breaking a sweat. There were videos circulating the internet of people killing other players from a distance that your average SMG couldn’t even touch. It’s truly fascinating that Infinity Ward didn’t see a problem when pushing this shotgun through the development cycle. After 2 updates that specifically pointed out nerfing of the shotgun, usage of it seems to have been drastically decreased. Even though the gun was stripped of some of it’s overpowered capabilities, it is still a very popular gun. With the 725 being so strong during the early days of the game, it is safe to say it frustrated a large amount of players to the point where they put the game down, only to play other multiplayer games with less broken features.
Now we get to the camping, a point of contention between some players. When you bring up the issue of camping in COD, you are often met with the “get good” response. But when compared with its competitors like Rainbow Six and Apex Legends, camping is brought up as an issue substantially more often. The way the lighting works in MW, other players are near invisible when they are sitting in certain corners. Certain maps like Piccadilly and Euphrates Bridge seem to outright encourage camping. With camping, comes issues that are more than just minor annoyances. When a map is full of people camping, it completely ruins the flow of the game at hand. When you can’t make any progress to get out of your spawn, you know there is a real issue. To make it even easier to camp, there are claymores in the game. Claymores are nothing new to Call of Duty games, but in MW they are a force to be reckoned with. Even with an explosive damage reduction perk, claymores still take 90% of your health away. As we all know, things like claymores and bouncing betties are a lifeline for campers and while I feel they are fine to be put in the game, their damage output should not be near as high as it is.
The Just Okay: Map design and Spec Ops
Spec Ops, a fan favorite from MW2 and MW3 is back and not really better than ever. Spec Ops in the past was a whole set of missions, not from the campaign, that you could take on solo or with a friend. They weren’t as long as regular campaign missions, nor were they directly related to one another. But they were tons of fun when you played with the right person, and they were a good side dish to what the rest of the game offered. MW Spec Ops is a lot different than it was for the last two games. For starters, there are a lot fewer missions in this version of Spec Ops. This mode also shares progression with multiplayer, but the caveat is the XP gained is so minuscule, that it doesn’t make Spec Ops worth playing if the gameplay isn’t excellent. And the issue of Spec Ops is that it does little to nothing to add to the overall experience. It is fun sometimes to have a PvE experience with your friends, but after you have completed each mission, there is very little incentive to replay any of them.
One of the more disappointing things in Modern Warfare for me is the maps. They aren’t particularly bad, but in no way are they great, or even unique for that matter. The map lineup is full of uninspired, generic settings that you would see in any war movie or game. Most of the maps melt together, to the point where I can only remember the maps I hate. As I had mentioned before, a good sum of maps seem to promote camping, which provides for wonky enemy objective play and slower pace to each match. The two maps that were launched with Ground War were more of the same. They are highly generic maps that don’t contribute to the fun that Ground War actually is. The few maps that do shine are mostly in the Gunfight playlist, which I will touch on more in the next category.
The Good: Gunfight, Graphics and Campaign.
The new and most unique game mode in Modern Warfare is Gunfight. A 2v2 deathmatch in close-quarters maps that were designed specifically for Gunfight. The match ends when each player on a team is killed, or if time expires you have a chance to capture a neutral objective. If that isn’t captured, then the team with the most health collectively wins the round. Gunfight has the most exciting moment to moment gameplay of any other game mode. It is a perfect getaway to the problems that I have highlighted in the rest of the multiplayer. To even the playing field, all four players spawn with the exact same load out, which eliminates abuse of any overpowered weapon that is in the game. The maps, like I said, are designed specifically for this game mode. They are really the highlight of all the maps that are in Modern Warfare, and there aren’t any maps that I don’t look forward to playing in Gunfight. 2v2 has been implemented in Modern Warfare 3, making it not the first COD to include a 2v2 mode. Modern Warfare is the one to get the formula right though, and it is a game mode that I encourage any player to try out if they are tired of the problems that exist in traditional game modes.
Most Call of Duties have had graphics that exceeded the quality of its peers, and Modern Warfare is no exception. But this year’s Call of Duty does more than just surpass its peers, it blows them out of the water. I am playing on an Xbox One S and have experienced very few framerate drops, even during moments of high activity. The game looks like a modern Battlefield, but runs as smooth as you would expect from Call of Duty. The lighting is excellent, other than in a few corners that make enemies close to invisible. The animations are done with so much care, that when compared to past CODs, it isn’t even close. The way your character loads a magazine into your gun gives a purpose to each mag that you put in, when in past games it just felt like an animation to show proof that you were indeed reloading. Modern Warfare is in my estimation, the best looking game of the year, which is not a thing a lot of past entries have been able to say.
The Call of Duty campaign made a big return after its absence in Black Ops 4. It was more than likely that Black Ops 4 cut the campaign so they could focus on their battle royale mode, this is something no COD has ever done before. While some COD campaigns have been lackluster, the majority of the series has put together very solid campaigns that last around 5 to 6 hours, and have been a treat when you are looking for something other than multiplayer. Modern Warfare includes the best campaign since Black Ops 1, and I believe it could have a strong case for the best COD campaign ever. This campaign was significantly more dark than anything we’ve seen in the series, other than maybe “No Russian” in MW2. This was something we had heard whispers of leading up to Modern Warfare’s release. This shows that Infinity Ward and Activision weren’t scared when they were writing/developing MW. Their ability to push out such dark subject matter, when they know this will be one of the bestselling games of the year, is a testament to the developers passion for creating what they wanted to, no matter what the media thought of it. And there really are some messed up scenes throughout the game, with lots of war crimes being committed as well as near genocide. It shows its dark features, while still remaining a cohesive story that I was eager to see that outcome of. The pacing is done very well, even though the missions are on the short side. Some of the levels are very stealth oriented that remind me of what made us love COD campaigns in the first place. If you were upset with any of the past Call of Duty Campaigns, I promise you this one is different. It is made up of everything that these campaigns have done right in the past, it is as close as you can come to a perfect first-person shooter campaign.
In the end, Modern Warfare will be the best selling game of the year, as most Call of Duties are. But Modern Warfare has a better chance to stand the test of time because of the cross compatible feature that is brand new to the series. This will provide a longer life when it comes to an active player base for Modern Warfare. Active players has always been hard to come by for COD, as soon as the next yearly entry arrives, player count falls off dramatically. I believe Modern Warfare will be different, I think it’s possible that if they fix some of the balancing issues, and add some more signature maps, it will remain some peoples go to Call of Duty game for a few years. I honestly hope that next year’s entry is just a port of Modern Warfare to next gen consoles. While that isn’t likely, I think it would really help the Call of Duty name if they can keep Modern Warfare relevant, and constantly improve on what they already have built.
