Call of Duty is directly appealing to your nostalgia, and that much is obvious from the title. The second entry in Activision’s new reboot trilogy, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II continues the new story of Soap MacTavish, Ghost, and Captain Price. This time ballistic missiles have been stolen by a terrorist group, and it’s up to the team to take them back, while taking out the terrorists that intend to use them.
It’s a classic Call of Duty story you’ve already seen a dozen times before, but Modern Warfare II sets itself apart with presentation and gameplay variety. Starting with that presentation, the game manages to pull off some truly incredible visuals, while holding a steady 60fps on PS5. Fans have already shared videos of a near-photorealistic portion of Amsterdam, and compared the in-game location to the real-life inspiration. The similarities are truly striking, and Modern Warfare II manages to impress throughout.
An early rocket setpiece is another incredibly well-realized moment. You guide a high-speed rocket through mountain passes, with the ground whizzing past below you. It moves incredibly quickly, but it looks real in the moment while zipping along at a pace that forces you to pay attention. That pace continues for much of the game, until it’s essential to slow down, and those slower moments feel refreshing.
Many of the missions here have been inspired by the original Modern Warfare trilogy. Operating an overhead gunner while taking out foes as your troops on the ground engage? That’s definitely a Modern Warfare mission, as is the one where you wear fully ghillie suits with another soldier as you crawl past armed guards. These missions were iconic for a good reason, and they feel shockingly good now too.
Many missions have you forcing your way forward, taking out enemies with the weapons you find along the way. Bursting into a factory, enemy bases, laying siege on an annexed school, the explosive Call of Duty you know is here, but it takes so many moments out to change things up. Infiltrating a boat dock to sneak aboard a barge requires you to take out all soldiers guarding the area as silently as possible, and you can dive underwater to avoid their sight, before popping up and throwing knives or pulling them into the water. These gameplay switch-ups don’t often last long, but they come frequently enough that the campaign consistently manages to feel fresh and interesting mission-to-mission, which is more than what can be said for the likes of Call of Duty: Vanguard.
Of course, it doesn’t always hit quite right. One mission is based on an armed convoy, and the entire mission is spent driving, leaning out of the window to shoot, and even leaping to other vehicles to commandeer them before driving further down the convoy. It feels cool at first, but you’ll get tired of it before you feel it ending – and then it’ll actually continue for twice as long as you feel it should. Tonally, other missions are a bit weird too – yes, Amsterdam is gorgeously realistic, but stabbing and shooting cartel members in the street, having people run while screaming, and then acting like it was a fairly low-key and quiet affair is a bit… odd.
The polar opposite can be said of a late mission, Alone, which strips you of your advanced military technology, forcing you to scavenge for materials and engage with a unique crafting system in order to arm yourself and move past a series of armed guards that are patrolling a mostly empty district. It’s incredibly tense as you break into shops in order to find materials and open up safes, all before finally finding a few weapons and ending things in the explosive manner you’d expect. The slow build is pacing perfection, and while not all missions are this good, they’re mostly better than you’d expect.
And it has to be said, while the final enemy you kill in this game is named Hassan, you do for a period fight against a blonde white boy named Graves that runs an American PMC and betrays the team. It felt as if Call of Duty’s revolving door of Russian, Nazi, and Middle-Eastern foes stopped, and there was a moment of self-reflection on American imperialism. Only a moment, though, because foreign people do indeed get shot.
Ultimately, this is still a Call of Duty game and it can’t stray too far from what makes this series what it is, and it just doesn’t boast the kind of creative eccentricity that Titanfall 2 had years ago, but Modern Warfare II is one of the better Call of Duty campaigns. The story is almost exactly what you expect from the series, but the gameplay features enough action setpieces mixed with quiet yet engaging moments to keep you invested throughout. One of the best Call of Duty campaigns in recent memory.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
