There's nothing groundbreaking, a la Titanfall 2's set pieces, but it's comparable in that very little outstays its welcome. You'll fly exploding RC planes into helicopters for a minute or two, then before you know it, the war has moved on and pressed another toy into your hands. Apart from those stumbles, though, the action charges forward at an admirable pace. There are a few missteps, most notably a clumsy section where you have to guide someone to safety via security cameras. I don't think it would have felt so tense if I hadn't been so vulnerable, and I wouldn't have been so willing to be vulnerable if those checkpoints weren't so generous. I played on the difficulty level above normal, where being fired at for more than a second is more than enough to send you back to the last checkpoint.
I remember a retaliatory attack from the terrorists, advancing over fields under the intermittent, pallid light of special illuminating ordinance. I liked it best when the tables were flipped, though, and that darkness was used against me. Equipped with night vision googles, you're stalking enemies who barely stand a chance. Others take place largely in the open - and in the dark.
One section has you clearing a London townhouse, with claustrophobic stairwells and terrorists waiting in ambush throughout. It's varied and well-choreographed, punting you between the war-torn streets of Urzikstan and recognisable European locations. But apart from the quality of the writing and its endorsement of American interventionism, I hate to say the campaign is pretty great. They're constantly coughing up banal drivel about how they respect and trust each other despite their differences, rather than drilling into those differences. I don't find them convincing because they talk in generalities.
CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE MULTIPLAYER REVIEW PLUS
Then that war hero I mentioned, plus another near identical one. There's the leader of Urzikstan's resistance group, defending her country. You've your young British sergeant who's frustrated with his government's perceived restraint. Lines are crossed, etc., but the story's predictable and lacks convincing characters. You spend most of your time fighting them, while fussing over the fate of some chemical weapons your group has stolen from some terrorists. The Russians have invaded, under the command of a rogue general. The game is tied to a war in the fictional Russian border state of Urzikstan. This is especially striking, given one level passes off a real and questionable strike by the US Military as a Russian atrocity. When spoken by an unapologetic war hero type who's been given permission to go off-book by a US general, and given that those actions save the day, it's the view endorsed by the game. That's not just one character's view, either. It wants you to think about how war is, actually, quite bad, but still drenches everything in that familiar and all-pervading tone of "Ooh-rah! guns 'n' glory 'n' all this is justified because look, America's enemies are worse".Īs one member of your hodgepodge, globally-sourced squad puts it, "we get dirty so the world stays clean". Modern Warfare frequently and successfully tries to make you uncomfortable by getting you to stick weapons near or into civilian's faces. Or the time I interrogated a terrorist by aiming a gun at his wife and kid.
Or the section where I played as a small child, and repeatedly plunged a screwdriver through the chest of a soldier who'd just walked into my home and shot my father. The waterboarding mini-game springs to mind, where I had to press buttons while prompted to avoid drowning. I just want to make it clear from the outset that Modern Warfare contains no surprises, outside of a few scenes where excess crosses the line into self-parody. 'Of courses' are for horse critics with nothing interesting to say, however, and I'm not going to write a review filled with them. Of course a part of me likes it, and of course part of me is jaded by its similarity to CODs prior. Of course the multiplayer is essentially the same game we've been playing for over a decade, only prettier and in more flavours. Of course its guns feel good, and its explosions are many and impressive. Of course Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare has nothing interesting to say about war. Developer: Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Beenox, High Moon Studios