Entertainment

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Review – Infinity Ward is back

Written by ABC AUDIO on November 5, 2022

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Review – Infinity Ward is back

By Stefan Stuursma on Wednesday November 2, 2022 at 4:00 PM

Three years after the original reboot, it’s time for the next installment in the renewed Modern Warfare series. With a bombastic single player, extensive multiplayer and spec-ops mode, Infinity Ward offers a nice package. The Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 review tells you whether this new bang fest is worth your hard knocks.

The Holy Trinity

There’s a lot to like about Call of Duty this year. Microsoft buying Activision and the question of whether the mega franchise will soon be available everywhere. Fortunately, the shooter giant is not going anywhere at the moment and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is the example of that. The latest shooter from Infinity Ward once again mixes the nostalgic basis of the old Modern Warfare games and throws a brand new next-gen sauce over it.

The basis is of course the multiplayer, which again this year millions of fans can blow their lead every day. The spec-ops mode is also back and gives you the opportunity to liberate the world in co-op from all the terrorist evil in the world. But the perfect stepping stone can be found in the single player, where you can experience a roller coaster ride full of explosions and spectacle in a few hours.

And that single player in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is again one big reunion of familiar faces. Captain Price, Soap, Ghost, Gaz, it’s a selection from the list of veterans who are making themselves heard again. The 2019 reboot took that well-known cast and successfully mixed it with a somewhat grim tone. That style is continued in this sequel, with this time of course a brand new baddy.

A brand new roller coaster

The mysterious Hassan wants revenge on the west after a cold-blooded murder of his uncle. It’s up to you as an elite soldier to track down and nip this new threat in the bud. As a Call of Duty campaign confirms, you do that by traveling all over the world and shooting around a lot. In that sense, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t do anything new, but oh how it plays nicely.

Where one moment you are swimming through the waters in Amsterdam to track down a cartel, not much later you are shooting soldiers in Spain with your sniper rifle in a ghillie suit. The variety offered by the 17 missions in total here is top-notch and the entire single player feels like a well-thought-out action movie with no moments of rest. The plot offers little and is even predictable on many points, but that does not detract from the gaming experience in this case.

The sleek gameplay and also eye-catching graphics of Modern Warfare 2 ensure that Infinity Ward puts one of the better Call of Duty campaigns on the table here in recent years. Characters look realistic and environments are to die for. A lot of money and labor has been put into the campaign and it is bearing fruit. So take that single player with you, even if you buy the game only for the multiplayer. It’s a perfect warm-up for the real thing against your online rivals.

On the road together in Spec-Ops

Or you can choose to give Spec-Ops mode some love first. With three missions available at launch, you can explore Al Mazrah together in the Spec-Ops with a friend or any other player. With more missions en route post-launch, the Spec-Ops content feels more tightly designed than the missions from the previous installment of 2019, but with more freedom than the classic Spec-Ops from the original Modern Warfare 2.

Broadly speaking, you summarize the missions in Spec-Ops as: go to the objective, kill the bad guys and escape. One mission focuses a bit more on stealth, while another (Defender: Mt. Zaya) lets you fight guns blazing against hordes of enemies. It’s a nice trip between the campaign and multiplayer, but it’s clear that the focus is less on the Spec-Ops.

With the introduction of Kits you can take on a specific role during a co-op mission and these Kits should also play a larger role in the upcoming Raid missions. But for now, at launch, Spec-Ops is mostly a snack that will leave you hungry before the big feast.

Online warfare in multiplayer

Because where the campaign and Spec-Ops are fun, the great success of the Call of Duty franchise lies in the extensive multiplayer. This year too, Infinity Ward has worked hard to serve a cohesive and above all entertaining main course on the table. And the company generally succeeds in this, although there are a number of irregularities that can be pointed out.

The tight gunplay and fast time-to-kill are in any case present and that ensures that the multiplayer also feels great, at least in the tested PlayStation 5 version. It’s clear that the working base from Modern Warfare 2019 returns here, but developer Infinity Ward has thrown up points that didn’t work in the original. For example, the map design is better tailored to the specific modes, making the overall experience feel much faster and clearer.

Ten smaller maps are available for the standard six-on-six matches, in addition to the five arenas designed specifically for the larger Ground War and Invasion modes. This way there are fewer dead spots on the maps and you will always run into someone, friend or foe. Most of the well-known playlists can also be found here, including Free-For-All, Team Deathmatch, Hardpoint, Domination and Search and Destroy.

Successful and less successful additions

Infinity Ward adds two new features with Prisoner Rescue and Knockout, both of which seem to be inspired by games like Rainbow Six Siege. Respawns are also disabled here and rescuing hostages sounds very familiar to players of the Tom Clancy game. It’s a nice addition to the mix, but it’s anything but groundbreaking. We are dealing here more with a new flavor in the mix than a brand new end product. Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer feels quite familiar as a whole.

You level up your rank again during your multiplayer adventure to unlock new things, including perks, gadgets and weapons. Although unlocking weapons in Modern Warfare 2 has been made unnecessarily complicated. To get some weapons and attachments, you must first get other weapons to a certain level. This instead of just linking weapons to a player level. Even if you almost touch the maximum level 55, it may just be that you can’t use a whole bunch of weapons yet and that’s just annoying.

You don’t want to play with weapons unnecessarily that you don’t like working. The chance is small, but it is hoped that Infinity Ward will tweak this system, because in its current form it is unnecessarily complicated. A better addition than the more extensive Gunsmith function that lets you tweak weapons until you weigh an ounce. It may be too much for casual players, but fans of the game can now completely tweak their favorite weapons to suit their playstyle. It’s the little bit of depth that Call of Duty can definitely use.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Review – One hell of a shooter

At the bottom of the line, Infinity Ward manages to deliver a little innovative, but surprisingly fresh and entertaining shooter with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The single player is again a rollercoaster ride of excitement, with tension, drama and of course bumps of lead to shoot. The Spec-Ops is a nice extra, but does not leave a very impressive impression. No, the real deal is in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer. With rock-solid gameplay, a pleasant time-to-kill, maps that better match the experience, and plenty of fun modes to choose from.

Some of the design choices, including unlocking weapons, are a bit iffy. But there are also a number of welcome additions. With the current solid foundation in place, it is now hoped that Inifinity Ward will also work out the last hitch. Modern Warfare 2 as a total package is one of the better Call of Duty experiences we’ve had the pleasure of embracing in recent years.

8.5