Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Year: 2022
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
PEGI: 18
Published: 18/12/23
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
PEGI: 18
Published: 18/12/23
Infinity Ward’s reboot of the Modern Warfare series in 2019 was as revolutionary for the Call of Duty franchise as the original was for the industry in 2007. It totally revamped the entire Call of Duty experience, featuring a gripping campaign, tight multiplayer, and a gorgeous new engine.
So it’s fair to say my expectations for Modern Warfare II were high. But it seems that Infinity Ward’s success may have just been a flash in the pan.
Three years after the events of the first game, Task Force 141 in a joint operation with the U.S Army Shadow Company assassinate General Gorbrani of Al Qatala. Six months later Gorbrani’s second in command Major Hassan Zyani is found to be in possession of a devastating American missile system and partnering with the Las Almas drug cartel.
Determined to stop Zyani, and find out how he procured the weapons, TF141, Shadow Company, and Mexican Special Forces engage in a globe trotting joint operation.
So it’s fair to say my expectations for Modern Warfare II were high. But it seems that Infinity Ward’s success may have just been a flash in the pan.
Three years after the events of the first game, Task Force 141 in a joint operation with the U.S Army Shadow Company assassinate General Gorbrani of Al Qatala. Six months later Gorbrani’s second in command Major Hassan Zyani is found to be in possession of a devastating American missile system and partnering with the Las Almas drug cartel.
Determined to stop Zyani, and find out how he procured the weapons, TF141, Shadow Company, and Mexican Special Forces engage in a globe trotting joint operation.
I really hate to say it but I found MWII incredibly boring and rather tedious. A massive shame because I was such a fan of 2019’s Modern Warfare. The story itself lacks everything that made the first game exciting. Following an interesting opening that sees you assassinate Gorbrani the game slows down to a snails pace and fails to pick itself up until the final few missions, by which point it’s far too late.
The characters are flat and uninspired, even those who were previously very deep and interesting such as Gaz. Farah who was a favourite character of mine from the first game is relegated to a cameo in a single mission. Alejandro from the Mexican Special Forces is given the most development and it’s halfway decent but nowhere near as extensive or well done as most of the characters from the first game.
I’m going to delve into spoilers here too as the game’s big narrative moment is the same one as the original MW2 in 2009, and that’s that Shadow Company and General Shepard turn on you right around the end of the second act. So you end up fighting Russians, Iranians, Mexicans, and US PMC’s for the final act. Where Shepard’s betrayal is genuinely surprising in MW2 (2009), here in MWII (2022) it’s just kind of confusing. Turns out he was going to sell the very weapons you’re searching for to the Russians, but they stole them instead (makes sense, why pay your enemy if they’re stupid enough to offer you weapons). But when TF141 and the CIA come close to putting two and two together he just orders Shadow Company to kill them all, which doesn’t go to plan either. Like I’m not even sure what his plan was had he managed to kill off Soap and Ghost because the CIA still would have worked it out so he just makes things even worse for himself. At least in MW2 (2009) the only people who knew Shepard had gone rogue were TF141 and by getting rid of them he would have covered his tracks entirely.
Zyani is also barely present as a villain, instead being overshadowed by Shepard’s betrayal for almost a quarter of the game, only to then pop up right at the end for the final mission. Whilst the villain in MW 2019 wasn’t exactly memorable, at least the intriguing plot and compelling characters made up for that, whereas MWII has none of that.
The game is artificially lengthened through the use of an inflated difficulty. I’m perfectly comfortable playing Call of Duty on Hardened difficulty, it gives me challenge whilst rarely frustrating me enough that I want to throw in the towel. But with MWII I found myself lowering the difficulty to Regular and still struggling with a number of sequences in the game. A lot of it felt designed around trial and error, with so many stealth sequences that result in fail states if you are seen, but enemies seem to be magnetically attracted to your exact position so it’s kind of impossible to avoid them.
Two cases of extreme difficulty I remember distinctly were the mission ‘Alone’, where you are stripped of all your weapons and equipment and must sneak through the streets of Las Almas unseen. You’re also permanently injured so you move slower and whilst I like the idea of this mission, you’re frequently forced into engaging into combat with enemies that can put you down in a single bullet. Dropped weapons only have a couple of bullets in and are not enough to penetrate the armour most enemies wear, and then they finally stretch of the mission pits you against several enemies in a small environment with little to no ammunition. It was a nightmare.
Then the second time was in the penultimate mission, Ghost Team. On the whole three mission had been great and showcased all of MWII’s mechanics really well, and then to end the mission you’re dumped into an arena to take on a tank that can only be damaged with C4 found in the arena. This tank just stayed on my tail and gunned me down time and again, but if that didn’t get me then it was the constant influx of enemy reinforcements that did. I just managed to get extremely lucky with some decent checkpoints and I only died around fifteen times before I succeeded. A potentially great encounter ruined by bad game design.
There’s also a couple of missions that are stretched out far too long and so they stop being fun. They happen to be one after another too which doesn’t help. Recon By Fire attempts to imitate CoD4’s All Ghillied Up but only serves to frustrate with an attempt at open ended level design that falls flat and just makes the mission longer than it needs to be. Then Timing and Violence sees you working your way up a military convoy in the desert Uncharted 3 style, but once again this sequence just lasts far too long and stops being interesting less than halfway through.
The characters are flat and uninspired, even those who were previously very deep and interesting such as Gaz. Farah who was a favourite character of mine from the first game is relegated to a cameo in a single mission. Alejandro from the Mexican Special Forces is given the most development and it’s halfway decent but nowhere near as extensive or well done as most of the characters from the first game.
I’m going to delve into spoilers here too as the game’s big narrative moment is the same one as the original MW2 in 2009, and that’s that Shadow Company and General Shepard turn on you right around the end of the second act. So you end up fighting Russians, Iranians, Mexicans, and US PMC’s for the final act. Where Shepard’s betrayal is genuinely surprising in MW2 (2009), here in MWII (2022) it’s just kind of confusing. Turns out he was going to sell the very weapons you’re searching for to the Russians, but they stole them instead (makes sense, why pay your enemy if they’re stupid enough to offer you weapons). But when TF141 and the CIA come close to putting two and two together he just orders Shadow Company to kill them all, which doesn’t go to plan either. Like I’m not even sure what his plan was had he managed to kill off Soap and Ghost because the CIA still would have worked it out so he just makes things even worse for himself. At least in MW2 (2009) the only people who knew Shepard had gone rogue were TF141 and by getting rid of them he would have covered his tracks entirely.
Zyani is also barely present as a villain, instead being overshadowed by Shepard’s betrayal for almost a quarter of the game, only to then pop up right at the end for the final mission. Whilst the villain in MW 2019 wasn’t exactly memorable, at least the intriguing plot and compelling characters made up for that, whereas MWII has none of that.
The game is artificially lengthened through the use of an inflated difficulty. I’m perfectly comfortable playing Call of Duty on Hardened difficulty, it gives me challenge whilst rarely frustrating me enough that I want to throw in the towel. But with MWII I found myself lowering the difficulty to Regular and still struggling with a number of sequences in the game. A lot of it felt designed around trial and error, with so many stealth sequences that result in fail states if you are seen, but enemies seem to be magnetically attracted to your exact position so it’s kind of impossible to avoid them.
Two cases of extreme difficulty I remember distinctly were the mission ‘Alone’, where you are stripped of all your weapons and equipment and must sneak through the streets of Las Almas unseen. You’re also permanently injured so you move slower and whilst I like the idea of this mission, you’re frequently forced into engaging into combat with enemies that can put you down in a single bullet. Dropped weapons only have a couple of bullets in and are not enough to penetrate the armour most enemies wear, and then they finally stretch of the mission pits you against several enemies in a small environment with little to no ammunition. It was a nightmare.
Then the second time was in the penultimate mission, Ghost Team. On the whole three mission had been great and showcased all of MWII’s mechanics really well, and then to end the mission you’re dumped into an arena to take on a tank that can only be damaged with C4 found in the arena. This tank just stayed on my tail and gunned me down time and again, but if that didn’t get me then it was the constant influx of enemy reinforcements that did. I just managed to get extremely lucky with some decent checkpoints and I only died around fifteen times before I succeeded. A potentially great encounter ruined by bad game design.
There’s also a couple of missions that are stretched out far too long and so they stop being fun. They happen to be one after another too which doesn’t help. Recon By Fire attempts to imitate CoD4’s All Ghillied Up but only serves to frustrate with an attempt at open ended level design that falls flat and just makes the mission longer than it needs to be. Then Timing and Violence sees you working your way up a military convoy in the desert Uncharted 3 style, but once again this sequence just lasts far too long and stops being interesting less than halfway through.
It’s not all bad though. Modern Warfare II plays almost identically to its predecessor, which is probably the highest recommendation I can give it because I loved the way MW 2019 felt to play. Character movement is weighty, the POV is tight, the guns feel meaty to use, and each mission does feel like it’s got something unique to offer (although most of them aren’t particularly good).
MWII’s only noteworthy new feature is the backpack, which gives you the ability to pick up objects from the environment and craft objects in the same style as The Last of Us. This mechanic is woefully underused, only actually being properly useful in one or two missions; but also why bother including a crafting mechanic in Call of Duty. Like it’s giving me the option to build a smoke bomb using components I find lying around, or I could just pick up a smoke bomb from a nearby ammo crate, I think I know what I’m going to go for because picking up a pre-made one is significantly less fad than scouring an active battlefield for components to craft one.
From a presentation perspective the game is on par with MW 2019 which is a shame considering I was playing on PS5. I wouldn’t say there’s any discernible improvement to the audio or visuals. That being said, it’s a very good looking game overall. The new engine introduced with MW 2019 is put to good use here with some more varied looking environments to show off a bit more of what the engine is capable of.
I do take issue with the awful user interface though. My biggest issue with Modern Warfare 2019 was how unfriendly it was for a player to just get the game installed and running. But MWII takes it one step further by not only doing everything its predecessor did (as well as Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard), but now also presents everything as a cluttered mess in a poorly labelled multi-game menu system.
Activision have decided to collate all the CoD games since MW 2019 under one interface with MWII, meaning that MWII’s modes are hidden deep in menus behind Warzone content and as the time of writing new content for the recently released MWIII. It shouldn’t be this hard for me to put a game disc in and start the story mode, but I had to download over 150GB of extra data across multiple content packs and then solve the Rubik’s cube of a menu system to even find the campaign. Total disaster doesn’t even begin to describe it, and easily the worst interface I’ve ever seen in a video game.
MWII’s only noteworthy new feature is the backpack, which gives you the ability to pick up objects from the environment and craft objects in the same style as The Last of Us. This mechanic is woefully underused, only actually being properly useful in one or two missions; but also why bother including a crafting mechanic in Call of Duty. Like it’s giving me the option to build a smoke bomb using components I find lying around, or I could just pick up a smoke bomb from a nearby ammo crate, I think I know what I’m going to go for because picking up a pre-made one is significantly less fad than scouring an active battlefield for components to craft one.
From a presentation perspective the game is on par with MW 2019 which is a shame considering I was playing on PS5. I wouldn’t say there’s any discernible improvement to the audio or visuals. That being said, it’s a very good looking game overall. The new engine introduced with MW 2019 is put to good use here with some more varied looking environments to show off a bit more of what the engine is capable of.
I do take issue with the awful user interface though. My biggest issue with Modern Warfare 2019 was how unfriendly it was for a player to just get the game installed and running. But MWII takes it one step further by not only doing everything its predecessor did (as well as Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard), but now also presents everything as a cluttered mess in a poorly labelled multi-game menu system.
Activision have decided to collate all the CoD games since MW 2019 under one interface with MWII, meaning that MWII’s modes are hidden deep in menus behind Warzone content and as the time of writing new content for the recently released MWIII. It shouldn’t be this hard for me to put a game disc in and start the story mode, but I had to download over 150GB of extra data across multiple content packs and then solve the Rubik’s cube of a menu system to even find the campaign. Total disaster doesn’t even begin to describe it, and easily the worst interface I’ve ever seen in a video game.
Multiplayer is a solid offering once again. It’s feels a bit lighter and snappier than MW 2019, but it’s hardly a twitch fest. But once again there’s no real alterations from the last couple of Call of Duty titles. Whilst the homogenisation Activision are aiming for can be beneficial to present a more unified experience across Call of Duty titles, if they’re all just going to play the same then the franchise identity is kind of dying because it was once to varied from year to year. The return of third person game-modes is very welcome and hasn’t been seen in over a decade from Call of Duty multiplayer. Whilst the core game-modes are the bread and butter of the experience, dabbling in the third person modes was a nice change of pace.
Spec Ops this time around comes in two varieties. The tried and tested mission mode which sees you and up to three other players engage in small objective based missions similar; as well as the new Raid mode which puts a squad of players through their paces by placing them in a considerably longer and more difficult mission. Both modes continue the storyline of MWII, but much like the previous Modern Warfare it’s an incredibly janky way to experience story content.
Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to play either of these modes because I couldn’t find a match after around half an hour of trying, and attempting to organise a group of friends together was even more difficult. So long story short, I can’t really say much about Spec Ops, but I can confirm it suffers from the same story delivery problems as MW 2019, in that some of the content is locked behind Warzone and due to the revolving door of content some story material has gotten lost along the way.
Modern Warfare II is a shadow of its predecessor. Unlike the original Modern Warfare 2 (2009) which arguably improved on its predecessor in a number of ways, Modern Warfare II (2023) only ever makes strides backwards. A less interesting story, poorly designed missions, frustrating difficulty spikes, a stale multiplayer offering, and a coop mode that’s dead only a year after it launched. It’s far from the worst the franchise has to offer, but it’s definitely a massive disappointment coming off the back of Modern Warfare 2019 it’s hard not to feel let down as that was such a reinvigoration of the franchise.
Spec Ops this time around comes in two varieties. The tried and tested mission mode which sees you and up to three other players engage in small objective based missions similar; as well as the new Raid mode which puts a squad of players through their paces by placing them in a considerably longer and more difficult mission. Both modes continue the storyline of MWII, but much like the previous Modern Warfare it’s an incredibly janky way to experience story content.
Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to play either of these modes because I couldn’t find a match after around half an hour of trying, and attempting to organise a group of friends together was even more difficult. So long story short, I can’t really say much about Spec Ops, but I can confirm it suffers from the same story delivery problems as MW 2019, in that some of the content is locked behind Warzone and due to the revolving door of content some story material has gotten lost along the way.
Modern Warfare II is a shadow of its predecessor. Unlike the original Modern Warfare 2 (2009) which arguably improved on its predecessor in a number of ways, Modern Warfare II (2023) only ever makes strides backwards. A less interesting story, poorly designed missions, frustrating difficulty spikes, a stale multiplayer offering, and a coop mode that’s dead only a year after it launched. It’s far from the worst the franchise has to offer, but it’s definitely a massive disappointment coming off the back of Modern Warfare 2019 it’s hard not to feel let down as that was such a reinvigoration of the franchise.