odern Warfare 2 (the original) is
a game that’s near and dear to my heart. It was the shooter I played most
growing up clocking in something like 24 days (576 hours) play-time. It was my
first true multiplayer experience and playing it I fell in love with elimination
games and games modes that would later carry on to Counter-Strike, DayZ and
Rainbow Six: Siege. Something about the tense situations that would arise from
only having one life was unparalleled as a multiplayer experience.
So when I heard the hype around
Modern Warfare 2022 (MW22) delivering the goods I was instantly onboard. I made
the decision to avoid the story not only until I played Modern Warfare 2019, but
when back and replayed the original trilogy and finished the MW3 story which I
never finished. Whose characters are also near and dear to my heart (Soap,
Price, Ghost, etc). While the story remains in a similar boat to God of War 3
and 2018, I did get a chance to experience the multiplayer and I have a lot to say.
First off the bat I was surprised
by just how much content there is… to start Ground War and Invasion were my favourite
modes. The Battlefield like map of Ground War provide an awesome open warfare experience
that easily overpasses its inspiration. I haven’t played a Battlefield game
this good since Battlefield 1; and it’s Call of Duty. I enjoyed Domination,
Headquarters, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed for traditional TDM. TDM and FFA are a
BIG eh. But I’ve never been a big fan of these modes especially in Call of Duty
where you usually feel like headless chickens running around in circles on a
map. I’ve never been particularly exceptionally at shooters with my slow
reflexes. So I’ve always excelled where I can manipulate the object and outwit
my enemy – hence my favouritism of Search & Destroy games. Domination and
Kill Team are staples for me in that regards, but Headquarters and Hardpoint
too me by surprise. Take an area, hold it, gain points, it moves. Simple but
fun and as it keeps you on the toes with a dynamic singular objective that
creates amazing combat scenarios.
As for elimination mode I was
left quite disappointed. Knockout is a leg above the rest where two teams
compete for a money bag and must hold it to gain points (a mobile king of the
hill like Oddball from Halo with elimination). Similar to the aforementioned modes
this creates amazing combat encounters that highlight the best parts of the
maps – with a cat and mouse spin on it as your team forms around your moneybags
VIP to protect the objective. Speaking of objectives, the decision to allow
players to choose between killstreaks or score streaks is a gamechanger. No
longer are players rewarded for avoiding the objectives. If I want to hunt heads
I can do so. If I want to sit in the back with anti-air missile and shoot UAVs while
defending an objective on Ground War I can do that too and gain my streaks while
I’m at it. One change opens up such an incredible amount of potentially for
playstyle. It must be in every Call of Duty. A few suggestions and complaints
however. Players should start with score streaks as many didn’t even know it
existed and just ignored it – which pushes players away from an objective
mindset from Day 0. That’s a mistake. Also the ability to create score/kill
streak loadouts is much needed. The matchmaking is fantastic where you can
select every mode and search – however some killstreak loadouts just don’t work
on some modes. Having a 7-9-11 kill/scorestreak works on TDM but not Search
& Destroy where you’d be lucky to get. The game modes have 3-5 rounds with
5-6 kills. That’s 15-30 possible kills across your entire team requiring both
yours and the enemy team to be wet blankets (yours slightly more than the
other). It’s just not feasible and it had me switching off elimination modes. Hostage
and Search & Destroy however doesn’t have the same oomph that it use to. I’m
not sure what it is but something in particularly that turned me off is just
how sweaty these modes have become. Due to the nature of it it’s always been a
little competitive but here it’s just downright toxic where trash talk has
become a natural part of the game modes. That’s fine I guess but it’s just not
the same to me so I choose to leave; that mode can live on in my memory. Finally
not long after this released Warzone and DMZ. These modes quickly replaced Ground
War for me. I love BRs when they’re done right. They combine the best parts of
survival games with elimination game modes. DMZ is Tarkov and Warzone 2 is a BR.
I enjoyed DMZ; the hunt loot and extract gameplay formula. But eventually it
fell off with no real metagame progression to support it like Tarkov. Instead using
a bolt-on from the main game in that you keep your guns and can enter with them
next time – pretty shallow. At the very least you should be able to extract
your cash with a rotating shop. If I want to go in geared up and I have the
liquidity to do that, why shouldn’t I? Warzone is still great if you have a good
squad as the most intense elimination game mode on the market – it’s no wonder
BRs still dominate. All these modes and I haven’t even touched the campaign or
co-op. The value here is absolutely !@#$ing incredible.
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| Sleuthing around in DMZ is intense especially when solo... |
The gameplay is weighty and versatile
– dive, slide, mount and lean around walls. But at the same time you move slow so
you’ll need to use these to your advantage (I see drop shotting returning with
this!). The perk system is great – you start with two tier 1 perks and tier 2
and 3 you unlock through the match. It’s a great way to balance people taking
Ghost in every game. Initially I disliked all the starter guns but once I eventually
unlocked a few others like my forever gun, the AK47 (or whatever its called) everything
gameplay wise came together. The degree to which you can customize guns is
insane. With dozens of guns, each with 30 attachments, then throw in perks,
tactical and lethal grenades and the combinations are insane. If that wasn’t enough
weapons having tuning where you can literally slide stats like ADS and damage
range up or down. I turned the high stopping power slow draw of the AK47 into a
quick draw murdering power house that I can run and gun with and it was
glorious. The progression system isn’t perfect however for one reason alone. There
are two levels of gates. The first being items unlock each level – for example my
favourte perk Ghost unlocks in the 50s. I shouldn’t have to grind for 30+ hours
to get this last… Just let me unlock in whatever order I want, please. If you’re
worried people will spam it before exploring other perks – then have soft gates
and make it ridiculously expensive – offsetting people who want to save up for
it from the start. Hell, it’s in the default loadouts so you weren’t that
worried. Lastly the sub-unlocks are terrible – the fact that I need to grind a
terrible gun to get the one I want is not a good system. I understand the purpose
is to have players try every gun. But when certain guns are redundant and will always
be forgotten, what’s the point of forcing players to try them in the first
place?
Previous issues I’ve had with the
games are gone. I noticed the spawns are much much better. Sure every now and
again you drop right behind someone, especially on the smaller maps. But its
noticeable rare. Compare it to Black Ops where I could lock someone into an
open spawn at the back of the map – gun them down until I get a chopper and
dogs and then no one was safe inside or out. Guns seem more balanced also. Call
of Duty has always been about fun over balance (a big reason for its success
imo) – but some guns were shocking and often got patched, notably the shotguns
in MW2. Here the approach seems to be give players full control over every
aspect of the gun with tuning to the point that they can unrealistically create
there own guns. The result in my experience so far has been no balance is
balance and fun. My biggest problem with the guns are a lot of single shot
weapons. Remove a scope from a sniper, give it an iron sight with super quick
ADS and now you have a man-dropping machine. It’s garbage and I think any
sniper other than a slow draw 50 cal should be two shots to the chest. Or at
the very least you can’t remove the scope in single-shot snipers. It seems
especially unnecessary when they give snipers the ability to quick draw
pistols. The other issues that come to mind are the maps just not feeling as
iconic as MW2. There are a few larger maps where older maps have been inserted
like Quarry and Rust – and these just seem so much better in terms of design. Afghan,
Terminal, Flavela, Sub Base, Estate, Highrise, Karachi, Wasteland and oh my god
Underpass... my absolute favourite COD map of all time. The character is
notable missing and I have a feeling why. A lot of the maps are designed in
tiers of small, medium, large. Reusing sections of a larger map for ground war
in smaller game modes like TDM. It’s clever, but the maps feel less crafted to
perfection. There’s a definite quantity of quality here. Take Taraq for
example. Plenty of ruins. On most modes other than Ground War it feels way to
open and naked - like the snipers reigning in on Blood Gulch. Now take a
similar map from MW2, Wasteland. Way less cover and way more open. The key
difference being tactically placed trenches that allow places to navigate the
open zones above. This is sorely missed in what what feels like it would be a
simple and natural addition to a Afghan guerrilla inspired map. That being said
I do feel they did the best with what they had in this mission to deliver as
much content, maps and modes as they did. It’s a concession I think is worth it
and while I can understand them not including the original maps initially, so
the new ones can stand on their own, I hope to heavens they bring them back in
the future.
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| Oh quarry my old friend... |
In my time playing I had limited
technical issues beyond crashing. Not sure whether I should be grateful for that
but it was bad. However these and the other issues aside, the metagame, content
and gameplay all combined culminates in probably the best metagame progressions
system I’ve seen in a shooter bar a few quirks. The guns and unlocks all carry
across every mode. Upgrade a gun in Team Deathmatch? Take the loadout into Warzone
where you can buy it. It’s fantastic. Now I hear there are raids coming to. It’s
clear the intention here is to supplement every shooter out there -
Battlefield, Destiny, Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six, Tarkov – as your one stop
shop. A concept that if you told me about 2 months ago, I would have laughed,
but to my surprise for the most part here it works. Throw this game into the
same boat as Deep Rock Galactic – I think this is going to be my main shooter
for quite a while.
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