Why Is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare SO AWESOME?! And... BAD?!

the full release of Modern Warfare 2019 is here I don't remember the last time I was this excited for a Call of Duty game but it was proudly the Wii version of Cod three nothing can really top that the trailers for modern warfare were so epic so visceral and intense the gameplay looked totally unique a far cry from Call of Duty's typical standards the story trailer showcased some unbelievable graphics I mean captain price ain't never looked this dashing before I'd like to take his fine ass on a date the waiting anticipation the beta's have all passed into the beforetime and now we can put on our act man goggles and take a look at the semi finished product that is not advanced or infinite or ultra advanced infinite but modern warfare 2019 Infinity Ward has certainly made an impact with their latest release however it's not all good and gravy people's reactions seem to be just as polarizing as they were for the last eight games in the series I can't play I can't [ __ ] play this game right now I don't want to play there's one there's some truth to both sides about how people feel about this game modern warfare is not perfect but how do we sort out the brown-nose praise from the unreasonable criticism and find the truth about the quality of this game well that's what I'm here for it modern warfare is already a massive success according to Forbes making over six hundred million dollars in three days and for the first time since advanced warfare it is confirmed question mark that this game won't have any loop boxes how exactly modern warfare will be monetized down the line remains to be seen but what can be seen is that 120 gigabyte download regardless of how you feel about modern warfare there were so many things we all looked forward to a new engine no loop boxes the return of Captain Price and a rebooted narrative no Lube boxes a selection of maps beyond small three lane garbage an overhauled progression and customization system this butt plug not being in the game modern warfare despite its unoriginal name seems to be infinity ward's greatest attempt at revamping this franchise the game brings to the table some of the biggest changes and improvements we've seen in a long time but with great change comes great responsibility and in doing so modern warfare also introduces several new issues oh yeah we're gonna talk about that as Call of Duty truly evolved alongside its brand-new engine or has it regressed even further does the campaign prove that these games should have a single player how did the multiplayer turn out why do some people love the maps and others hate them and what about the return of spec ops well let's strap on our night-vision goggles take the globe's off and kill civilians straight into this have you ever been so hyped for something so unreasonably pumped to get your hands on it that you didn't even know what you would do when that moment came that was me giddy as can be popping in modern warfare for the first time the first thing I want to talk about is spec ops and ho-ho oh boy do I have a lot to say this mode seems to have flown completely under the radar in the past spec ops had always been infinity wardshaven for PvE content it's a part of the modern warfare franchise that has served as a place to chill out from multiplayer and just have fun but it could also double as a real challenging experience if you craved that though basic and modern warfare 2 there were so many missions to try out 23 of them in fact and you could tackle each one with a buddy and co-op you had ones where you'd ride a snowmobile down a mountain or you had to infiltrate a gulag prison there was a mission where you held off enemy forces using claymores predator missiles and you would snipe them down from the roofs there was so much variety and all the missions were memorable as hell the grind for stars or a faster time it was a thrilling side gig right for expanding upon which mw3 rightfully did improving the mode in every single way with separate progression tons of new missions and an all-new survival mode that you can play on every level and even DLC for those hardcore fanatics that wanted more but spec ops has laid dormant for eight years and now it's finally made its glorious return did you think I was gone forever I had immensely high expectations for spec ops and I wanted to see what Infinity Ward could do with it in the modern era of gaming so how has Infinity Ward improved upon this formula well they haven't in fact and I'm not exaggerating when I say this okay spec ops in modern warfare 2019 is not only one of the weakest PvE experiences in cod history it is a complete and utter disaster the likes of which I have never seen where do I start where do I even begin well you've got your four standard operations which doesn't seem like much but let's check out the classic mode first alright hello to any Content here hello maybe you have to beat the level first before they show you the other ones you know kind of like a tutorial so the mission is called safeguard and it Jesus that scared the piss out of me and getting shot at before the games even finished loading let this serve as the perfect illustration for spec ops overall well safeguard is pretty basic your helicopter is shot down right away and then you get bombarded by enemies while your teammates stand there in the t-post real pretty so you're basically trapped in this small area fighting off hordes of enemies until help arrives you know it almost plays like a round of survival unlike in previous games you don't really get clear instructions here's the weapons caches itself you claim oh so if you've got any left differential positions let's go how about some objectives on screen maybe it's whatever you hold down for 12 minutes or so get to the helicopter and then you fly away all right well that kind of sucked balls but now let's see what other missions we unlocked are you are you kidding me the next evolution of spec ops my ass one mission one mission ain't this the fucus thing you've ever seen a whole tent dedicated to a single mission did they seriously Bank on adding all of the content through updates but what's the point of even having this section of the game if this is all you have to give us it looks embarrassing keep in mind folks modern warfare 2 had 23 missions at launch modern warfare 3 16 missions and survival and you know what else where's the difficulty setting where are the stars are we even graded on anything ever heard of leaderboards Infinity Ward is this even spec ops as a hardcore fan from years and years ago this mode is completely unrecognizable to me what time hell are you and to make matters worse apparently there's even a rampant glitch where the helicopter doesn't let you board at the end that's right the one classic mission in the game currently doesn't even work for some players that's not even the worst part it's not even the end oh hell no we're just getting started with this [ __ ] fest now alright spec ops has five total missions for Xbox and PC gamers one of them is a total bust so these have got to be pretty great right to make up for it wrong so I hopped into a public match of operation headhunter with one of my buddies things seem to be going well we didn't really know what to expect for the first ten minutes it was fun took out the lieutenant's nice nice on our way to the stadium and then the game drops a hot wet bucket full of diarrhea all over us that was pretty challenging so we got a couple more buddies in tried operation coup falta we went on a nice little Joyride I popped in my Kenny Loggins CD and we are all excited for a new adventure and holy [ __ ] our car blew up instantly draining all our armor the enemies were alerted to our presence and in an instant we were under fire from every direction we spent five minutes trying to get a foothold somewhere trying to regroup and advance thirty meters closer to the objective it took five minutes to do that and then we died okay okay maybe it's a bit of a grind I can respect that a bit and alright you could say it wasn't the best move to drive straight in but what a ridiculous punishment for a simple mistake that players are inevitably going to make for 13 minutes we couldn't even make it to the first objective mind you all of us were Call of Duty veterans we all had mics open communication strategy and we didn't do a goddamn thing there was one mission where we progressed enough to get onto an airplane it was mile-high club all over again hell yeah let's go we fought our way through the cabin under a time crunch disarmed the nuke and jumped for our lives it was tough but after 20 minutes or so we were able to beat at least one of the operation what it's it's not over we just jumped out of an exploding airplane how is that not the end well we get to the next part and then they drop barrels of dog puke on us all over again of course we died and it was at this moment that I started to ask myself is this the SpecOps mode we were promised am I missing something I started to question everything and I have confirmed after eight attempts that these operations are the most insanely difficult infuriating thing I've ever encountered in a Call of Duty game you think world at war on veteran is hard that's cupcakes [ __ ] right there it is so bad so unfair it almost can't be believed every operation plays out the same you begin with your buddies you're all confident and ready to have some casual fun and then in two minutes it turns into a complete sweat fest - game [ __ ] see you try to get to the objective and maybe you're lucky and complete a couple but then you always get to a part where the game stonewalls you you'd think you could push forward but you can't because there's so many bad guys look at this just look at this what am I supposed to do in this situation so you try to carve a path but they never stop respawning so you're constantly pinned down taking fire trying to reload trying to refill your ammo trying to set up some kind of a [ __ ] defence but then your teammate goes down and you'll run to revive them but you can't run to revive them because there's a hundred guys shooting at you so you try to clear them out but you can't because they keep respawning but then you get down and your teammate has to run for cover he tries to clear up the soldiers himself but there's too many you haven't even scratched to deaden them he goes down you go down you die your other teammates die and now you have one person who just sits in a corner with a shotgun shooting any guys that come by waiting for everyone else to respawn that is SpecOps operations in a nutshell it's an absolute nightmare the mode never lets you breathe never relent even if you push through an area killing everything enemies will spawn behind you you already cleared that area why are they coming from there you are never safe and it makes it damn near impossible to even approach the objectives this [ __ ] over the comms keeps telling us to plug into the network for 15 minutes as if we're not [ __ ] trying I need to breathe I need to breathe give me a second okay Wow was this mode meant to be played with six people eight ten who knows there is some strategy I guess you can customize classes bring in killstreaks fulfill certain roles to help your team I was looking forward to this sandbox being utilized in a PvE mode except none of it matters because you are so ill-equipped to handle what the game throws at you the difficulty goes beyond what I've just explained and shown you fight juggernaut switch in some missions make up about 1/4 of the enemy numbers you encounter and they soak up so many bullets you think you're firing Nerf darts at them died die come on die please die what the [ __ ] [ __ ] man it gets even worse if you die when you respawn there's a glitch that prevents you from using any of your munitions or killstreaks to help your team why but why why would you do that why would you do any event and then when you respawn you don't start with the loadout weapons you chose refilled equipment and ammo no you hold on to the weapons you last head and you still have to reload from your previous life like cut me some slack dude what did I do to you spec ops is so horrific ly buggy and clearly not tested there's the section in headhunter where you have to run up a ramp into a plane and it's surrounded by the most egregious invisible barriers I've ever seen it is awe-inspiring just how awful poorly programmed and incompetently designed this mode truly is no checkpoints no nothing it just goes on and on most players won't be able to even experience the content this mode is supposed to offer because nobody is going to be able to beat these operations we paid upwards of $60 and we can't play this I can't do it $60 just to get fist [ __ ] I don't need to pay $60 for that I could go sit on a cucumber if that's what I was into you literally get shot from every conceivable Direction possible at all times what is shooting me right now what you tell me what shooting me I'm thrown on top of a building I can't see anything it is unbelievably shockingly bad check this out the AI is so cold-blooded they are shooting through a solid brick [ __ ] building right now what the [ __ ] playing these operations is like trying to run up the staircase in Mario 64 when you don't have enough stars it's like trying to do a soul level 1 run on Dark Souls using only your flaccid penis to control the mouse and keyboard you might as well try halo 2 legendary all skulls on with a blindfold and a guitar hero controller it's like playing cruel smash yeah except cruel smash wasn't one-third of the [ __ ] game it was in that's my biggest gripe here people this is supposed to be one third of the modern warfare experience and it's completely utterly broken Infinity Ward has made their biggest fuck-up to date this needs to be patched immediately no it needed to be patched on October 25th no it needed to be patched before the game came out single-handedly the most pathetic mode I've ever seen in a triple-a game and if you don't believe me try it yourself go ahead be my guest try to beat all these operations and while you're at it why don't you try and discover a cure for cancer and shitty game design because Infinity Ward could really use that now I need to settle down and talk about the multiplayer I need to take a nice shower so I can wipe all the SpecOps doodoo off my body to be honest I'm disappointed with the multiplayer in a lot of ways an ecstatic and others how can there be so much right with modern warfare and yet so much wrong with it as I've been writing and editing this review Infinity Ward has come out with some much-needed updates and I'm sure that many of the problems I discussed will be fixed in time but that doesn't mean they never existed as I pointed out before modern warfare is the slickest sexiest looking Call of Duty game ever and the designers are taking an approach of realism and seriousness to the game no more dumbass emotes and loot boxes that are embarrassing to witness or ridiculous cartoony weapon skins this game has the best gunplay in the series by far incredible stunning visuals buttery smooth handling and controls authentic and deadly sound effects all the markings of a professionally made game I find it amazing the attention to detail with the weapons it's uncanny if you're a firearm fanatic aka an American you will be enthralled by although my neat details in Polish of the weapons this reddit post by typical Andrew so it's just a glimpse of the attention to detail and it's one of the many reasons Modern Warfare feels so immersive sound design is epic everything from the noise the guns make when you shoot them their reload sound effects they went all out here the transition to night vision mmm sound so buttery a callback to the original game and I love it on the more mechanical side of things quick play and multiplayer is a great addition allowing players to sort their preferred game modes like titanfall 2 did instead of going into individual playlists it streamlines the experience and keeps game modes that aren't played as much more in the loop because people can still search for them at the same time but there's a huge problem with the modes and we'll get to that later what I really love are the missions its Modern Warfare's version of challenges right you also got dailies and whatnot but these give a more defined focus and they progress onto new ones as you complete them until you get the final reward you're able to choose whichever mission you want to focus on and it gives you some things on the side to look out for and do as you play your standard multiplayer they give some pretty great rewards and incentives for doing them and Wow it has nothing to do with loop boxes what a revelation people it's impossible when you take away that typical hit a slot machine for reward dynamic it forces the developers to get creative with how they dish out the rewards and this is the result moving on to the gunsmith and armory it is more exquisite and refined than it was in the beta unlocking attachments crafting your own personalized weapon it's just so beautiful to behold like creating my own painting it's a work of art weapon customization has never been this good in any game I've ever played before ok that is saying a whole lot there is so much versatility to be had here with the pic 10 system gone equipment tacticals 3 perks primary and secondary badda-bing badda-boom fan-favorite noob tubes return you can also pick a grenade launcher that launches incendiary rounds are a smoke screen you can have a hybrid optic or no optic at all or a reflex sight you can get extended mags a suppressor extended barrel grip on the handle and the scopes so many scopes and it's neat how much information they give you about your weapon and the pros and cons of each attachment I think it's really cool how they change the way you unlock camos - by levelling your gun up you unlock different tabs which have you grind for separate challenges like hip fire kills point-blank kills etc this is a breath of fresh air from the typical get 8,000 headshots challenges all the camos look dope and fit in with the aesthetic without being too over-the-top or cartooning so we've talked about most of the good now let's discuss the bad customizing your operators was pretty hyped up and Wow it's about as bare-bones as cosmetics go if you can even use that term you choose one guy and then you choose an outfit no mixing and matching nothing unique or special about it it just sucks they also added executions in this game oh sweet without gritty and realistic the game is over all these animations are going to be so brutal someone was paid to animate this someone was paid to do this for work in a game that made over 600 million dollars let me just say that of course the executions are horrifically buggy matter of fact reviving people in SpecOps was horribly buggy to to some of the Jiang kiya stannum ations I've ever seen it's kind of appalling that Halo Reach in 2010 had way more fluid and badass assassinations modern warfare has some weird-ass bugs man just one match we've rolled up and just clipped straight through the gate I had to do a double take because I thought I was imagining it another time an allied helicopter defied space-time and physics just to kill me and what the [ __ ] is happening here who knows but on a more serious note one of the biggest criticisms of multiplayer are the call-outs there's one time I was sneaking up on a guy and my soldier blurted something out about his mother and he didn't take too kindly to that it sucks when your character chooses to reveal your position without your consent for no reason and then you get riddled with bullets because of it when you should have had the upper hand call-outs should only be called out to your team your voice shouldn't disclose your position to the enemy like a freaking dumbass sometimes they also try to call out helpful information like enemy at the destroyed building well which one testicle breath there's like 14 of them it happens multiple times every game it's ridiculous and it's honestly just a huge distraction okay weapon balance ideally a multiplayer shooter with so many weapons and such a huge focus on customization would want a very diverse selection of weapons to be used across the board but prior to the November 12th patch go on live the weapon balance in this game was the hugs you almost never played a match where the m4a1 or 725 didn't dominate the kill feed these two weapons alone were destroying the sandbox and making players feel forced to use them in order to compete luckily they have patched both weapons and I can respect Infinity Ward for how quickly they've acted and listened to fans and even though the game is a lot more playable the real conundrum is why it had to be this way at all Call of Duty has been coming out with a new release every year for over a decade they've handled things like shotguns claymores and overkill perfectly fine in the past how did they make such a massive oversight with these weapons and the balance of the game take something as simple as stun grenades disabling claymores they had to patch that feature in that's the way it already worked ten years ago it's like we're all guinea pigs as if our $60 is a Buy in for a six month journey as the game takes hundreds of updates to get to where it was supposed to be at launch this type of gameplay should not have progressed past alpha and especially not beta testing when it comes to matchmaking we have several issues here as well I've watched and noticed that the game will look for matches with higher ping why well that's because of skill based matchmaking or at least that's what I assume it feels like the game matches players not based on the best connection but on their skill level I had a great first few games but since then have ran up against sweaty tryhard like none other using every tactic in the book to get an advantage it's frustrating but this is how you're gonna run the matchmaking then just make a ranked play list for Christ's sake also the lag compensation / net code is horrific you'll often find yourself getting shot at and you think you ran out of view work ducked behind cover but you didn't not in that person's game and that person's game you're dead nobody is really talking about the lack of game modes which is something I noticed right away Call of Duty has historically offered a pretty wide array of modes enough that it has a little something for everyone with such a wide fan base with diverse interests the cod community needs a wide diverse selection of modes to play and with such a long history of game modes from previous entries you'd assume that modern warfare would have enough to satisfy all players and your assumption would be it's given me halo 5 flashbacks with how little content this game launched with stopping stop launching your games with such barebone features although they have recently patched in hardpoint and Kill Confirmed but I'm not sure why those things had to be patched in personally I'm a cod fan that mostly enjoys objective games with more than one life so I have domination headquarters ground war and hardpoint four ways for the multiplayer to hold my attention dad ain't [ __ ] you spent all this time crafting the best weapon system in cod history but you don't have gun game anybody remember capture the flag all these huge dynamic maps will be pretty awesome to play infected with 1240 or to even 64 players why not who wants a tense match of one in the chamber I know I would anyone missing some slick drop zone action and for the love of God where is demolition so unless Infinity Ward hops on the update train immediately well let's just say I'm gonna get real tired of headquarters and domination but we can still take a look at the modes we do have gunfight though so good it got its own beta and it is pretty damn good the maps are fantastic I love the variety and custom classes they give you it's a great addition to the lineup of content in modern warfare and if you'd rather not deal with getting ass blasted by all the meta weapons or if you're tired of regular multiplayer it's a nice distraction there's tons of nooks and crannies to outmaneuver your opponent really a mode of mastery and skill of course your success is very dependent on your teammates so hopefully you don't get stuck with some jag on who's afk the whole match another thing that was teased in the trailers was all the night-vision aesthetics right I love the laser sights on the weapons and the limited HUD really makes for an immersive multiplayer experience definitely one of the most underrated parts of modern warfare and now that I think about it this is a new twist kind of on TDM so I'll give you some respect points Infinity Ward another big addition was ground war I don't even care that it's a straight-up ripoff of conquest from battlefield in the OG battlefront games the mode works - fantastic success within Cod's mechanics and sandbox vehicles make their big boy debut up in here they have not seen the light of day in multiplayer since a world - app war you'll see tanks mongooses helicopters trucks all patrolling the map it's chaotic fun at its absolute best although in some areas people will just camp in clean house like there's no tomorrow and since all 64 players have their kill streaks active makes the mode really feel like a battlefield hahahaha but ground war has its share of flaws for one you can't squad up with more than four people you're telling me the biggest mode in cod history doesn't allow you to bring all the homies in with you second the matches end in like 10 minutes with 64 people you'd think the games would last longer but no I expected this to be like all-out warfare instead there's like this rush to have fun before the game ends ground war only had two maps at release and they have their share of problems - which we'll talk about it's a nice experiment but like every other aspect of Modern Warfare just doesn't have the content to sustain long-term interest at this moment killstreaks have finally returned to call of duty and what seems like ages modern warfare everything has a place even the shield turret which is real annoying to lunk around can be fun at times the sentry turrets are also clunky to use and I wish it was like modern warfare 2 where it had a gold outline showing you where you can put it aside from that the ac-130 chopper gunner and holy Jesus the emergency airdrop have made a comeback as well in some ways it feels like a much more balanced version of mw2 s killstreaks which is a sentence I never thought I'd say personal radar is a nice cheap UAV and the counter UAV has a really cool effect where it distorts all your user interface love the cluster strike and direct airstrike where you have to be in the line-of-sight to call them in one of the reasons modern warfare is so addicting is because the kill streaks are so fun to use they knocked it out of the park here y'all ready for me to talk about the map design now all right here we go I got so hyped up here in the developers talk about their design philosophies and how they were Loki [ __ ] on Treyarch and sledgehammer for their over reliance on basic three lane maps it was everything I had asked for and talked about in my Call of Duty reviews so why am i less than thrilled let's talk positives first overall the multiplayer rewards strategic thinking instead of mindlessly sprinting into one of three directions and playing that your reflexes and netcode are better than your opponents it's an old-school Call of Duty philosophy harkening back to the original games but in some ways they've taken this too far maps are a lot more complex and clustered in terms of design there's so many areas to shoot and get shot from it keeps you on your toes no matter where you are there's tons of flanking routes so you never feel like you don't have a handful of options at any given point and you can get real creative with some of the ways you hop around the map and the secret spots you can find and get this we have maps with more than two story heights whoo she did it lads we effing did it we brought variety to Call of Duty map design it's not just three lane garbage anymore another positive or negative is there are no remakes in this game and one or two to pad out the variety wouldn't have been bad though and then the ground war maps everything goes get a load of this in tavis district there is not one not two not three not four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 or 15 but 16 flights of [ __ ] stairs see how it's a shoot off from up here I'm having more fun than a squirrel and a peanut convention the ground war maps are massive it's a trip to see so many players running around shooting at each other from all different angles and while I love these maps there is an inherent flaw of too many snipers on too many different buildings because you can get a helicopter and just jump down in parachute you can basically pick wherever you want and just slice people on the ground you just kind of have to have to take those [ __ ] sniper shots okay now that that's out of the way problem number one some maps and modes just don't work well on especially the 10 V 10 maps domination is not fun it just becomes a straight up camp fest problem number two the maps all have a very similar aesthetic which is miserable it's either a city a factory a warehouse a sandy warehouse I get it this is modern warfare not rainbowdash warfare but does everything have to be so gray problem number three this is a big one the content is spread too thin some of these maps are specifically geared towards two V to 10 V 10 and 32 V 32 lobbies strictly going by the numbers of standard multiplayer maps for every game in the franchise Modern Warfare's tied with Call of Duty 3 for the second fewest amount of maps at launch beating only cod World War 2 which had a measly 9 however if we aren't counting 10 V 10 maps then modern warfare only has seven plus one with shoot house this is why people are getting bored with the game most players don't like the maps we have and the developers made the assumption that players would dive into every mode in map when the reality is some people just focus on one thing so if you don't play gunfighter ground war all the time the developers spent on those two modes doesn't really affect you so when combined with the scarcity of game modes the say me looking aesthetics modern warfare once again does not provide the amount of content it needs to keep players coming back problem number four my boy Fabian sums it up perfectly in this tweet the map design went from formulaic to formless personally I prefer more complex map design but it's also essential to have some simple maps to the last four entries in this series had almost exclusively small three lane maps with no verticality but with modern warfare we've gone to the complete other side where all the maps are complex and huge I don't know why it's so hard to provide a generous mix of both when previous games in the series had easily done that but Infinity Ward is working on this and they just added shoot house which plays great very fast-paced small three lanes but that's what I'm saying this is the only map in the game currently that's like that the flow is all over the place the lanes aren't particularly defined gunrunner in Hackney yard are two standouts from the beta but oftentimes you get these tiny miniscule sight lines the people camp in and shoot you down from problem number five the biggest of all what can really kill the fun and call of duty window warfare is camping now it's no secret that whatever the strongest strategy is people are gonna exploit that and Call of Duty has always had issues with campers but it has never been this obnoxious people think it's exclusively the map design that inspires the campers but truthfully it's all the mechanics surrounding the maps that make camping so viable why is restocking claymores two of the first things unlocked and why is spotter aka sitrep not unlocked until level 38 with restock you can just keep slapping them s'mores down on the ground players under 38 have no real means of countering that even when you get spotter the dam perk doesn't work here's how it's supposed to work you see that I'm not gonna run into that ya know this perk is busted another issue is the footsteps now this is what footsteps sound like in real life and these are footsteps in modern warfare why does this encourage camping well you don't make footsteps if you don't move and players who want to kill your annoying camping ass wife they'll run to you most times in my experience the spawning has been pretty good but at times it is quite ridiculous the 10 v10 Maps anuya palace Euphrates bridge are clogged peak are awful and it seems like these maps spawn you 70 plus meters away from the objective at all times yet players need safe zones so they can spawn in and not get killed immediately but this is absurd one third of the map should not be entirely dedicated to safe spawning it's excessive and no action ever goes on over here it has the same problem as ground war with more players you expect more action but these 10 v10 maps are so huge that there's actually less action I've actually stopped playing 10 v10 modes because the three Maps they have are so god-awful you want to know why people camp because it takes like 15 seconds to run to the part of the map where the enemies are and yet it doesn't sound like much but if you die ten times in a game you've just spent two and a half minutes of the match running up to the middle do you like earning those kill streaks - hey so do I now go out in the middle and try to take an objective no right let's just go to the bottom it's unfortunate you know I was playing a match and this guy was complaining about how the campers were getting all the kills and he just said well if you can't beat them join them it's like that's the play style that the game is balanced to promote and a lot of people don't want to camp but they feel forced to you either die a rusher or live long enough to see yourself become a camper also mounting makes weapons extraordinarily accurate which is just another incentive to lock down an area and stay there this is the saving grace everything that people have complained about with modern warfare are things that can be fixed with some core balance changes new maps modern warfare can be one of if not the greatest Call of Duty multiplayer experiences ever but there's no telling how long it will take for that to come to fruition after the shitstorm surrounding tray X decision to not include a campaign in black ops 4 I had no question that Activision would mandate a single-player campaign for modern warfare an Infinity Ward made sure to let everyone know that's what they were doing no Russian has nothing on this game it's gonna be based on real world conflicts hot damn so controversial war crimes atrocities because you need to watch things die from a distance I long considered the days of quality Cod campaigns over but the trailers got my Makarov pumpin yet something felt weird this was a new game set in a new modern warfare universe with the same characters would it simply retell the story from the first game I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into but I knew soon enough the game opens up with the leaders of the Alcatel a terrorist group the butcher and the wolf as they monologue about their purpose which is about the extent of their motivations for being the bad guys we are hey yo pass that [ __ ] dawg yo that is clearly weed the cinematography in this scene is excellent as it portrays these soldiers preparing for something one man gets up walks outside and you better own Wow what a fantastic opening cut to 24 hours earlier and the American military are moving to intercept a Depot of chemical gas held by General Barkov Russian bad guy number six so a lot of the missions take place in the fictional country of isaac stan not to be confused with afghanistan kyrgyzstan asshole's Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan the greatest nation in the world although later the game references the highway of death a war zone during the Gulf War that was attacked by American Canadian British and French forces but in an attempt to frame the u.s. as the good guys Forrest says the Russians bombed it during the invasion the reason I bring this up is framing it's a great idea to set the game in a fake location and use real incidents and conflicts as source material so Infinity Ward can be authentic while also having the freedom to portray this nation however they want but if you're going of reference real events you probably shouldn't swap out the countries involved it's disingenuous and doesn't improve the story at all so we take control of one of our main characters Alex as we go in dark into the forest the new engine really makes this game look incredible I can only imagine what it looks like in 4k we come across a compound start scouting the area and you know what may have [ __ ] all this stuff let's go in swing it oh hell yeah I love the smell of napalm at night moving in on foot we see the compound is toast flames everywhere towers collapse not three minutes after bomb in the area you get a throwback to world that war where we see helpless soldiers as they struggle to survive and this is what mahram warfare does really well it doesn't make you feel good about the violence or killing people at times it makes you feel guilty part of the reason we disconnect ourselves from the reality of what the game is showing us is because most military shooters don't take the time to humanize the enemy but we still have a mission to do so we sneak our way slowly through this after a shootout we progress into the warehouse and search for the gas lights go out kill the power and hot damn I am on my toes right now Modern Warfare's campaign is full of surprises guys coming out of the woodwork [ __ ] you see that fight you move slowly and methodically anticipating the next time someone's gonna pop around a corner in the clean house mission you corner this guy in a room and he has to hide under a bed to shoot at you with nowhere else to go I like this it's not just enemies blindly running towards you all the time within the first mission I knew this game was gonna be a blast because the game is never over indulgent in action sequences where you fight off 18 helicopters 27 boats 3 million bad guys and the droid army so we locate the gas a job well done take us home oh no that guy's brakes stopped working we're under fire it looks like we're done for but these guys aren't trying to kill Americans and so they speed away taking the gas with them looks like we aren't the only ones trying to take down Barkov modern warfare also does this cool thing where it transitions from the cutscenes into your characters view it's so seamless and really immerses you in the game so [ __ ] has really gone down and Colonel as well recruit some extra help who's it gonna be ladies and gentlemen Captain John price [Music] flash forward and now we're in Piccadilly in the shoes of sergeant Garrick trying to stop a terrorist attack time to blow the lid off this joint boys oh don't make me do it man don't make me they set off the explosives and now it's a war zone civilians are everywhere and you've got to watch your fire Jesus Christ everyone's dying all the civvies running away the frantic cries over the radio as you and your team try to control the situation it's pretty powerful stuff all while giving the player complete control so you work with local cops and run around taking out all the terrorists you can even halt their execution of hostages man that's cool you try to rip open this debris but of course there's a guy with a knife behind it how predictive oh we're saved but by who Captain John Bryce so you and the bearded legend squad up and locate a group of hostages but something's not right no more time Doug I can't help you what we do prices what do we do Wow this game is awesome in the aftermath Derek tells price how he isn't thrilled with how things went down they said it's in how fast so everyone can just keep pretending with all war yeah the [ __ ] century that is why if we got our hands tied just take the bloody gloves off a fight the dialogue here is fantastic there's so much character development and you can tell that price is going to become something of a mentor to Garrick and price does recruiting Garrick under his command we switch back to Alex who is looking to gain the help of a militia group led by Farah Karim and her brother hadir she is one tough cookie and hadir a straight-up homey the three work together to end the Russian occupation of Isaac Stan this is where we come across one of the more unique missions we've got to sneak through to plant explosives to distract and destroy the Russian forces instead of having a big dumb shooting gallery like usual minor warfare takes this opportunity to show us a story in game they do some world building and it's awesome we see how the Russians treat their prisoners and it makes you feel vulnerable scared but I want to take a moment to go into more detail on the game played Infinity Ward has paced the game so expertly and although it's only about six hours it's a thrilling ride from start to finish clean house is probably the most iconic mission here where you have to infiltrate this house and it is so tense every step you take feels like an eternity as you go room to room sweeping and clearing out the all khatallah terrorists there's one time a man's holding a woman hostage and you take him out thinking you saved the day but it had to put her down to get missions where you use explosive drones or you infiltrate a hospital disarming traps there's one where you have to escort a woman using the security cameras and if you give her the wrong directions at the wrong time pop she gets got but my favourite mission is going dark where the game completely opens up giving you three objectives to tackle in a nonlinear fashion you could honestly replay this mission eight times and still see something new there's so many unique gameplay scenarios that keep the game fresh like using players to illuminate the battlefield until it goes dark and then you have to pop another one highway of death is another highlight a deer gives you this sick ass sniper rifle to recon the enemy's position and just like an all ghillie dup you use the wind to lead your shots but it ain't so simple because the all khattala forces move up on your position they send tanks trucks and mortars your way so you're managing the forces that are in your face and the ones that are on their way it's an excellent defense mission back to this story it basically revolves around America's efforts to take down all khatallah barkhov and stop the use of chemical gas as a weapon over the course of the game Farah hadir price Alex and Garrick take part in missions to push back the tide against these evil organizations the team is able to kidnap the wolf and hold him in an American Embassy but all khatallah is not having that [ __ ] and a bloodbath ensues as they invade the embassy the butcher shows just how ruthless he is by executing a man and then his mercy is weak child damned son which I could do that in Skyrim but here's something that bothers me modern warfare may have incredible presentation yet it almost seems like it was made to be controversial and this is apparent every time you try to play a campaign mission there are so many moments that seem to be there for shock value the hanging bodies in the third mission as a Russian soldier forces a woman to watch crawling around several corpses to avoid getting spotted dead kids here dead kids their mass executions more executions burning alive getting strangled stabbed father slain in front of his kids and finiti ward really hates children man but it's almost as if they were thinking what's the most innocent thing in the world children well let's kill a bunch of those on screen so the audience is shocked and feels bad I mean good grief what are you gonna do next kill a dog they just get wow so many atrocities happen so quickly that the game almost desensitizes you to the violence it's showing defeating its own theme of war as hell or whatever but there's also an issue of motivation barkhov isn't really a compelling villain and his reasons for invading Isaac Stan are that he doesn't like terrorists are you sure he's not George Bush meanwhile Farah hadirun Alcatel don't want to be ruled by foreign powers and so they bomb London why so while the characters might be cool and likeable their motivations really aren't fleshed out and thus the plot feels kind of forced another one of my favorite sections is when you interrogate the butcher and though we are the good guys that's not stopping us from using the same dirty tactics to extract information Derek back caches in the back what is it what an ago she ation it's a pretty powerful scene and they even force you to pull the trigger and holy [ __ ] that modern warfare packs with it several themes about war we need to take the gloves off if we're going to fight these bad guys just take the bloody gloves off a fight what the gloves off they're off we need to change the rules of engagement because the law we follow is getting people killed look they're not mess with women and children I will / if they were hostages you take the gloves off you get blood on your hands Kyle I said it works where do we draw the line I saw you throw the line wherever you need it soldier and do the die someone has to make the enemy scared at a dog so after highway a death turns out hadir stole the guest what a tweest next we get an oddly timed flashback sequence where we play as far as a child oh yeah this is the real Call of Duty experience play is a little girl with pink boots but this mission is pretty great and it reveals the tragic backstory of Farah and a deer for the sake of time I'm gonna skip some of the plot details but our final mission is to take out Barkov they push through plant the explosives but the detonator is [ __ ] and we get a pretty heartfelt scene between far and Alex the final scene shows price and Laswell discussing future plans and this got my nostalgia boner running at 100% general Sheppard pulled the files you asked for whoa whoa whoa general Shepherd we already have loose ends loose ends who's your crew sergeant go Kyle they're calling gas you never said anything John what Tavish SAS sniper demolitions goes by so why it's classified there he is Simon Riley there's no picture never why are you bringing up all these names price you got something big planned what are you calling this task force one-for-one [ __ ] yes what an ending I think it's especially impressive how good this campaign is considering this franchises history of hand holding an explosive over-the-top action sequences and while the main villains are pretty generic even by call of duty standards I was rooting for price Alex and Garrick to succeed the whole time although Infinity Ward definitely forced a lot of controversy into this game and it takes away the impact and realism despite its short length modern warfare has a lot to offer for any fan of Call of Duty and the FPS genre all in all modern warfare can be a pretty kick-ass game at times and unbelievably frustrating at others despite having an unoriginal title the campaign and story is entirely unique but memorable characters excellent dialogue I'd go so far as to say this campaign matches the quality of the original masterpiece it's based on and that's about the greatest thing you can do when you're making a reboot the developers took it slow with crafting modern warfare and it features the best level design I've experienced from this franchise the campaign more than proves that with the right team and resources Call of Duty can still blow people away 15 sequels later the team that developed spec ops though embarrassing not only do they have to heavily patch the operations to even make them playable they put such a [ __ ] taste on my mouth I don't even know if I'm ever gonna go back do you want a great PvE experience look elsewhere the multiplayer has some crippling issues with map design and weapon balance sure it's nice that snipers and long-range weapons are finally viable but a campers meta is not really fun the mechanics and gameplay in the multiplayer are top tier luckily most of these problems are things that Infinity Ward can and probably will fix they've already added in new maps and seem to be listening to the right parts of the community though there is so much to love with Infinity Ward's latest game they still have so much work to do and all we can do is wait and that is why call of duty modern warfare is so awesome and bad you

Channel: The Act Man

Views: 4,361,617

Rating: 4.8562717 out of 5

Keywords: act man review, the act man, act man, call of duty, modern warfare, modern warfare review, modern warfare 2019, modern warfare gameplay, infinity ward, activision, modern warfare multiplayer, modern warfare 725, modern warfare m4a1, act man call of duty, call of duty modern warfare, call of duty review, call of duty multiplayer, modern warfare ground war, modern warfare gunfight, modern warfare spec ops, modern warfare campaign, modern warfare cutscenes, captain price

Id: l4Wk3lafGqM

Length: 53min 22sec (3202 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Joyful_Jiska]

Mall music - Dead rising

I went to the video and asked in the comments, by the way.