CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE
The best series entry in years almost hits every target
“THE CAMPAIGN IS LIVELY AND VARIED, NEVER FAILING TO KEEP YOU ON EDGE.”
There’s a moment early in this game when we need to crawl under some lorries and then silently drag ourselves across a pile of dead bodies to remain undetected by a Russian patrol, and we can feel the developer winking at us through the code. “Remember All Ghillied Up?” it’s asking. “So do we.” Recollection is a theme that resonates through the game at regular intervals, playing as a constant reminder that this game shares its DNA with Call Of Duty 4.
Thankfully this doesn’t overshadow everything in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, and while the story has problems, it’s still one of the best Call Of Duty campaigns in a generation.
Bringing in former Naughty Dog talent has clearly paid off. Where past Call Of Duty narratives have felt disjointed but functional, here it’s focussed and well-paced. But it’s not the sharp analysis of modern warfare the developer was aiming for. It’s more A-Team than Sicario as series icon Captain Price gathers a band of brothers, and a sister, to take down a zealous Russian general and his paint-by-numbers Middle-Eastern terrorist accomplice.
BOOTS ON OUR GROUND
The campaign is varied and lively, never failing to keep you on edge. The standard huge battles that make up Call Of Duty’s footprint are pulled back to reality by tense stealth missions and covert breach assaults. Storming a London townhouse
using night vision is genuinely unsettling as the reality of war comes to a quiet street near you. It’s the appalling possibility of accidentally shooting innocents that anchors these, and many, of the new Modern Warfare’s missions.
The controls, visuals, and sound design make every weapon feel powerful – guns are weighty and impactful, and shots reverberate around, in, and out of the screen with a powerful kerr-chunk or wheezing zip. Infinity Ward has gone out of its way to make you feel powerful, then scattered the levels with women, children, and fleeing shoppers – whether in London’s Piccadilly Circus or chasing a terrorist through the streets of St Petersburg – to make you feel the consequences of pulling the trigger.
In one scene I see a terrorist taking aim at some shoppers, but a child runs into my line of sight; I can shoot both child and terrorist and save all the innocent people, or hold fast and let more passers-by die to save the kid. It’s not scripted, it’s the consequence of a situation. I feel bad and restart the checkpoint.
Pushing you through these missions is the need to find a cache of stolen chemical weapons, the game’s overt theme. The real question the campaign asks, however, is ‘How far would you go?’ Are you prepared to put a gun to the heads of a terrorist’s wife and child to extract information? Well, that’s a choice you face in Modern Warfare. Don’t worry, Captain Price won’t feel less of you if you opt out, which you can thankfully do.
Captain Price regularly asks his team to cross more than borders to keep the world safe. “When you take off the gloves you get blood on your hands,” he says like a Bourne-again Gandalf delivering words of wisdom amid the chaos.
NO RUSSIAN
Despite these moments the game still leans into stereotypes to sell its perspective - the maniacal general Markov goes full Rambo III, American soldiers are selfless heroes, the CIA can’t be trusted… While the world Modern Warfare paints is one of greys, its heroes and villains are still sharply black-and-white.
Female resistance leader
Farah Karim does manage to rise above the tropes that try to sell her struggle. Callback missions to her childhood can feel mechanical as they clutch at your heartstrings – a gassed, dying dog takes its last breath while women and children are lined-up and shot by those
‘evil’ Russians. Yet they can also deliver some effective gameplay: as a young Farah you must crawl unseen under tables and through air vents in your burning family home to stab an invading Russian to death with scissors and screwdrivers. It’s horrific and brutal, and regularly plays as a thread through this character’s missions until the final confrontation with Markov.
“THE REAL QUESTION THE CAMPAIGN ASKS IS ‘HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?’”
This is the kind of ‘show, don’t tell’ design we’re used to from Naughty Dog, and shows more than any playable waterboarding minigame (yes, there really is one) that this Call Of Duty has matured in some areas.
WAR FAIR?
That same tussle between tone and gameplay follows through into the online modes. The raw realism of aspects of the campaign fail to fully translate into multiplayer with consistency. The focus on making the guns feel and sound realistic ensures every match lands a punch. Yet this is a slower, more tactical skew on Call Of Duty’s run-and-gun style of FPS. This can depend on the map and mode combo; Team Deathmatch on the Azhir Cave map is fast and fun, but play the same mode on the larger maps, such as Aniyah Palace, and it’s a slow slog.
The balance of success and failure can be seen in new modes Gunfight and Ground War respectively; the former is a fast roll of the dice through randomised loadouts on tiny maps and each round lasts seconds, the latter a Battlefieldstyled large skirmish that fails to keep you engaged.
Technically stunning, the game runs at a solid 60fps on both PS4 models, on- and offline. Despite everything, Modern Warfare is still a return to form for a series that has lost its way in recent years, but it’s come at a price. Modern Warfare remains a Hollywood shooter, right up until the fan-service post-credits ending, and that overshadows the good progress made in many areas to update the series.
VERDICT
Modern Warfare is the best Call Of Duty in years, but it still can’t shake-off the cartoonish trappings. Off- and online it’s a quality shooter that does more right than wrong. Ian Dean