The long awaited release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is finally here, we’ve waited a few weeks before posting our review due to the fact the Warzone 2.o only released on November 16th and the obvious issues we have come to expect from big launches. The review is divided into sections to make things easier for you.
Campaign
There has been huge excitement leading up to the campaign and in all honesty it has been worth the wait. You’ll fly across the world to all sorts of interesting locations all while meeting some interesting characters along the way. Of course there are some familiar faces too, with Ghost, Soap and Price all working together to save the world, again.
Story wise the game is great, its the usual stop the bad guy before he destroys parts of the Western World with the obvious twists and turns along the way. The individual missions are all well paced and have their own unique theme, from the classic sniper missions with Price guiding you along the way, to the bombastic vehicle based missions which are full of action.
A particular highlight is a mission set at sea which see the team trying to stop the launch of a missile, instead of the usual press the button to stop the launch you need to listen carefully and follow the instructions given to you. There are multiple button presses you need to follow and getting it wrong results in failure. It adds a new sort of intensity to the campaign and I’m all for it. Another mission involves having to craft makeshift weapons and using stealth to escape a sticky situation.
It’s the best campaign I’ve played for a while and luckily I finished my Veteran campaign before an Xbox syncing error meant the game now thinks I haven’ t completed it. Unfortunately errors and glitches are a common theme across the title in the campaign there were lots of graphical glitches such as vehicles without bodies and some odd physics resulting in frustrating deaths.
Multiplayer
Most people will be buying Call of Duty this year for either multiplayer or Warzone. It’ll come as no surprise to people that MP is great fun but even after a good few weeks there are no end of issues which really let the game down. First off, is the dreadful UI. Activision have split the menu into each pf the game modes, but all too often you get left in the wrong part of the game, meaning you are unable to edit your load out until you start a match. So for example you want to play multiplayer, but are in the Battle Royale menu, the only load outs you can see are the ones for that game mode, rather than then one you really need.
The UI also makes you feel like your game is crashing, however it’s just lagging because the game is loading. I’ve spent many a night in state of confusion with my party because the game is telling you someting different compared to what is actually happeing.
The way the game handles unlocking weapons is also quite contentious. In order to unlock certain weapons you need to level up a different weapon within the same ‘platform’ before you can use what you really want. I would much rather see the traditional unlocks from previous games.
When you do get into a game however its normally brilliant, we’ve come across a few cheaters which is a shame but you are easily able to report them which is good. All of the traditional game modes are there and matches always fee competitive. If you prefer playing private matches the option is available, hopefully some more of the fun modes will be introduced soon (Prop Hunt, I’m looking at you.)
Warzone 2.0 & DMZ
Warzone is back with a new Map, Al Mazrah and its great for the most part. After a rocky start most matches are lag free although even recent matches have suffered with some issues. The map is full of interesting areas on land and under water if you are feeling particularly brave. There are lots of mini missions to do to earn cash and bonuses and even the gulag as had a welcome update. Gulag has basically become 2v2 Gun Fight, with a juggernaut released after 30 seconds, you can even work as a group to kill him or try to take each other out.
This has all been enhanced by proximity chat, any enemies within 50m of you with their voice channels open can now be heard by players, it has introduced a whole new meta for Warzone. You can either choose to use your intelligence to catch your opponents out or try to reason with them, you only have to take a look at TikTok to see some of the hilarious results of this.
Currently in BETA is DMZ, this mode sees your squad of three land in Al Mazrah against 18 other squads, however you all have some pre-determined missions to complete, completing these missions give you access to more difficult missions and higher rewards. There are weapons in this mode that can only be unlocked by playing DMZ so its well worth diving into. The world is full of AI who are protecting strongholds and as the match goes on they get tougher to beat.
There is also a weapons case that you can collect and attempt to exfil with, however once you have it in your possession, all of human opponents know where you are making things a lot more difficult. It’s a bit more chilled out than Warzone, but it can be very challenging.
Overall Modern Warfare 2 is an excellent game but its difficult not to ignore the issues, its a shame that games get released in this state especially when it seems like they could be fixed fairly easily.
