Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Review (2023)

A fun yet familiar war experience

For theAndreas Hamilton

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2Campaign starts 3 years after 2019Modern war, leading a fully assembled Task Force 141 as an international terrorist threat emerges. The team begins with a successful drone strike that eliminates the leader of Al Qatal, and soon discovers that the terrorists are working with a global cartel to distribute US-made missiles. Of course, the war on drugs is now also the war on terror. So Captain Price, Kate Laswell, Ghost, Soap, Gaz and newcomer Alejandro Vargas must track these ballistics before throwing a gender reveal party for various US targets. The story here has strayed far from familiar 2009 soil.modern warfare 2, for the better, as the many twists now play out as intended, even if they're nowhere near the same Calibur as the originals. Another character returns, a mustache-less General Shepard who looks a little more like a certain Battlestar Galactica military member than the Shepard you may remember. Unfortunately, despite its cutting-edge graphics, great scoring, fast and satisfying combat,modern warfare 2feels like trying out a "best of" game from Infinity Ward, resulting in a top-notch shooter with a mid-range delivery. I'm Andrew Hamilton forwired, and I'll tell you why this game is a poor compilation of better games, but with the best gameplay in the series.

-Firstout, i'm stating the obviousmodern warfare 2reaches new heights in the graphic fidelity department. Dust and dirt billows over an almost photorealistic mountain as you head towards a recon point, then turn back to reveal the Ghost scouting out a new target for a drone strike. These opening moments quickly set the bar high for what the game's graphics and great art direction have to offer. From the vast Mexican landscapes to an actual cloned area of Amsterdam to the streets of Chicago, this game is fantastically global. Internationality is accompanied by major changes in diversity. I encountered a lot of pop-ins while flying the AC-130 as Shadow Company and some strange texture glitches during Wanna Be"Alle Ghillied Up' mission (more on those renovations in a moment), but overall it delivered all the power and polish one would expect from a top-notch Call of Duty game.

mutablehow were the levelsmodern warfare 2I clearly felt the looming shadow of the 2009 original looming over it, as many of the game's missions feel like the best of what worked in the 2019 game mixed in with fan favorites.Modern warpast. This works well enough to be fun to some extent, but I felt it stifled the creativity of the encounters. I personally hated the CCTV mission segment in the 2019 reboot campaign, and the equally annoying version in this game just reminded me how much of a failure that was. On the other hand, I loved the mission where you had to tactically clear a house of terrorists, so of course this game said"Oh yes, I have a lot of that"🇧🇷 That's fine, but relying on those early successes meant the content felt a little too familiar. On the other side are things like "Alle Ghillied Up”-style mission that imitates the original until the wait for the soldier's passage. I love the original mission, and shooting is probably my favorite thing to do in an FPS, but my goodness did this not have the same thrill and feel as the first time around. The new missions, meanwhile, have lived up to their welcome with lengthy sections devoted to stealthy tracking through enemy-infested Mexican streets, using a new crafting mechanic that feels kind of wired. There's also an issue with some of the unique mechanics like this. For example, armor plates briefly arrive in the game's final mission, but aren't collected or equipped elsewhere in the story. The chase could have been fun, but with the manual override mechanics of thewar zonereally messed up the pace. I really liked what this one had to offer, but yes, it felt like aModern warnot sure who it is. Striving to reach the heights of the 2009 game, but failing to deliver a cohesive story that felt connected to the first game. I mean, we're being introduced to General Shephard in the flesh in this game, and if you know what's going on in the original, even his lack of Stache isn't going to make the twist any less obvious. Also, don't spoil the time you have to kill for single player games by adding spongy armored characters to the game.

-Before reaching my verdict, I would like to talk about the missions involving the cartel. Infinity Ward has been AmericanizedNarcos/ CSI: Miamiapproach that makes them the overly stereotypical Mexican members of all time. Also, portraying the Mexican military as expendable with no consequences because "these guys work for the cartel" is an insult to the Mexican military, I presume, and like, what are you talking about?! You can't just blow up and shoot allied military units under the guise of "Okay, Alejandro says these guys are disgusting and evil."! The second half of this story should have been about all the Allied nations coming together to resent the American leadership by dumping a not inconsiderable number of uniformed servicemen from TF 141. MW3 must be oops, we accidentally caused an international incident and now Mexico is being pushed into a war with the US and Russia is offering help. That would be a much more interesting twist than what we actually got. For Russia, turning allies against us to wage a proxy war between the US and Mexico is a terrifying thought, JESUS.

Spoiler alert here, so skip to the on-screen timecode if you don't want the details spoiled.

The Shadow Company plays a fun role in the story, but you can't really relate to the player character, so all of the things involving them feel superficial. Their leader, Phil Graves (Got it? Because hefills graves), has one of the most energetic faces I've ever seen... That's all I know, just wanted to say how energetic he is. Shadow Company is honestly the part that feels the darkest. The use of private mercenaries is really weird in a game like this, as the whole point of TF 141 is to go into the dark, and in a way that nobody would if they were there. When you outsource it to this blonde model posing as a soldier, this is how it feelscall to actionI didn't want to answer the difficult questions of what hyperpatriotism, a central theme of the original, looks like. It doesn't give us a memorable twist because Shadow Company doesn't owe loyalty to anyone beyond a paycheck. It's Shepherd's turn and he's just out for the rest of the game. No real betrayal, no feeling of a patriot doing what he deems "necessary" to protect his county. We're left unchecked by a brutal mercenary addicted to US ORDERS, but somehow the US isn't responsible for his actions? IT steals the twist from any sting and just makes all the obvious signs look like they're getting hit by bricks on the way to a broken tip.

-Look, the overall experience is less hereZero Dark Thirtyand more from Michael Baynarcos🇧🇷 A fun, bombastic story where one-note characters really ask no questions and realize they found their way too late to be the best the series has to offer. Its undeserved twists are predictable, but honestly the gameplay is too high to ignore. So I say this campaign gets good times for 7 hours7🇧🇷 If you want to see moremodern warfare 2The report remains set to Hardwired. Multiplayer is getting a separate overhaul, so keep an eye out for it next week.