I’m not a fan of FPS games and I rarely play them anymore. The last CoD I played was Black Ops 2 and that must have been on the PS3. However before this time I played two metroidvanias in a row and I needed something completely different. PlayStation Plus had just announced their free games of August 2020 and there it was, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered. I’ve actually heard quite a lot of good things about CoD: MW2 but I didn’t know that it also was remastered. I decided to give it a chance.
Once I started playing it I remembered why this game was special. It was because of the airport scene where you as a terrorist gun down civilians. That was pretty controversial at the time, but if I didn’t know about it I don’t think I would have given it a second thought playing this game now. Not that it isn’t something extra, gunning down civilians, but I guess I’ve become numb to the controversy. I also do think it is a bigger deal in the US than it is here in Sweden.
First of all the game looks great. They have made a good job with the remaster. You can tell that it is based on a PS3 game on the character movement, facial expressions and such. But it doesn’t really bother me much.
The shooting is good. This is a thing that the game nails down – and it should since they’ve iterated the CoD series for decades. The arsenal is a bit boring and I tend to go the same weapons time and time again. Some missions you start with a different load out, like a sniper rifle but pretty soon you end up in the same kind of shooting as you do through out the whole campaign, close quarter combat.
I actually thought Modern Warfare meant that is would be a futuristic shooter that was taken place 30 years in the future. I don’t know how I got that idea, but I got a bit disappointed with the setting when I started the game and it was in present time. I guess “”Modern Warfare”” is to separate the game from all the WW2 shooters they’ve done before in the series.
The variety of the shooting was ok. It wasn’t good, but the game was short enough that I didn’t get really bored of it. One thing that really irritated me was how difficult it was telling friend from foe. I would often shoot my team mates, and it happened more than once that I brushed up next to an enemy thinking it was my team mate just to get my throat slit. You could argue that’s what it’s like in war but I don’t think the reality argument really holds. There is nothing in this game suggesting that it would simulate the experience of war. The scenarios and what happens in them are completely ludicrous to be taken seriously. So if the game has decided that it should be an entertainment and not a simulator, then it can help me distinguish friend from foe.
The scenarios are entertaining, but far from realistic. It took some time until I understood that there was a story behind it. First it seemed that you were just dropped into different situations, and that’s ok, but after about half the game they start connecting the dots. And it’s and ugly sight. The overarching narrative is so over the top stupid that it makes me roll my eyes. It is worse than the worst Alec Baldwin movie about the Cold War you’ve ever seen.
The writing is bad on a whole different level when you come to dialogue between the characters, that mostly consist of being macho and shouting things. It is like someone seen Black Hawk Down and tried to imitate it. It is outright embarrassing.
Anyhow, I had quite fun. It was entertaining but it does not deserve all the hype it has gotten over the years.
I rate this game as OKAY.
Replay 