The latest installment of Call of Duty has arrived and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II continues the popularity of the Modern Warfare series as the latest game in the rebooted franchise has passed one billion in sales revenue in just ten days.
The campaign contains what fans expect as Captain Price, Soap, and Ghost as well as other members are tasked to learn how destructive missiles ended up in the hands of a dangerous organization.
Going from one locale around the world to another in a deadly chase for answers and to apprehend the main suspect, the team soon learns that there is a much bigger game taking place and the stakes are even more dangerous than before.
Using an array of weapons, tactics, and allies, the team must race against time to save the day. As anyone who has ever played a Call of Duty game will know; players will play as different characters and face missions that require stealth, tactics, dexterity, and firepower. How a player opts to play is usually up to them as I am more of a straight-up action type vs stealth and evasion but there is a time and place for that as well.
The campaign missions are clever and contain some great visuals as well as action and the story was one of the more engaging ones in recent memory. The biggest issue that I faced was random crashes of the campaign and one mission was so bad that it was nearly unplayable as each time I faced a crash I had to verify my install again, do a drive optimization, and venture back in to see how far I could get. It originally crashed frequently at the start of the mission until I optimized the drive before heading back in.
Activision support eventually suggested a Hotfix driver which hours later was followed by a new NVIDIA driver which seemed to fix the issue as I was able to complete the remaining missions without any issues and this issue never showed up during Multiplayer games.
Multiplayer mode has been enjoyable with larger and highly-detailed maps and while some have not been as popular with fans, I like the variation that was included as they allow for a nice mix of styles, and the various weapon and streak options work well. It seems to me that the weapons have a better balance than some games at launch as they seem to be more accurate and fair than some early-level weapons I do not find myself having to unload multiple rounds into another player nor do I get a one-shot done approach.
I have found the Invasion mode to be a nice challenge for those who like to play on a large map with multiple players and at times take command of vehicles as running down enemy players is a great delight.
The graphics and sound are really solid and playing on a BenQ EX3210U with a Geforce 3070 RTX really made some of the visuals pop especially the neon and water-laden locales as well as the great cityscapes at night.
It has been reported that there will not be a new game released for the franchise in 2023 and that Warzone 2 and extras seasons of Modern Warfare II will fill in the gap. That has since been amended by reports that premium content will come next year along with the free Season updates which may include a new campaign add-on and more.
Regardless of which direction future content takes until the release of the next game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II gives fans of the franchise what they expect and despite some bugs, is one of the more engaging and enjoyable releases for the franchise.
4 stars out of 5
