Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has sold itself as a return to the setting that "started it all." It’s a snappy marketing line that tugs the nostalgic strings of fans who remember the magic of 2007, and it’s not entirely misleading. The warfare is once again modern and, yes, Captain Price is still your likeable squad dad. Yet it's Modern Warfare's moments of unfamiliarity that impressed me—rebuilt weapon handling, ambitious new multiplayer modes, and characters that aren’t the cookie-cutter operatives we've seen in the last decade.
Modern Warfare is an evolution for the series, and it’s exciting. Unfortunately, this evolution is only half-realized in multiplayer. Here, the relics of 2007 clash with fresh ideas. Modern Warfare aspires to be grounded and tactical while giving you the power to pilot your own heavy gunship. For as far as Modern Warfare moves the needle, it still spends so much energy checking the same old boxes.
Shellshock
It’s easy to forget about these complaints in the heat of a match, because Modern Warfare’s action is exceptional. Weapons explode with concussive energy and rattle with recoil until the magazine is spent. Reload animations bask in the moment with motion-captured flare that celebrates a kill and snaps back into place for the next fight.
Facing the lethal end of Modern Warfare’s weapons is often petrifying. Taking a hit doesn’t just flinch your camera and spray blood jelly on-screen. Bullet impacts are loud, disorienting thuds—it feels like my chest is caved in. Near-miss bullets slice through oxygen with the deafening echoes of a military sim. The classic hit marker 'thwoops' are now blunt strikes that form a supersonic flurry of blows, closing on the intoxicating coin flip 'ding' that promises I’ve won the firefight. The violent hum of a helicopter’s minigun drowns out my own weapons, proudly declaring that it's top dog. Its busy soundscapes are facsimiles of real battlefields with drama cranked up to 11.
I can smell the piles of Activision money burned to make Modern Warfare look, sound, and animate this good. And it was worth it, because arcadey shooting has never felt more forceful.
Despite an aesthetic turn toward reality, Modern Warfare’s marquee modes still encourage the unintelligible carnage that cemented Call of Duty’s empire. Team Deathmatch and other core modes remain cyclical meat grinders of kill-die-respawn-kill where the only skill check is the first to click on a head. Oh, and whoever scores the murder-est killstreak—those are back, too.
