Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II review – brilliant experience for fans and new players

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II delivers exactly what the hardcore fans of the franchise wanted from the popular first-person shooter while also onboarding new players into the game.

Infinity Ward, the developers of this chapter and the original Modern Warfare II released back in 2009, are at their absolute best here with stunning lifelike characters and environments and brilliant and responsive game play.

For this review we played the game on the PlayStation 5.

The campaign is a lot more straightforward and the multiplayer mode, the bread and butter of the franchise, was a lot better than we expected.

In the campaign, we’re reintroduced to favourite characters – Ghost, Price and Soap – who are the main characters on the mission to discover how American nuclear weapons ended up in the hands of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists.

There are 17 missions to complete in the campaign and the action takes us from the deserts of the middle east to other locations including Mexico, Spain and Amsterdam.

And it’s not just a straight up shooter (it is most of the time) but often the player has to stay in the shadows or sit still in long grass to avoid detection.

In other missions you’re driving vehicles and shooting and jumping on to other vehicles to stay alive and providing overwatch – and firepower – for an attack on a compound from a circling spy plane.

In one section, you have to guide Ghost through an enemy base by hacking into the security cameras to find the safest path.

You also get to do a bit of swimming as well so you can dive underwater and sneak up on your enemies and avoid their fire.

There’s also a wide variety of weapons you get to use as well from sniper rifles and grenade launchers to mounted machine guns as well as the regular machine guns, pistols and silencers.

There were a couple of times where it wasn’t immediately obvious what you needed to do next and the location of the weapon you needed for the mission.

We got to the very last mission of the campaign and it kept crashing and coming up with an error.

To get around this we had to delete the game and reinstall it. Luckily, we had the checkpoint saved and we were able to resume and complete the campaign.

But for us it’s the multiplayer that keeps us coming back to the game.

Our favourite is Team Deathmatch, but you can jump into a free-for-all, search and destroy and even rescue missions.

Or one can be served up at random.

And there are also large-scale battles like 20 v 20 Team Deathmatch.

Whatever your playing style happens to be and what sort of games you like, the Call of Duty Modern Warfare II multiplayer will give you what you need.

Now let’s talk about the weapons and perks.

As we’ve seen in other Call of Duty games, players get a chance rank up to access more powerful weapons and they also get a chance to improve aspects of their weapons like the barrel, scope, the grip, size of the ammunition magazine.

It takes a lot of work and a lot of games to get your weapon to a decent level but it’s worth it.

The maps also offer a nice variety in terms of design, size and layout.

The Breenbergh Hotel has both tight corners, long range areas and multiple levels while El Asilo is a larger map to suit both run and gunners and snipers and there’s plenty of room to move inside the buildings and lots of space outside as well.

Another interesting map is Santa Sena Border Crossing – a tight layout that’s littered with destroyed cars in the narrow funnel of the US-Mexican border.

All 12 multiplayer maps offer their own quirks, bottlenecks and hiding places for campers.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II is available now on PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

VERDICT