It is almost comforting in this era of “games as a service”, where franchises exist as endless monetisation machines designed to consume every second of our free time, that Call of Duty still gets an annual retail release. Once upon a time, these games sold 30m copies a year, and people queued outside stores at midnight to buy them. Those days are gone, but Modern Warfare II shows there is still guilty pleasure to be had in these ridiculous yearly instalments of macho combat gymnastics.
The campaign story takes place three years after the close of 2019’s Modern Warfare. The newly created Task Force 141 is sent to track down an Iranian terrorist who has somehow acquired a set of American nuclear missiles. It’s slickly produced, fast-moving stuff, ricocheting around the world, from the Middle East to Mexico, while gruff guys yell macho spec-ops phrases at each other. En route, there are a few spectacular set-pieces. A section where you infiltrate a convoy of military vehicles as it zooms along a civilian highway might be one of the best driving sequences I’ve ever played in a mainstream shooter; and there’s a brilliant gun fight on the deck of a cargo boat in rough seas, where massive shipping containers slide all over the place, squishing unwary combatants.
A lot of the time, however, Modern Warfare II resembles one of those new straight-to-streaming action movies starring any of the Hollywood leading actors named Chris. It is brash and entertaining without ever quite stumbling on an interesting idea. Indeed, some of the key sequences are borrowed from other places. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare’s famed All Ghillied Up and Death from Above missions get very accurate tributes, while a mission to infiltrate a cartel owner’s mansion is basically a Hitman level, complete with social stealth, multiple routes and flashy architecture. The occasional implementation of a crafting system, which allows you to make mines and smoke bombs from materials you find in the environment, is most heavily used in a sort of semi-apocalyptic, post-explosion survival mission that might as well be called The Blast of Us.
It also presents, as it always has, an unquestioning endorsement of military intervention. Hi-tech guns, bombs and gadgets are gleefully deployed without hesitation, and in one already infamous moment, which takes place while you’re tracking enemies through a small town, you’re told to aim your weapon at innocent people in order to “de-escalate the civilians”.
The fact that the game simply expects us to accept and act on the language of armed oppression is a huge tell about the wider culture that produces these narratives. There is at least some subtle reflection on the imperialist fantasy of America as the world’s police force: not all your western allies are what they seem. However, just as in the previous game, which nudged us toward thinking about the thin line between covert ops and war crimes, the overriding message is that heavily armed, anonymous special forces operatives are 100% purveyors of good; we must all submit.
And really, that’s OK. No one comes here for trenchant geopolitical analysis. We make a Faustian pact whenever we consume mainstream action entertainment – it always, always, exists in a queasily seductive space between valour and atrocity.
Meanwhile, the audio-visual experience is truly astonishing. Every environment, whether it’s an abandoned Mexican village or an Amsterdam canal-side cafe, is rendered in extraordinary detail. Bullets rip past, enemy footsteps clatter up metal staircases, explosions shake about in your head – the sheer physical immersion, the mastery of form and function within these hellish landscapes is unreal.
Away from the campaign, the all-important multiplayer component is stronger than it has been for years. Modern Warfare II offers 12 modes spread across an initial selection of 15 maps, and as the hugely successful Beta Test hinted, these are uncompromising hair-trigger online shoot-fests, with turbocharged pacing and unrelenting intensity. There are some genuinely innovative locations here, including the Senta Sena Border Crossing, a highway section littered with abandoned cars which players need to silently skulk between; and Crown Raceway, where fights take place in pit lanes, with hi-tech super illuminated garage workshops as F1 cars zoom past outside.
There’s nothing hugely new about the modes. We get several variations on the old “Conquest” concept of occupying a space for as long as possible, while newcomer Prisoner Rescue is a basic Capture the Flag derivative, where two teams fight to defend or rescue prone civilians. But after two years dominated by the Battle Royale genre, Modern Warfare II re-introduces the appeal of tight, focused maps and constant engagement. The perfectly balanced weapons, the pinpoint environmental feedback, the progression system that inches you closer and closer to that perfect grip or muzzle to really balance out your firearm platform; the sheer noise and thrill of it. Infinity Ward revolutionised the multiplayer first-person shooter with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and this is the best contemporary reinvention of what that game was about: chaos, skill progression and the reflexes needed to survive for longer than three seconds at a time.
In our era of coldly distanced technological combat, of armoured police vehicles on city streets, of protests bloodily subdued, we might ask why such violent delights as Modern Warfare still have a place on the entertainment calendar. It’s something I’ve pondered over the many hours I’ve spent thoroughly enjoying this ludicrous game. It is something I will perhaps go on to think through in the many, many hours to come.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is out now on PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, £70
