Barry Sloane plays the new Captain Price. You might have seen him in *checks notes*... um, Bluff City Law?Dark Thirty’s nerve-shredding raid on
the Bin Laden compound.
Infinity Ward deserves credit for
shaking up COD’s usual campaign
structure. Some of Price and co’s
best moments come when you’re not
holding a gun. A mid-game stealth
section has you use CCTV cameras
to help a hapless office worker evade
patrolling soldiers, while an earlier
moment sees your disguised agent
ferrying cinder blocks into a building
site to avoid guards. It’s subversive
stuff and shows the studio has more
going for it than great guns.
Online epic
Not that the guns aren’t great. They’re
astonishing. Hop online, and reworked
reload animations make every switch
of the chamber a thrilling mini-event.
Shotguns, rifles and pistols all kick
like angry mules, while there are few
pleasures quite like dropping a rival
marksman with the likes of the Grassy
Knoll sniper. Weapons in Modern
Warfare are furious, dishing out fire
and fury in the most fatal of flashes.
Whether you like your PvP carnage
dished out in vast battles or tense
duels, COD has you covered. Sprawling
matches of Ground War often descend
into chaos; 64 players clashing
to create shooty mosh pits where
gun and vehicle carnage run riot.
The debuting Gunfight mode is a
winner, too. Offering a more tactical
palate cleanser to the relentless
meat grinder murder of the bigger
offerings, its 2v2 stand-offs can
be desperately tense. In a neat
move that keeps the mode’s action
unpredictable, your weapon loadouts
change between rounds. Of course,
whether you can put up with Modern
Warfare’s sensational PvP gunplay
is directly tied to how well you cope
with constantly being shot by players
who are far better than you. Death is
as swift and relentless as ever, andwith killstreaks returning, prepare to
perish... a lot.
If you don’t mind being killed by the
odd nuke – how anyone can score 30
consecutive kills is beyond our tiny
minds – PvP could swallow your damn
life. Pair it with a gutsy (if insensitive)
campaign, and this tonally conflicted
series continues to stay relevant
thanks to the best guns in the biz. QSPEC
AND CALL
Last seen in 2009’s
Modern Warfare 2,
Spec Ops picks up
COD Zombies’
brain-eating baton.
Carrying on story
strands from the main
campaign, its action
mostly revolves
around surviving
waves of dudes and
then legging it in an
evac chopper. Early
maps currently feel a
bit rote, and the more
straight-up survival
slant doesn’t quite
have the spark of
MW2’s bite-sized,
highly bespoke
missions. You better
be a good healer, too.
Constant revives are
needed to pull your
four-player squad
through, as cover is
seriously sparse.“There’s often
a tonal divide
between
campaign and
online matches”
FAR LEFT The
brutal
Piccadilly
setpiece can
cause a bowel
movement.
RIGHT ‘Clean
house’ is one of
the most
harrowing
missions COD has
ever attempted.OXM VERDICT
A controversial
reboot with
weekend-eating
PvP and the best
guns about.7
LEFT Maps in
Spec Ops offer
little cover, so
you might want
to keep someone
on healing duty.More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 069REVIEW