More military shooting from the masters of the genre
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
YOU KNOW WHAT you’re getting when
Call of Duty goes back to its “roots” in
the fourth game. You get three years
of Infinity Ward’s full attention, with
additional help from High Moon, Beenox,
Raven, and Sledgehammer. It had better
be good—and luckily it is.
While we get yet another plot about
American intervention in a Russian
invasion of a fictional country somewhere
in that space where Turkey meets Iraq,
it’s also a game of beautifully recreated
moonlit alleyways, night-time walks in
the forest, abandoned motorbikes, and
a battered PC case with the single best
rendering of a Molex power connector
we’ve yet seen. Its use of darkness is
sublime, enabling you to be the terror in
the night before deftly turning the tables.
It sees the return of Captain Price who,
amusingly, has the same facial hair as the
protagonist of Disco Elysium, but few of
his other hang-ups. Price is ruthless and
clinical, tossing hostages padlocked into
suicide vests off ledges, rather than have
their explosion kill innocents, and
rocking the most ridiculous night
vision goggles. He’s a good man
to have on your side, even if you
do spend a lot of time following
him around. In fact, there’s a lotto look, an otherwise unremarkable trek
down a zig-zag staircase showing events
outside timed perfectly with your descent.
The new engine is part of that
distinctiveness. Even without ray tracing,
it looks good. The lighting, in particular,
deserves heavy praise, justifying the
decision to set so much of the game in
the dark. Character models are sharp and
believable, their mo-capped movements
fluent. The hair-rendering technology
produces such great beards and stubble
that a female resistance leader seems
strange for her lack of whiskers.
Performance is good, too, with 4K not out
of the reach of RTX 2060s and upward.
The best Call of Duty for a long time?
Probably. But also a rattling good story,
with multiplayer that will keep you coming
back for years. –IAN EVENDENYou are often a small part
of a larger operation.A terror sequence in London
features civilian deaths and
suicide bombers.Night-time levels showcase
the new lighting tech.A hit from this custom sniper
rifle causes serious damage.of following in general, including a stand-
out part in which, as a small girl, you follow
your brother through war-torn streets.
Such breaks from the COD norm never
last for long, but then nothing does. For a
glorious two minutes, you launch remote-
control planes laden with explosives into
Russian helicopters. There’s a short
reprise of Death From Above, in which you
use a helicopter to splatter soldiers who
were making your life hard just moments
ago. There’s the requisite sniping level
in which you must take bullet drop and
wind speed into account, but it’s over the
moment you use your rifle to hammer
bullets into the engine blocks of trucks.
It keeps up this pace, from thunderous
assaults on aircraft hangars that wouldn’t
have been out of place in 2017’s WWII, just
with different guns, to midnight house
clearances that couldn’t come from
anywhere else. It’s a game that knows its
identity, on its own and as part of a series-
within-a-series. It pulls the same trick
Infinite Warfare managed, of standing out
in an otherwise samey genre, but does
it while being ostensibly the same as
other games, not by taking Jon Snow
to space. It even manages Half-
Life 2’s trick of directing your
gaze where the devs want youCall of Duty: Modern Warfare
DUTY Great graphics, sound,
and performance; non-stop pace.
SHOOTY Retreads of COD greatest hits;
some controversial content.
RECOMMENDED SPECS i5-2500K/Ryzen 5
1600X; 12GB RAM; GTX 970/R9 390.
$60, http://callofduty.com, ESRB: M8
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