Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
PREVIEW
to use guerrilla tactics, you have to set
ambushes, you have to use your superior
numbers and your knowledge of the
environment against the enemy.”
What I saw, though, wasn’t quite that.
The mission takes place 20 years prior to
the terrorist attack in London, when a
young girl who is maybe six or seven years
old is dug out of the rubble after a
bombing in the Middle East. This is Farah,
who will grow up to be the rebel leader you
play in Modern Warfare, but this is her
origin story, and it’s a rather familiar one.
Her town bombed by military forces and
her parents killed in front of her, she’s a
traumatized child who grows up looking
for vengeance. I assumed it was an
American bomb that destroyed Farah’s
town, as that would certainly be relevant
and “ripped from the headlines” even 20
years ago. But no, the bombers were part
of some sort of Russian military outfit, and
in addition to murdering citizens, they’re
also abducting children.STEALTH SCREWDRIVER
With her father dead, Farah and her young
brother hide in their house from a heavily
armed, hulking Russian soldier, and rather
than fleeing they decide to attack him. The
mission looked to me like a tutorial to
teach players how stealth works, and little
Farah creeps around the house, picks up a
screwdriver, and impales the Russian with
it. Then she hides again while the Russian
pulls the screwdriver out of his body,
leaves it on the floor, and continues to
search for her. Farah crawls under
furniture and through a hole in the walls,
retrieves the screwdriver, and stabs him
again. This repeats three or four times,
until Farah and her brother eventually kill
the soldier and then, in true videogame
form, immediately attempt to loot his
body. It is, quite honestly, a bizarre
sequence, and an odd choice to attempt
to tell a compelling origin story while also
teaching stealth screwdriver attacks and
looting mechanics.
Farah and her brother eventually
stealth their way out of town and reach a
farm, where they find a gun and
prepare to take on more Russian
soldiers. “This is the most authentic
and realistic game we’ve evermade,” Jacob Minkoff says. I don’t
personally find two little kids killing an
enormous Russian grunt with a
screwdriver particularly realistic, and
rather than being ripped from the
headlines, Farah’s origin story instead
appears to be ripped from about 50
different movies and TV shows.
At least there’s more impressive
weapons than screwdrivers in Modern
Warfare. As always, a great deal of
attention has been paid to making the
guns feel realistic, weighty and fun to
shoot. Even the tiniest details like idle
animations and reloads have been
reworked—you can now see yourself
perform a tactical reload, which is when
you’ve fired a few shots and your
magazine isn’t empty but you want to
replace it with a fresh one. Rather than
your hand simply pulling out the mag,
going offscreen, and returning to pop in a
fresh mag, you’ll actually see your soldier
visibly keep the first mag in his hand while
replacing with the second. It’s a small
detail, but an excellent one. And good
news, you can now reload while you’re
aiming down the sights without the gun
pulling back to hip-fire position.
The audio is excellent, too, though
admittedly I was watching the
presentation in a theatre setting and not
listening over a headset like most of us will
when the game is released. But the finer
details of the audio are again impressive,
even when it comes to expelled shell
casings, which actually make different
sounds depending on what sort of surface
they land on. The audio even uses ray
tracing to deliver realistic sounds, reverb,
and echoes depending on your position
in the environment.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is
scheduled for release on October 25, and
once again on PC it’ll be exclusively
available on Battle.net. It plans to support
cross-platform play at launch, and won’t
have a season pass this time.
I didn’t get any hands-on time with Call
of Duty: Modern Warfare’s singleplayer
campaign, as this was just a presentation,
and only had a brief look at two missions.
But in keeping with Call of Duty’s long
history, the re-imagined Modern Warfare
is looking technically impressive and
narratively wobbly. When Infinity Ward
says it’s going for an authentic and
realistic game, I’m inclined to think they’re
talking about the authenticity of its gun
models, sound effects, and animations
rather than the content of the story.
Chris LivingstonA GREAT DEAL OF ATTENTION
HAS BEEN PAID TO MAKING
THE GUNS FEEL REALISTICSerious facial
expressions only.