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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare review
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare review
It
doesn’t take long for the guilt to set in. You’re holding a handgun in
London’s Piccadilly Circus as terrorists run wild with assault rifles
and flames bloom from a recently ignited suicide vest. As terrified
civilians run past, screaming and wounded, you’re thinking: “Where is
the next mission checkpoint?”
Call of Duty is perhaps the most divisive mainstream gaming brand of all time; a
gung-ho, partisan blockbuster combat romp selling us a vision of rough
and ready spec-ops superstars travelling the globe with their guns and
their competence, helping freedom fighters while killing rogue
paramilitary groups, without pausing too long to consider the
differences between them.
In 2019’s Modern Warfare, a reimagining of Call of Duty 4: Modern
Warfare from 2007, you take control of SAS and CIA operatives as they
aid rebel forces in the fictitious country of Urzikstan, which borders
Russia and is fighting for its independence. A stash of chemical weapons
has gone missing and must be located while an extremist Russian
military faction is quelled.
The story is a pulpy, mashup of real-world proxy wars and brutal
localised conflicts that panders to US sensibilities. Urzikstan could be
Syria, it could be Afghanistan, it could be the Ukraine or Chechnya. It
doesn’t matter. What matters is that hard men and women are putting
their lives on the line in hidden, deniable ops where the rules are bent
– and that can include the odd war crime.
The problem is, it’s fun and it’s really well made. Modern Warfare
looks astonishing, from the almost photorealistic cinematic sequences to
the intricately detailed in-game environments: the desert towns, the
city streets, the remote villas. Sometimes you just have to stop and
admire the orange glint of the sun off a burned-out vehicle.
And this is the best campaign since Call of Duty 4. From an
incredibly tense raid on a terrorist stronghold in north London to a
bloody siege on an embassy roof, it is exciting and brilliantly paced.
There are references to the series’ past, with particular moments – a
helicopter raid during which you take control of missiles from the air; a
long-range sniper mission – that will remind veterans of classic
missions Death from Above and All Ghillied Up. There is always some new
high-tech toy to try, or a fresh perspective on the battle in hand.
All the while, you concede that this is a polished game made by a US
studio, studying, and arguably excusing, American military and political
methods. There has already been significant controversy
surrounding the Highway of Death mission, which features the slaughter
by Russian military of escaping civilians but bears a close resemblance
to a real-life US-led action against retreating Iraqi military personnel
in Kuwait in 1991, also later known as the Highway of Death. This
switching of culprits has led to the game’s rating on review site Metacritic being bombed with negative comments from apparently Russian players.
True, the game does try to muddy (or perhaps more accurately bloody)
the waters of which side is good or bad, right or wrong. There are key
Russian allies in the game who are crucial to your mission, and we’re
encouraged to view the main antagonist, Russian general Roman Barkov, as
a rogue player, disowned by his country. At the same time, we see
western forces break the rules and commit ethical crimes which the
player has to decide whether to be a part of. There is a lot of bluster
about blurred lines and “fighting with gloves off”, but it just amounts
to chatter in the wind before the next barnstorming set-piece.
Meanwhile, in the multiplayer section of the game, where players
fight one another in a range of team-based pursuits, some long-term fans
have complained about the new maps, which are more naturalistic in
design than previous Call of Duty online maps, which work like little
purpose-built sports arenas of death. There are more places to camp and
to snipe from, so players have to be more guarded, slowing the pace.
Yet the ridiculously chaotic Ground War mode, which pits two teams of
32 players against each other on a large map with armoured vehicles and
helicopters, is exhilarating if wildly unpredictable, while the more
contained mode Gunfight has teams of two competing in very small areas
with a range of weapons. This is tense, highly controlled multiplayer
action – not quite up there with Counter-Strike for tactical purity but as close as Call of Duty is ever likely to get.
Can we enjoy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare without being revolted by
or sucked into its skewed, cliche-ridden interpretation of geopolitics
and asymmetrical warfare? We have, after all, had many years of the
Hollywood-military complex selling us smartly packaged, exciting
thrillers such as Black Hawk Down, Hurt Locker and Act of Valor, all of
which have been questioned for their depiction of US military actions.
The Liam Neeson movie Taken is an awful analysis of human trafficking but an amazing mainstream thriller.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare, meanwhile, is a slickly produced, well
constructed military shooter filled with thrilling set-pieces and
moments of fraught tension. It’s also a good run-and-gun online shooter,
which wants to bring something fresh to the way online team-based
competition works in this genre but isn’t quite there yet – new maps
will inevitably follow.
If you tire of the online action, there is always the campaign to
replay at a higher difficulty level. A new “realism” mode takes the
challenge up to max, removing all the on-screen information so you have
to rely on memory and your senses to know if you’re about to run out of
ammo or if a grenade has just rolled up alongside your cover point. This
mode brings a whole new dimension of heart-in-the-mouth suspense,
completely changing the pace and complexion of the action. Despite
yourself, you are dragged into the fray again.
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