Call of Duty Modern Warfare II is finally here and the thoughts on it are mostly positive. This is my personal review, and it includes and overview of the game. A quick warning before you read this story: there will be spoilers to the game, so if you haven’t played and finished this game already or don’t want to get spoiled, then do not continue reading. 

A RUN-DOWN OF THE CAMPAIGN

The campaign starts with Ghost (a top-tier British soldier) in the middle of a desert, and you must get to a high up and discrete location to spy on a Iranian general to see what he is up to. After finding out he has possession of American missiles, they give the go to launch a missile at the base where the Russian general is and successfully destroy it. Then later it skips to a cutscene where two generals talk about whether or not they are at war after the attack. They then go on to say that the plans for the American missiles have been passed to the General’s second in command, Hassan. They then send out a squad of highly trained British specialists including Soap and Ghost to kill or capture the second in command.

They split up into teams, and Ghost and Soap infiltrate up-close from the ground from a chopper drop-off, and the other half stays in the chopper and tries to find a rendezvous point but get shot down by the Russians defending the second in command. After that, Ghost and Soap decide to go help the survivors from the chopper crash and try to hold the point while they heal the survivors. After defending the survivors from the enemies, they go on to find Hassan. They find no sign of Hassan anywhere and find out he escaped. But they do however find out that a cartel is helping to smuggle the American missiles, and the missiles are being transported in a dock in Amsterdam. They send two soldiers to find out more information.

They get through their troops and find out that the cartel is meeting up at a place in downtown Amsterdam at eight through an enemy’s phone. They intercept the cartel and find out where Hassan is. They find out Hassan is going to secretly cross the Mexican border into the United states with help from the cartel, and they send Mexican Special forces to help. They go on a wild goose chase after Hassan, and they fail to hold him back from America but decide to follow him and hopefully capture him. They catch up to them but then fall into a trap set up by Hassan.

The Special Forces go into a house where Hassan is, and then Hassan traps one of the troops in a room and beats him up. They later burn the room and leave, and Hassan escapes once again. Hassan was then taken back into cartel protection in Las Almas, Mexico. This confused me because why would he go to America just to get sent back to Mexico? But anyways they group up the Mexican Special forces with Ghost and Soap and go to Las Almas to hopefully capture Hassan this time. On their way there, the Special Forces tell Ghost and Soap about the cartel leader “El Sin Nombre” who is some unknown man who creates chaos in Las Almas.

They then arrive at the area where Hassan is supposed to be held and start infiltrating. But their plans get thwarted when the Mexican Army arrives. They get overrun and must retreat. When they seem pinned down, a small American force called the shadow team provides air support for them and drives out the Mexican army and continues their siege on Hassan. They find out where he is and siege the building he is in and finally capture him.

But the problem now is keeping hold of him. They have a very difficult time getting through the cartel protecting him and manage to get to a discreet location where they can question Hassan.

They realize they get information that the missiles are being held on a remote island and then go on to infiltrate it. After sneaking on the island, they find out that there is an underground passage system which most likely holds the missiles. But their plans get thwarted once again when their informant who is on a boat alone gets captured.

They go after her and find out where she is being taken. After a big car chase and lots of fighting, they catch up to the convoy and successfully capture their informant. Their informant learns from what the enemies were saying that the El Sin Nombre might have some valuable information they need, and so Soap and The Mexican special forces go into the cartel headquarters to find him. But they do not go guns blazing. This time, Soap turns himself in, and the Mexican special forces dress up as guards.

Soap gets interrogated by a woman named Valeria, and after interrogation, they send Soap to a waiting room to wait to talk to El Sin Nombre. Alejandro secretly pulls Soap out of the waiting room and makes him put on a disguise. They know that the person interrogating Soap is on the third floor, so they sneak up there and spy on them to learn where El Sin Nombre is. But instead, they learn that Valeria is El Sin Nombre, and this time they break into the room she is in and capture her and escape with her in a helicopter. Later they interrogate Valeria, and Alejandro reveals that he knew Valeria because she used to work with him in the military.

They learn from Valeria that their missiles are being held in an abandoned storage facility, and they go to that location to hopefully find the missiles. They fight through waves of soldiers set to defend the missile, and when the enemy troops realize they can not win, they initiate a countdown to launch the missile to make sure that the Americans’ plan does not succeed. The Americans change plans and infiltrate the mission control room and change the destination of the missile at the last second, successfully disarming the missile. When the team gets back to base, the leader of the Shadow Company betrays Soap, Ghost, and the Mexican special forces. They capture one of the members of the Mexican special forces, Ghost escapes, and Soap barely makes it out alive.

Soap goes on through a long and painful trek to meet back up with Ghost and avoid the shadow company, but eventually, they find Soap’s presence and try to kill him. Soap fights back and he finally makes it to Ghost, and they escape the area. They go to a safehouse where the people who were betrayed by the Shadow Company plan to take back their base, take back Alejandro, and defeat the shadow Company. They barge into the base and successfully defeat Shadow Company and rescue Alejandro, and they don’t die (unlike the 2009 Modern Warfare II).

EVERYTHING NEW

There have been a lot of new things added to the game that were definitely what a lot of people asked for. There is now aquatic combat, which now for the first time in the Modern Warfare Series players can swim and attack enemies underwater. There have been lots of other Call Of Duty games that have sliding in them but never a Modern Warfare game until as of now, and not only can they slide; they can also do a tactical dive which makes the player dive to the ground and make them go prone. Players can also hang on to ledges which personally I find as useless and kind of stupid to add into the game. Location damage was added to drivable vehicles, so now when a player shoots at a specific part at a vehicle that one part will be damaged rather than the whole vehicle.

There is now a tactical camera in Call Of Duty which when thrown will make an alarm sound if an enemy is nearby. There is also a shock stick which acts as a trap and if placed in a well hidden space, when a player passes by it, it shocks them and stuns them for a little bit. This allows players to easily eliminate enemies. The drill charge is a throwable item that is basically a grenade with a drill on it, and it drills a hole into a wall and launches the grenade through it. This is very useful for when an enemy is hiding inside a building. Finally, there will now be a third person mode in Call of Duty, so now players can either see their player from a perspective of their player or a third person perspective. 

REVIEW

The first impression this game gave me was great. The graphics in the first scene could probably fool some people into thinking it was an actual game. Overall, the graphics were phenomenal and groundbreaking, and at times, can look exactly like real life. The gameplay is great as well. They have good movement and very realistic physics.

This game has some occasional glitches and bugs, but nothing too big; it’s mostly just randomly kicking you to the main menu. One big thing I do not like about the game however, is that when you are in the main menu, they constantly ask you to sign up for things. This really bugged me, and I personally don’t think they should do that. I’d rather they just put a separate page in the main menu for these things, rather than spamming random pop-ups when you log in. There are a couple of areas in the campaign where some stuff they do or learn is unnecessary and/or doesn’t make sense at all. But the campaign is very fun and does have a very classic modern warfare feel. It seems that it did give the fans a lot of what they wanted.

However the ending was very poorly executed and seems extremely anticlimactic. Overall, the campaign was fun and enjoyable, and it included great problem-solving and action packed missions. However the storyline did feel extremely rushed and feels like they didn’t have enough time to really focus on the details of the plot.  The multiplayer is very good, too. There are a lot of good things about it, such as gun customization and game modes, but one thing that is debatable about it is the maps.

Some of them are very good and very well done, and others are just trashy and just suck to play in. All of the new things added I thought were a very good addition to Call Of Duty games and really satisfied me. The whole entire game gives me a very nostalgic feeling of the old Modern Warfare games, and I was definitely happy to see Ghost and Soap back together again, but a lot of it feels too similar to the old Call of Duty Modern Warfare II. Keep in mind this is not a remastered version of the 2009 Modern Warfare II, this was intended by the developers to be a completely different game. It just feels too similar to the old one in the plot and in the multiplayer. 

It kind of feels like they copied the old plot from the original Modern Warfare II and just changed a couple of things and added new characters. Now the reason I didn’t like this was because it is kind of unoriginal, and I wish they changed a lot more of the plot and action then they actually did. They should’ve tried to make it a whole different Call of Duty game and not just some different ending of the original Modern Warfare II. Overall, it was very entertaining and I enjoyed playing the campaign, and I like the multiplayer, but there are still some things that they could’ve changed to make the game perfect. I give this game a 75% after all of my suggestions. I would only recommend buying this game if you are a pretty big fan of the Modern Warfare trilogy and would like to have a good nostalgic feeling as well. This way, the purchase was worth it and you get the joy you intend for out of this game.