‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II’ Single-Player Campaign Review: A Return To Form

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s campaign is a welcome return to form for the larger Call Of Duty franchise.

While I enjoyed Black Ops Cold War’s weird single-player campaign, I was much less impressed with Vanguard’s. As a WWII shooter it was a tonal mess that came across as overly preachy for a Call Of Duty title, and oddly unfocused.

Modern Warfare II is a loose sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare campaign, picking up several years later with many of the same characters (many of whom are long-time characters in Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare franchise).

You play as the members of Task Force 141 for the most part, alternating between Soap, who’s paired with Ghost, and Gaz, who’s paired with Captain Price. Occasionally you’ll play as a different character, like a member of the Mexican special forces under the command of Colonel Alejandro Vargas, but mostly you’re Soap or Gaz, bantering with Ghost or Price, as you make your way through the game’s 17 globe-trotting missions.

These will take you to Mexico, Texas, Amsterdam, the Middle-East and even the Chicago skyline. Missions are varied. Some are straightforward shooting corridors. Others make use of stealth. Some have you unarmed, utilizing crafting to puzzle your way out of a tricky situation.

Throughout the campaign you get to try out a bunch of the guns that you’ll use in multiplayer. Since the campaign was released a week early, players will have more of a reason to play it before diving into multiplayer, and it’s definitely a good way to get a feel for the game. You can also earn various MP rewards by playing through the campaign, including a new Weapon Blueprint.

I played the campaign on Hardened and plan to go back and try it out on Realism (yes, I know this skips Veteran). It was a decent challenge, with some very sudden difficulty spikes at times. Armored enemies can be very challenging, and there were a couple times during the campaign where the sudden arrival of multiple armored foes made things especially frustrating.

There’s a driving mission that let’s you leap from one car to the next, commandeering new jeeps or armored vehicles as you chase down an enemy caravan. This was decently fun, but a long sequence of mine-dodging ended up being more tedious than entertaining.

One mission calls to mind the classic All Ghillied Up sniper mission from Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; another is almost identical to Death From Above. These are certainly memorable, fan-favorite missions and I enjoyed playing new versions of both of them.

A more interesting and unique mission involved you guiding another character via a series of security cameras, directing when he should move, when he should create a distraction, and when he should use his knife or pistol to take out a guard. This stealth puzzle mini-game was actually quite fun and engaging.

Overall, the campaign is a solid return to form for the CoD franchise and easily the best looking game in the series. There are some truly gorgeous environments to explore, from the hyper-realistic streets of Amsterdam to the glowing desert to a scene on a ship during a storm where shipping containers slide back and forth across the deck, providing both new hazards and a unique way to find cover.

I definitely recommend playing the game before multiplayer launches. Not only is it worth your while, it will likely also prepare you for the new DMZ and Raid modes.

Besides, it’s entertaining and there are no weird, awkward scenes like the one in Modern Warfare 2019 in which you played as a child who had to knife a Russian soldier to death. That’s a bonus in my book. This plays like a straight military thriller without attempts to be dark and edgy. There’s even some welcome comic relief which makes the characters feel more relatable.

Naturally, there’s still some over-the-top goofiness but in a lot of ways, the campaign dials down some of the bombast and makes it a touch more realistic. The story is nothing to write home about, but there are some nice (if somewhat predictable) twists and turns that keep things interesting, and the performances are solid all around. The facial animation is spectacular.

In the end, the decision to release the campaign early was a very smart one and I hope this becomes the standard going forward. It’s great to incentivize more players to give it a shot. The campaign sets the tone for the rest of the game, giving you a sense of who the characters are and often introducing the locations that multiplayer maps are drawn from.

There’s something a bit antiquated about a short, linear shooter campaign but I mean that in a good way. I get tired of giant open-world games with lots of busywork. It’s nice to get this more distilled shooter experience that can be completed in just a couple gaming sessions.

The full Modern Warfare II experience lands on October 28th on PC (via both Steam and Battle.net) as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles.