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Modern Warfare (MW) campaigns have always been about non-stop action and all out warfare. Call of Duty (Cod) MW2 (2022) takes a new approach in that it’s more story oriented. Without spoiling much, you play as franchise favorites such as Ghost, Captain Price and many others. After sabotaging an overseas arms deal, your team raids a complex and finds American missiles. Your team then must track down and uncover the people behind this deal. Throughout this campaign there are multiple unique missions I have never witnessed in a Cod game before. The creativity is amazing.

Co-op

Co-op used to be the highlight of MW games; with intense missions you could play with a friend. It was a  competitive community trying to see who could complete the mission the fastest, all being determined by a national leaderboard. The New co-op modes are horrible. They feel like rip off replicas of campaign missions no one liked. They are dull and unenjoyable, and even if you decide to play them you will have trouble finding others who would. The only people who play co-op are players who search for and find xp glitches.

Multiplayer

With that said, I already like MW2 (2022) better than MW (2019).  It still can be fast paced, but generally favors traditional play styles. Although it still has bugs and should have had more content on release, I enjoy playing it. These problems cause great memories with my friends and I, for better or worse.

MW2(2022) released with a decent number of weapons, with a majority of them feeling unique from other in-game guns. Some problems were some of these guns are reused from the previous MW, MW (2019). They may look slightly different, but are a close copy and paste. I don’t personally care because I liked those weapons, but it feels somewhat lazy.

Infinity Ward introduced a new mechanic in custom classes, weapon tuning. This is for more serious players where every little detail matters. You can micro adjust attachments so that your gun is optimized to your playstyle. This can include scope distance from your character’s viewpoint, or from weapon recoil control to aim down sights speed.

Skill gaps could be larger, and recoil is much higher than in recent CoD games. This makes the game far more difficult unless you memorize the recoil patterns. I say could, because weapons such as AK variants take 2-3 shots to kill. This means you don’t need to control recoil if you can kill someone in 3 shots out of a 30 round mag or more. Activision has finally attempted to remove slide canceling. I say attempted because it’s still possible, but extremely difficult. Though the new meta now is jump shooting and dolphin diving. 

I am very disappointed that Activision thought it’d be a good idea to release a $70 game with 14 maps. This may sound like a lot, but they are spread across multiple game modes. A majority of these maps either repeat or are hated by everyone. There are only 8 online multiplayer maps, and others from the game’s beta were taken out due to lawsuits.

A daunting task that’s been around since CoD began is camo grinding. Camo grinding has been the center of rage, relief, fulfillment, and superiority. Camos are obtained through countless hours spent leveling up every weapon and completing every camo challenge. MW2 (2022) has taken a new approach by making camos easier to obtain, but still difficult for masteries. Mastery camos are unlocked once every other camo is unlocked. For example, If I get max level on my M4 which is an AR and complete all the camo challenges, I will unlock gold camo for the M4. Once I unlock gold camo on every AR in the game, I unlock platinum camo. Once platinum for every category of weapons is unlocked, I get polyatomic. After polyatomic comes Orion. Each of these mastery camos also contain challenges of their own. Although it takes a long time, many CoD players would tell you it’s worth it.

CoD’s game environment has always been hostile, and everyone plays their own way. Anyone who buys MW2(2022) and has a PC, Xbox, or PlayStation can communicate in game with a microphone. A majority of the player base is young adults and adults who are playing for many different reasons. All it takes is one person to start taking trash and everyone wants to put their opinion in. Thanks to being online and the ability to hide behind an anonymous character, people tend to say some either out of pocket or disrespectful things. This is where CoD gamers get their toxic reputation.

Server issues were a massive problem on release and have been gradually being fixed, though still in repair. There are also a few glitches that suck, especially when you want to change your custom classes and they disappear until you load into a game. Although they suck, players have found ways to temporarily fix them so that the game is playable.

Bottom Line

Although I have listed multiple cons there are many pros, but no matter what I say there will always be people who find something to complain about. I enjoy playing CoD because of its nostalgia. I enjoy the challenge of grinding for in-game camos and playing with my friends.

Season 1 is set to release within two and a half months after the games release (November 16th, 2022). With season 1, new weapons are added and a handful of maps.  With this season Activision claimed 3 fan favorite maps would be returning, many suspect “Highrise” to return. This should fix the lack of content which currently makes the game stale. With the new season, updates should fix most bugs in the game. Later in the year Warzone 2 will release, which is free for everyone to play. What really has people hyped is the extraction survival game mode, which can be comparable to other titles like Escape from Tarkov.

I think most people refuse to give this game a chance because of the horrible CoD games released in recent years. I encourage you to buy it, but if you’re skeptical, wait until season 1 releases and see if the game is hammered out to what it should be.