“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” 2022 is a take back to the older Call of Duty games that made the series grow so much in popularity. The campaign continued with what its predecessor “Modern Warfare 2019” did and brought back fan favorite characters from the original Modern Warfare series such as Captain Price, Soap Mactavish and the mask-wearing cover character Simon “Ghost” Riley. The campaign was on the shorter side, taking between four to six hours to complete the 10 missions. The missions themselves range in variety from action packed car chases to stealth missions wearing ghillie suits, keeping the players attached to the wide range of missions the mode brings. 

However, for a single player mode that is built around making a good story, the campaign lacks the strong emotional draw the original Modern Warfare games brought to the series where you were betrayed by allies and had to make peace with enemies. The campaign in some ways feels like a prequel to the original “Modern Warfare 2” game that was released all the way back in 2009, with the characters looking much younger than they had been in the original games. The campaign is good, but not great, and when compared to its predecessor “Modern Warfare 2019”, it feels a little bit like a let down. However, it is still far from being one of the worst. 

The multiplayer mode of Call of Duty is sometimes what players buy the game for exclusively and this year’s game feels very smooth all around, with everything from movement to gunfights being the best the Call of Duty series has seen in quite some time. What’s best about this year’s Call of Duty is there’s not one gun or equipment that stands alone from the rest as the clear best in the game. All of the guns seem to play on a level field as while certain situations make certain guns better, the overall feel is very balanced across the board of the 55 weapons. However, one drawback against all of this so far is the multiplayer map sizes which is ultimately negatively affecting the pacing of the game. 

This year’s maps are much larger, causing the pace to become much slower, a key difference from past Call of Duty games that had maps with much closer quarters and chaos. All in all, this year’s multiplayer for Call of Duty does a great job of bringing back the classic gunplay that made the original Call of Duty games so successful while also incorporating new features, such as invasion and larger Ground War to help modernize the game. 

Special Ops is the third and final mode of the game and has been a staple in the Modern Warfare Call of Duty series but always as a third mode players seem to forget about. However, this year the mode was revamped and engages with the player more and moves more towards military missions, rather than just the simplicity of surviving waves of enemies. Similar to the campaign, Special Ops ranges in variety of style, as it consists of discrete stealth missions to defend friendly military bases against enemy assaults. The revamped mode went from something that was once so simple to what now has the possibility to be a staple in every Call of Duty game for years to come. 

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is an overall well put together game with minor issues such as crashes and inconsistent servers that are holding the game back so far from reaching its true potential. The game has already broken the record for most sales of a game in the first five days with a staggering $800 million, doing so in just three days, shattering the previous record held by “Modern Warfare 3” launched all the way back in 2011 by $25 million. The game at launch is not perfect but has potential to be the best in the Call of Duty series history.