Call of Duty Modern Warfare II campaign review

The game also follows the 2019 reboot in more ways than just visuals. It's more focused on linear storytelling and always manages to push you in tight spaces and house corridors to keep the tension tight. As if reminding you how actual surgical strikes are carried out. 

The story itself is a little dull. The usual suspects return with Russians, Middle Easterns and the Mexican cartel. The previous games in the series often explored grey areas that made you question government-backed operations like the ones you do in MW II but here things are not as moral questioning. 

Modern Warfare II also tries to mix things up. From stealth missions that give you nothing to shoot but some sensibilities to craft weapons on the go, to car chases that look like they've been ripped out of the Uncharted series. In no way it felt like a bad thing but we miss the bombastic shootouts than made some of the old games so memorable. Task Force 141 has some depth and the fan-favourite characters are here. However, after playing cinematic single-player games like God of War Ragnarok this year, Modern Warfare II seems like it has all the right ingredients to conjure a thrilling adventure as well barring the script.

The game also sends armoured enemies your way which makes the tactical approach for shooting enemies in close quarters and shooting enemies in open areas wildly inconsistent. At first, the game tells you the enemy with one or two bullets and you're good to proceed and then suddenly sends folks with armour that tank your hits until you shoot off parts of their armour. It's shabby but we all want multiplayer now, right?

Each and every gun in the game shoots with an incredible heft and the sound design here is in a league of its own. Throw in some really good headphones and you’ll easily believe that the shotgun and the assault rifle kickback and delay have been timed to perfection. It feels like CoD put half its paycheck into locking down the essence of every gun, its sound and its characteristics. This will inevitably make the multiplayer a lot more fun, however, that’s for a separate review.

Coming back to the graphics. Call of Duty Modern Warfare II’s excellence in the graphics department has put it on the radar of a certain Amsterdam hotel that is seen in the game. An area from Amsterdam in the campaign is so realistically created in-game by the devs that the hotel owners are unhappy with the stardom. You can check out the gameplay footage of the mission in Amsterdam here on our Instagram page.

The campaign mode also runs very smoothly on our Nvidia RTX 4090 on 4K without DLSS settings. This is easily going to become our favourite game for test benching gaming PCs and graphic cards. We already tested it on the Intel Arc A770 and the Nvidia RTX 4090, and the game supports both XeSS and DLSS supersampling methods. Even AMD’s FSR is supported. So no matter which PC part you have in your system, the game will run smoothly.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II shares the same name as its predecessor but brings fresh new ideas and missions to its campaign. It’s not as you remember it but this time the campaign is done better than last year’s Vanguard. The story is passable but the quality of graphics and sound design is a cut above the rest. The CoD franchise feels exciting this year especially when Halo Infinite multiplayer and Battlefield 2042 have both been disappointing. We’ll see what the multiplayer holds for us after playing it thoroughly. Spoiler alert, it’s fantastic and comes with tons of game modes and maps!