Back at it again – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered review

The original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched in November 2009 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. It’s been over 10 years since then, with Activision reviving the game in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered! Launched initially for the Playstation 4 on 1 April 2020, it will also be on Xbox One and PC 30 April (today!). Remember the first time you played this game? It’s time to return to those glory days with Captain Soap, Captain Price, and General Shepherd (one supposes).

Ready to roll out

Those curious might be wondering, why “Campaign Remastered”? Well, this edition does not have the multiplayer and spec-ops modes, leaving only the campaign mode to cater to solo players. So there you have it.

The campaign follows the mission of Task 141, a special forces unit lead by Captain John “Soap” MacTavish, as they hunt down Vladimir Makarov, the man behind the Russian Ultranationalists, as well as the United States Army Rangers who are defending the country from the Russian invasion.

Your point of view and playable character will swap around as you play five of them according to the missions. You have:

• Sergeant Gary “Roach” Sanderson of 141
• Private First Class Joseph Allen
• Private James Ramirez
• Soap MacTavish himself
• and an astronaut in the International Space Station

Soap is only playable during the last three missions of the game, with a majority of the game being played through the lens of the first three characters mentioned.

Once more into the breach

If you played the original Modern Warfare 2 back in 2009, then you’ll know the story already. This title has no changes to the story or new missions whatsoever, but you can now experience it in higher definition than ever before. The graphics have certainly been crafted to look so much more closer to reality than from its original iteration.

That isn’t to mean it’s completely void of additional features though. There’s now an “inspect” button you can play around with. It allows your currently playable character to fiddle with their weapons. This really is more for the beauty shots, with unique animations for handling weapons to cleaning the edges of knives. It lets you appreciate the detail put into this remaster, as a treat.

The stages have been redone with high quality textures, with the details especially popping on the PS4 Pro. You can expect something similar for powerful PCs too! High resolution, HDR support, new textures and redone cutscenes: you can really see the game as you are meant to.

Gun down those bad guys wherever they pop up! You’d always be starting with a different weapon per mission, but even if you happen to not like what you got, the enemies will be dropping theirs, so you can just pick up something you find more comfortable. There are some situations you might find yourselves spawning beside an about-to-explode vehicle, so uh, just enjoy the re-death.

Easy breezy controls

While there are the multitude of weapons you can use, there are occasions where you can opt to use a shield instead. You can use it to bash or ram into enemies, which is quite fun! What’s not so fun is when they’re used against you, so you’d have to make that quick dash behind them to take them out, or use an explosive: your choice.

You’ll get your chance to play with the big guns too, with missions letting you fire from a helicopter, or a tank with its heavy duty weaponry. You’d be tasked to use a Launcher or Stinger to destroy vehicles too.

There’s plenty of variety in challenges. Find yourself in a snowstorm and having to climb an icy mountain, and probably fall to your death multiple times. Drive that snowmobile for a high speed chase as you shoot down your enemies! Fun’s to be had in hacking enemy turrets while you protect your area with your own sentries, or calling in tanks to fire at designated locations.

The regular controls remain the same to move around, interact and so forth. It’ll differ accordingly to your settings and platform, but otherwise, there’s no big shakes here.

The differences in gameplay feel more subtle. Here, we want to highlight the No Russian mission, where in the original game it felt pretty easy, but the tension has been amped up in the remaster with the seemingly relentless attacks of the enemy. There is some leeway, though, as checkpoints are pretty plentiful now, so there’s definitely less frustration if you do go down.

Modern Warfare 2 has some of the best missions in the entire Call of Duty franchise and has even influenced a variety of other FPS games’ stories, so if you haven’t had the chance to experience it, now you should! We’ve even put together some choice comparisons between the 2009 and 2020 remaster for you to see in motion:

Laying down your arms

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is closer to a nostalgia trip that warms the heart than an actual separate title. Still, the core of the game is as fun as ever, while you revisit it with hopefully wiser eyes. It’s still one of the best FPS campaigns out there to enjoy solo.

FINAL SCORE

8.5 / 10

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