We are at a stage of gaming where the most famous video games consist of hero-based shooters with colourful characters shooting rainbows at each other with minimal realism. With many gamers yearning for imminent change, Infinity Ward handed us one of the best first-person shooters in the last ten years – Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (MW2), the reboot.

Call of Duty has been one of the leading first-person shooter games since the 2000s. This game is another in line with their many games and a sequel to the much controversial Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019.

The series is well known for its astoundingly good and revolutionary multiplayer as they were the first to bring the "create a class" system. However, Modern Warfare 2, 2022, not only exceeds in multiplayer but has one of the best campaigns of a first-person shooter game to date.

The prologue sets you in the shoes of Task Force 141's Simon "Ghost" Riley. It is found that he had been tracking a man named General Ghorbrani who has been supplying weapons to Iran. That is bad news for the West, so they decided to drop a missile on him.

This CIA and SAS joint assassination later sparks a chain reaction and leads to rising terror attacks. Iran elects a new revolutionary, Hassan and so the CIA sends our favourite Scottish lad, Soap MacTavish, and pairs him up with Ghost, to assassinate him. However, Hassan escapes and it turns out that he had been supplied ballistic missiles from the USA. The game follows Task Force 141 as they track down the supplied ballistic missiles to destroy them.

The campaign has some of the most well-crafted missions in Call of Duty history to date. Infinity Ward ditches the generic 'take a gun, go inside the room, and shoot people' formula and adds depth to it.

Suppose we are doing a stealth mission at the docks. Instead of following a scripted cutscene and an ally until the mission ends, the game drops you in the docks and lets you act and clear it in any way you see fit. Will you find an armoury and arm up, or will you look around for knives to do it silently? It's all up to you. There are also missions which leave you completely alone with no weapon and introduce a crafting system.

Another massive highlight of the game is its presentation. The cutscene-to-game transitions are seamless and the gameplay is insanely cinematic. Say a helicopter is crashing. Instead of just showing it in a cutscene, as we walk towards our target building in night vision goggles, the helicopter operator drops flares and yells, "Mayday" with some of the best voice acting and drops down in the field ahead.

The final and best things about this game's campaign are the characters. The characters are rich and well-developed. They have some of the best voice acting imaginable with the newer highlight being Alejandro, leader of the Mexican Special Forces. His voice actor gave his everything while voicing him and it shows. Definitely one of the best additions to the game.

The campaign has quite an anticlimactic end but sets up Modern Warfare 3 in the best way imaginable.

Now let's come to another massive aspect of the game, the multiplayer. The multiplayer of the game is one of the best in recent Call of Duty years. Like every game in the series, some of the maps like Santa Sena Border Crossing are complete dumpster fires while some like Farm 18 are effortlessly fun. The time to kill (TTK) is much lower compared to past titles. MW2 brought back dolphin diving, removed slide and reload cancelling, and completely trashed bunny hopping. With these lower and slower movement options combined with the smallest TTK, it resulted in the game rewarding a much slower and more tactical gameplay. So, instead of people just running around and shooting, they require more communication and teamwork.

With all the net positives of MW2's multiplayer, the game has its downsides.

The perk system in the game is absolutely horrendous. Instead of just taking three perks, you have to take perk packages mid-game and level them up to unlock the "ultimate perk." This practically makes some perks like "Ghost" completely useless until late in the game. The other massive problem with this game is the weapon level-up system. Instead of just unlocking weapons and attachments by levelling up, you get a family tree of weapons and unlock the attachments for the family tree. The tree consists of maybe an assault rifle, SMG and sniper but to unlock an optic for the SMG, you have to level up the sniper to level 14. These features seem quite unnecessary and hopefully will be improved soon.

In conclusion, MW2 has a spectacular campaign, decent multiplayer and grindy gameplay. The game already has a campaign, multiplayer, spec ops, DMZ, Warzone 2.0 and their newest addition, raids, with much more to come.

So is the game worth the $80 price tag? I would say so.

Abhoy Hriddo is levelling up the Battle Rifles to unlock a scope for the ARs while playing on Shipment. Send him thoughts and prayers at abhoyhriddo@gmail.com