What you won’t like
The occasional glitch
The game was surprisingly stable when I played it at a review event as well as in the multiplayer beta. We’ll see how it holds up as millions play, but I only had a few occasions where a cutscene didn’t look right. Only once did the PS4 crash on me entirely during gameplay. The first day of multiplayer has also been spotty in terms of server availability.
Scenes that make you uncomfortable
When a suicide bomber blows himself up in Piccadilly Circus at the beginning of Modern Warfare, you don’t actually see it. No body parts fly as the explosion happens. He holds the detonator in the air, and then the scene cuts away to something else. You hear the explosion in another part of the square, but you don’t see much of it.
In this case, the developer holds back from showing you what would be horrific, traumatic, and very bloody scenes. But in other parts of the game, you see it all. All told, three or four scenes are quite disturbing, reminiscent of the No Russian scene where terrorists slaughter civilians at an airport. As with No Russian, you don’t just witness these scenes. You are a participant. Most of the time, you are on the good side, but it is still very uncomfortable.
In a scene that gives you the backstory for the key character Farah and her brother, Hadir, you fight one-on-one as a Middle Eastern girl against a Russian soldier (who has already murdered your father) as he attempts to murder you with a gun or his hands.
After you kill the soldier in a horrific fight, you escape to the outside, where you see the victims of a poison gas attack, like a dead child and a quivering dog.
Later on, you will see a Russian guard waterboarding you so that they can extract information from you that they already know.
In another scene, a special operations team is clearing a house. As a soldier, you have to decide whether to pull a trigger as you aim at an unarmed woman who is not heeding a command to halt. You cannot progress in that mission until she is dead.
In still another torture scene, the Americans are extracting information from a prisoner. You have the choice to opt-out and not participate.
Collectively, this is all very disturbing. The context fits in the story, and I understand why the developers wanted to include these scenes. Perhaps they could have cut these scenes short. The child combat scene in particular goes on and on. I think it could have had a similar effect, as I felt when the suicide bomber attacked but the developers didn’t show it all.
An inconsistent tone
The developers say they tried to keep the same tone throughout multiplayer, the single-player campaign, and the Special Operations co-op missions. You don’t see any cutscenes in multiplayer, so the storytelling doesn’t extends into this mode.
But in multiplayer, you’re trying to kill as many enemies as possible. It’s not gleeful, but it is a competitive match that is more like a sport. It doesn’t resemble the serious, high-stakes world of the single-player campaign. I don’t find fault with this difference. It’s just noticeable.
Conclusion
As I said, Infinity Ward could have left some of those most disturbing scenes on the cutting room floor, just as it does in the beginning with the bombing in Piccadilly Circus. Sometimes it is better to hold back, without hurting the story, and I think that is a lesson that the studio should reflect upon.
But to hold back too much is to dilute the message of empathy for the soldier. The studio argues that the difficult scenes are necessary to make the point about the horrors of modern war. If you are faced with such criminal cruelty on a massive scale, how do you respond? Where do you draw the line on what you would do to make the world safe?
I’ve played through the game, and it was an intense and memorable experience. The story had moving parts and characters who had very different reactions when put into the crucible of unjust warfare. I think it is very well done, but probably could have left some parts out.
Yet I can’t fault the creators for their intentions in waking us up to the horrors that are around us in our world of constant warfare. This game is so thoughtful that it would be a shame if players skipped the single-player campaign and headed straight for multiplayer, which is a great experience as usual.
Ultimately, I think it is a good game because it might very well be the only way a new generation of players learns about modern warfare.
Score: 89/100
I played the game on the PlayStation 4 at a review event. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare comes out October 25 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Activision also provided me with a copy of the game for the purpose of this review.
For fun, I checked my previous ratings of Call of Duty games. Here they are: Black Ops 4: 90; WWII: 94; Infinite Warfare: 93; Black Ops III: 92; Advanced Warfare: 86; Ghosts: 80; Black Ops II: 89; Modern Warfare 3: 90.