CoD: Modern Warfare 2 is scheduled for release on October 28, 2022, coming in a year that has consistently disappointed shooter fans. Now it is supposed to be the savior of the genre in the gaming year 2022, but must do a strange balancing act between the mood of departure and old structures. That can only go wrong, according to MeinMMO author Marko Jevtic.

Much has been said about the gaming year 2022. Shooter fans in particular cannot be satisfied. Usually, the games that are released in the winter time of the previous year are the biggest hits for months.

However, CoD Vanguard, Battlefield 2042 and Halo Infinite have all disappointed. Even ‘fresh blood’ like The Cycle: Frontier doesn’t hit as hoped.

So CoD Modern Warfare 2 is almost automatically the great hope for shooter fans to finally play something really good and great again. Not an “insider tip” or an “established greatness” that you’ve been playing for years. But the one shooter of the year – the blockbuster, the box office hit, the pop culture phenomenon. Call of Duty is historically quite good at earning these descriptions.

But I have grave doubts that Modern Warfare 2 will live up to those claims in the long run. Because, due to the circumstances, the game seems caught between the mood of departure and the annual hype. And that is a mixture that can only disappoint.

CoD makes big promises that contradict each other

The best example of this is the presentation of the game at Summer Game Fest. Geoff Keighley’s presenter introduces Johanna Faries, the “head of Call of Duty.” She then stands at a shipyard in front of oversized prints of the characters in Modern Warfare 2 and proudly tells us what to expect:

In 2019, Modern Warfare has changed everything. And on October 28, we’re ushering in a new era of Call of Duty with the launch of Modern Warfare 2. We’re back, we’re bigger, and we’re bringing the entire team: Price, Gas, Soap, Alejandro and – of course – Ghost.

We needed a stage big enough to stage Call of Duty in a whole new way, inspired by the world we’re about to enter. Oil platforms, cargo ships and other [Schauplätze] Are just the beginning. Here is Modern Warfare 2.

Johanna Faries (via YouTube)

This speech is accompanied by epic music, and then the detailed gameplay trailer starts. You can see it here:

The whole thing went together for less than 10 minutes. But that was enough to take away all hope that CoD Modern Warfare 2 can be more than ‘just’ a good shooter. Because everything that Johanna Faries has presented here, along with the gameplay, is evidence of a most strange and difficult balancing act that can only disappoint.

The game seems like it’s caught between two extremes. Faries talks about a “new era of Call of Duty”, but in the same breath mentions that all the familiar faces are there. “Of course” also Ghost, how could it be otherwise?

How does this fit together? How ‘new’ can an era be when you go back to old means as a matter of course and present a team of elite killers from a 2009 game like the superheroes from Avengers. By that I mean ‘of course’ the protagonists from the original Modern Warfare 2 from 2009, not the new Modern Warfare 2 with the old title.

The second half of Faries’ quote probably gives the answer to this question: namely, it says Modern Warfare 2 wants to “stage itself in a whole new way”. That doesn’t just sound like ‘more appearance than reality’ – so far, it also looks quite like it.

CoD MW2 wants to break new ground – With familiar means?

When content creators and influencers got an exclusive look at Modern Warfare 2 in front of the big crowd, everyone was abuzz. They said it was incredible, would break the internet, and was already a “Top 5 CoD.”

But when the level gameplay was shown at Summer Game Fest, the mood was completely different. The player in the trailer moved annoyingly slow through the level and one thought dominated my mind, “I’ve seen it all before.”

Rain, evil terrorists, a rocket, Molotov cocktails and exploding red barrels. A team that you slowly trot after, the slowest door opening animations since Resident Evil 1… you’ve seen it all before.

Not only did I not see any new gameplay, I didn’t even recognize the big, new staging. It seemed to me like a petty mishmash of 4 games that officially have those exact names: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare II.

But I wasn’t the only one who saw it that way. The editors of PC Gamer, for example, wrote that “Modern Warfare 2 feels like it has no new ideas left” and said in a conversation:

Call of Duty as a single-player experience feels completely stale at this point. […]

CoD has a habit of being repetitive, but that oil rig mission was one of the most generic things I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t think of a single thing that happened in those seven minutes that I haven’t done a billion times in the last 20 Calls of Duty. […]

It comes across as if Infinity Ward needs to check off some boxes that prevent the game from feeling new. Why does it look so much like Call of Duty 4’s introductory mission? Maybe the point is to create a sense of nostalgia for games that are already 15 years old, but what I got instead was “oh, we’re doing this again”.

The editors of PC Gamer in their article

With Modern Warfare 2, they want to usher in a “new era”, but at the same time fulfill every fan expectation that anyone with the remotest interest in the game has.

The name of the game is also an old one, as are the names of the protagonists – Ghost has to be there, of course. An oil refinery for sure too, that’s just CoD. The weapons are modern and familiar, of course. If it says Modern Warfare 2 on it, it certainly has to be Modern Warfare 2 in it. But I wonder: Where is the new, the special, the interesting?

We’ve only really seen the single player so far. Most people are interested in the multiplayer, though. But nothing we know about MW2 so far gives the impression that anything revolutionary is going to happen here. There are just killstreaks, weapon attachments and perks again. “Of course”.

The typical CoD routine can’t entertain for 2 years

One of the biggest criticisms of CoD Vanguard is the setting. World War II as a battlefield has been hackneyed for decades. CoD was responsible for this itself with its first games, Modern Warfare was already the course correction in 2007. As a compromise, the gameplay was kept as old school as possible. It didn’t work: Vanguard was a big disappointment for gamers and for Activision Blizzard.

Let’s get one thing straight: This is not me saying months in advance that the game will be bad or not fun – I can’t make a statement about that yet, and I don’t want to do that with this text. But I see CoD repeating the same mistakes, this time with a broader chest and more self-confidence than with Vanguard.

Even the people in charge at Activision said about Vanguard: It brought too few innovations. So why are they purposefully working towards a similar concept for CoD MW2?

The CoD formula has been successful every year since at least 2007’s Modern Warfare. Fun is actually what the games always bring, too. Too often, however, it’s like an 08/15 hamburger from a fast-food chain: sometimes you feel like it and it awakens old familiar feelings of enjoyment. But the whole thing is not filling or satisfying.

Modern Warfare 2 is possibly the first game in CoD history that has to live for 2 years. Because 2023 is probably not to appear a new CoD. MW2 must therefore be able to satisfy more than ever also in the long term, because there is no second portion so quickly. And as bad as the shooter competition is performing, there won’t be a good alternative anytime soon.

So CoD Modern Warfare 2 is caught in a very bad situation. It has to satisfy 2 years of CoD fans, but at the same time it has to save a shooter year full of flops, disappointments and routine. It’s a balancing act that the game simply can’t pull off successfully – even if it does everything right.

At least: a new game mode could be really good. “DMZ” is probably based on Escape from Tarkov and could be released as a standalone title. You can read everything important about it here:

CoD is supposed to get a completely new mode with Modern Warfare 2 – Copies the successful recipe of Warzone for it

Now I want to hear your opinion on the topic. Do you agree, are you against? What are your expectations towards CoD MW2 2022? Leave a comment below.