Regarding the battle, this time there are also some debates related to "bottom line" and "political leanings". In some of the "bottom line" related levels, I didn't try to do something extremely egregious and there were consequences.But just what is shown in the game is enough to make players confused about "double standards" or the boundaries between "good and evil"
With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Activision finally remembered what it made its name for.
Activision and players have been unhappy with the Call of Duty campaign for a long time. It is true that in the current market environment, "campaign" is no longer the biggest selling point of "Call of Duty". The more playable multiplayer mode is the foundation for ensuring player stickiness. But for "Call of Duty", which started with battles, its campaign is like the Spring Festival Gala. Maybe everyone is shouting that they have no hope and it is tasteless, but once the game is released, the campaign performance is not good – even if it is mediocre, it is still It is most likely to become a trigger of player dissatisfaction, or an introduction for players to return to the topic of "New Year's goods" after a year.
For this reason, Activision previously chose to return to World War II when the "future" and "science fiction" war themes were slightly exhausted. In "Call of Duty: WWII", Activision handed over a "World War II" theme that is important in the history of human warfare. Answer sheet. At the same time, this is also the starting point of the "Call of Duty" series.
And more importantly, although "World War II" is old to players, according to the series timeline, it is actually a "brand new" face that has not been around for too long. This is the same as "Assassin's Creed: Origins". Since the timeline of the series has been pushed too far forward and the expandable settings have almost been expanded, it is better to directly return the theme to the one that has left feelings in the hearts of players and can Let players regain fresh nodes.
But for this game IP with the highest commercial value in the world, the campaign performance of "Call of Duty: WWII" is still lackluster. Some of the scene settings in the levels allow veteran players of the series to know what will happen next at a glance. Some foreign media's praise for the game was mostly focused on the zombie mode and multiplayer mode, and they still pointed out some specific flaws in the campaign, such as rush to work, and the plot logic was not convincing enough.
In "Call of Duty: Black Ops 4", the campaign part was directly cut off. In today's "Call of Duty", that is, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare", Activision seems to have realized that although "World War II" is the origin of the series, it is the campaign part that really makes "Call of Duty" famous. is the "Modern Warfare" trilogy starring Price, Makarov and others. So, in this battle, Captain Price returned.
The most unabashed and straightforward battle
The first thing to note is that when Price appears in the script this time, players will not see the scene of old acquaintances hugging each other and crying. Because the previous trilogy has completely concluded the story, except for Price, almost all the team members and villains have died. Just like the name of this generation "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare", the subtitle does not have a serial number, and the old characters will appear in turn, but the plot and timeline are completely parallel worlds compared with previous works and have little to do with it.
It can even be said that if it weren’t for the emotion-earning scene in the final ending that left a deep impression on players, Price’s presence in the campaign would actually be relatively weak. This is related to the image quality improvement brought by the new engine and the rhythm of this battle.
Regardless of the feel, with the support of the new engine, the image quality of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" has indeed reached the highest level in history, and it is excellently optimized. The characters' faces are lifelike, and the textures and colors make them feel more alive—or more alive, rather than stagnant. As for Price, in terms of modeling precision, he is very different from the captain back then. When the bullet is fired, the effect of gunpowder particles spreading on the side of the gun is clearer and more realistic. The diffusion effect of light sources such as street lights and flames in night scenes is also moving closer to reality, creating a quite fresh night battle experience.
However, at least in this generation, Activision does not seem to intend to use the new engine to write too many thrilling chapters for Price, Soap and others. This time, most of the ink has fallen on a newcomer – "Farah", a female leader in the Middle East.
Activision has always been accustomed to allowing players to immerse themselves in the war from the perspectives of different camps and characters during the campaign, and use this to advance the plot on multiple lines. In "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare", this is almost the ultimate in the series.
In the middle of this battle, Activision successively inserted memories of Farah's childhood and being imprisoned in a prison by the enemy. It is worth mentioning that in this level where young Farah escapes for her life and fights back against the enemy, the player controls the little girl to be able to run, jump, brandish sharp weapons, and shoot with guns.
through the poppy bushes
Perhaps Activision is trying to create a sense of oppression in this level similar to the "Tyrant" in "Resident Evil 2". The little girl has to try to hide her whereabouts. She will be killed if she is shot. Any omission will cause the level to fail. And the enemy soldiers are just like "tyrants" who are slow but deadly. Overall, these levels are cruelly depicted and put enough pressure on players.
But at the same time, and it may vary from person to person, my feelings in these levels are actually dominated by shock at Activision's bold and unabashed depiction, completely overpowering other feelings.
The previously mentioned plot in the prison also requires the player to play Farah at that time and experience a long period of torture. It may be thought that what "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" is doing is to present players with more perspectives other than soldiers and those involved in the war. This also existed in previous battles, but not as much.
In addition, the campaign of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" probably involves the most civilians.
In this generation of campaigns, part of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's interpretation of the term "modern warfare" is that the war spreads into modern cities, such as some of Europe's iconic cities. Enemy troops will rush into the city and shoot without distinction between police and civilians. At a certain level, when the sound of explosions and gunfire suddenly becomes overwhelming, the system will not give the player an exact direction and path guidance, but will allow the player to survive and protect the people.
I was particularly fond of this setting of the system at that time. It made me feel a little confused about the direction, and the city, or around me, was full of fallen policemen, civilians and enemy troops, which created a particularly strong sense of despair.
Some actions taken under the dark night are one of the results of the new engine visual effects. When the environment is completely dark, the illumination range of the gun body tactical light will be extremely limited, and the effect is about the same as the "flashlight in horror games" ridiculed on the Internet. In this way, the sense of crisis when the player is in the dark is doubled, and the dust particles in the air and the footsteps echoing from time to time in the empty factory will also make the player more nervous. It has also become difficult to find the enemy's location – or, in other words, it involves more tactical and conscious components, such as judging the location by listening to the sound.
Some plots of sweeping houses floor by floor at night are closer to the law enforcement scope of modern SWAT police. The positioning, advancement, and search methods of the team members in the corridors were exactly the same as what was recorded in a book I had read on SWAT training. For example, the field of vision each is responsible for when the four-person team advances through the corridors, the two-person cooperation when exploring corners, breaking down doors, etc. The details are very professionally drawn.
What I'm more satisfied with in this campaign is that the formulaic design in "Call of Duty" of clearing out enemy troops in a featureless bunker area is much less. Instead, the flow and length of a single chapter are greatly reduced. For example, in the chapter about cleaning the house at night mentioned earlier, the chapter ends after the player has cleaned 3 or 4 floors.
If it were in the past, maybe a design of walking out of the building and engaging in long-distance shooting with the enemy on the street would be added to increase the content of the level and support the duration. But this time it was really rare. Except for a battle in the hospital, the level design at that time almost had the formulaic feel of the past, but Activision still added new content such as "tripwire grenades" to increase the variables.
And, perhaps deliberately by Activision, most of the animations between each chapter of this campaign have become extremely short. It's about as short as a simple conversation within a chapter. There are no longer large paragraphs of rendering and foreshadowing at the beginning of chapters, and most of them go straight to the topic.
There is almost no sense of separation between chapters. So when I just started and spent two hours finishing the first four chapters in one go, I even thought I was still in the first chapter. And in my impression, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" seems to have deliberately hidden the progress bar and icon of chapter loading, or made it so inconspicuous that I didn't notice it at all.
Coupled with the new settings and thrilling scripts in the levels, the feeling of the "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" campaign is actually close to "one shot to the end". Of course, the multi-line narrative that "Call of Duty" is good at cannot be "shot to the end", but the smoothness and rhythm of its overall chapter narrative are generally similar to it.
However, precisely because there is not much pure narrative and background content, the campaign of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" always gives people a feeling of unfinished content. The story seems to have just begun and is over. The damn villain is dead too. The conspiracy behind the war has only revealed the tip of the iceberg, which is not very satisfying.
Regarding the battle, this time there are also some debates related to "bottom line" and "political leanings". In some levels related to the "bottom line", I didn't try to do extremely bad things and there would be any consequences, but just what was shown in the game was enough to make the players think about "double standards" or "good and evil". Boundaries are confused.
I won’t give specific examples here to avoid spoilers and causing discomfort. But let me talk about such a detail. This time, before entering the campaign list page, a content warning option pops up in "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" for players to confirm. Later, in a certain chapter, a dialogue option was deliberately designed to "warn" players a second time whether to avoid the plot.
Multiplayer mode maintains excellent quality
This time "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" has a very key operational change, which is the addition of the "gun setting" function. Players can set up their guns at almost any corner of the bunker to shoot while reducing their body protruding area, and the perspective changes very freely. In addition, the player can release the gun mode by moving the character at will, which is very convenient to use.
Combined with the maps with larger areas and more corners in the multiplayer mode of the previous generation, you will find that there are more players squatting in the corners. But this is somewhat in conflict with the fast-paced, high-intensity competitive confrontation that has been the main focus of "Call of Duty" in the past. The appearance rate of trolls and broadsword mines will increase significantly.
Another operation worth digging into is the interaction with doors. Players can push the door hard and the door will open quickly. But if you are unlucky, the broadsword mine behind the door will be triggered directly, sending you home to the west. Another option is to gently open the door a crack, move forward slowly, carefully explore the field of view, and then push the door open.
2v2 mode is more straightforward. In a very small map, both sides are randomly assigned the same guns and form teams to fight. If it's fast, it takes less than 10 seconds. There is basically no such thing as a shady person, it just depends on the extreme hand speed and accuracy.
As for this cooperation mode, it is really difficult. A team of 4 people conducts a PVE mission. If a player falls, they can help each other. However, there are really many AIs coming to the scene. If you are not careful, the AI can easily go around the player to the unprotected side. In the end, it often ends up with four players running towards each other, struggling to save their lives.
The gameplay of the 64-player large battlefield mode is close to that of "Battlefield". Take points and get points. However, this generation of maps has really many buildings and is very three-dimensional. Players are basically equipped with sprayers and broadsword mines as standard equipment. So even though the map is bigger and there are more people, the game still has a stronger "street fighting" flavor.
Conclusion
Overall, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" has delivered a campaign mode that ranks among the best in history. The rhythm can almost be said to be the best in history. The plot design is also bold and immersive. But the plot was told too little, and it was gone right after it started. The visual and sound effects brought by the new engine to "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" are also very significant, and the title of the "Modern Warfare" restart is worthy of the title.
At least for now, what I’m most looking forward to about next year’s “Call of Duty” is that it will be the second game of the rebooted “Modern Warfare” – of course this is not possible, next year’s “Call of Duty” has been confirmed for "Black Ops 5." But in terms of quality, I hope so.
advantage
+Excellent campaign level design
+Strong visual expression
+Good optimization
insufficient
-Multiplayer mode places too much emphasis on street fighting
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