News - Call Of Duty: Warzone 2i Campaign Review (ps5) What Happened. Electric Playground

This is the 2023 game, not to be confused with the previous Modern Warfare 3. This is carrying on from what Infinity War did back in 2019 and kind of bringing back a fresh vibe to Modern Warfare, modernizing it, and making it feel a lot more grounded. I'm actually a big fan of 2019. The Modern Warfare game, the sequel to Modern Warfare 2, was pretty good.

I had an okay time with it, but it got a little bit loopy and crazy. Here we are with the third game that Sledgehammer Games has handled the development of, and apparently I did not know this. It was supposed to be an expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2, and man, after completing this very short and kind of slap-together campaign, that's exactly what this feels like.

It honestly feels like a campaign. That's missing a chapter. There's some cool stuff in this game. I always like how insane and big the campaigns and Call of Duty games can be. I think the Modern Warfare titles tend to air in a more realistic sense of realism. And you have pretty cool characters like Price, Soap, Ghost, and Gaz, and they all have some reparte together, and of course there's some pretty interesting and chill characters.

We were introduced to Farah Karaeim in Modern Warfare 1, and she's had some interesting stuff to do across this series, and she's back in this game as well. And I like the fact that in modern warfare games, you can kind of jump into the headspace of each of these different characters, although they all kind of handle the same, and you are just thrust into action, and you get into some pretty crazy action in this game.

My favorite mission in the campaign takes place on this dam, which evokes some really great nostalgic feelings of playing through Golden Eye, where we have to race to each of these different bombs that are scattered in the dam area and disarm them before the enemies take you out, and then you have to exfiltrate and get away cleanly.

Of course, there's an overshadow of all kinds of subterfuge, backstabbing, and characters that don't get along with each other that's appropriate for this kind of more clandestine, stealthy feeling. In the Call of Duty experience, they've all been a little bit sneaky, and you try to kind of not be seen until everything blows up and you go hot and guns are blazing all over the damn place, but there are definitely some interesting environments that you have to root out the bad guys in.

I thought the ice level was pretty damn cool. I also like the abandoned building that was under construction. You know, honestly, Call of Duty games kind of start at that, but I like it when it starts to feel a little bit more gritty and there's a little bit more realism. It kind of just brought me back to sitting in the conference room in 2019.

I was able to go to Infinity Ward, and I got a sneak peek at what they were planning for Modern Warfare to bring it back again, honor its history, and do something really special with it. I really enjoyed the campaign and the storytelling in Modern Warfare, and I know that Call of Duty games, the Modern Warfare series, and the Black Ops series are all about competitive multiplayer; it's all about getting people to play together, finding different ways to match them up, pair them up, get them into the cosmetics, customizing your character, and getting all of that.

I know that War Zone is incredibly popular and successful for the exact same things, so the campaigns aren't always the first thing that Call of Duty developers. I think, are thinking about, but there have been some really killer ones over the years, and they always kind of make me smile. They always kind of just go to this insane level; it's almost like you're playing a crazy Michael Bay James Bond movie.

You know, it's just absolutely insane. And somehow you got to survive it, and you got into all kinds of crazy stuff. This felt so muted, and I can understand part of that because you're chasing Marov. Vladimir MacArthur is a big part of this again, and he's enlisted this group of terrorists, and there's some really heinous, awful crime and chemical weapons and radioactive bombs and stuff that you have to disarm and itoc since civilians get caught in a crossfire in a certain hard-to-stuff level, a lot like the No Russians level from back in the day, but it's not incredibly memorable even though there's some nice little Peaks and some nice momentum, and almost like this tease that something better is coming, it just sort of ends, and then it's over, and then the credits come up, and there's no sense of finality or completion.

For real satisfaction. I think this is probably the most disappointing campaign that I've ever played in the Call of Duty franchise. Even though it was fun, on the sticks and on the thumbs, it felt good, and the mechanics are sound, where you get lots of cool technology and interesting toys, drones, and little sensor bombs that will pulse out where all the enemies are.

You've got this ascending capability so you can zip right up ropes in certain places, which was always fun to do, and of course you also got a gunner mission where you're in a plane and you're taking care of all kinds of terrorist bad guys, which is a little bit like inverse, and Missile Command, which is kind of fun.

There's fun in this game; it's just over so quickly, and some of the levels that they put into this thing to kind of squeeze a little bit of that war zone kind of vibe into this experience just felt out of place, and then it's over, and so you just feel completely deflated. It's like, okay, I played that, but the main kind of sensation that you feel after beating Modern Warfare 3's campaign is just utter deflation.

It's like, okay. So we'll see how the multiplayer makes up for the sort of tepid quality of this campaign, but I'm not a big fan of it at all. I mean, there's some fun in it, but this is really weak stuff for Call of Duty. I'm going to give it a five out of.