News - Is Warzone 2 A Scam
Intro
Today we're going in depth and ranking each individual mode two months after launch.
Campaign
Let's dive into the campaign. The alleged 16-month death cycle that Sledgehammer was given to complete this game is no secret and the campaign is by far the mode most affected by this tight deadline with an average of only 4 hours to complete it's the shortest campaign to date and to be honest even that 4 hours is a bit generous if you don't drag your feet during the open world segments, this year they added new open combat missions to the game which in contrast to the standard linear missions drops you into an open level usually just a repurpose section of a war zone map and you need to scavage for weapons and equipment to accomplish the objective on paper this sounds like a refreshing new take on the single player Formula, and something they've never done before a fusion between Modern Warfare 2's Mission alone where you needed to scavage from literally nothing.
And Black Ops 3's single-player Creator class, where you build your loadout before each mission with weapons you found in earlier missions. Because most missions were built around the stealth first shoot second strategy, the first time you played each mission, you were forced to use the default weapons, and you could only use previously found equipment on the same mission they were found, meaning any kind of thoughtful loadout customization was reserved only for repeat playthroughs.
This led to missions playing out like glorified Spec Ops with some BR elements sprinkled in like the parachute and weapon rarities, and with nearly half of the campaign's run time devoted to this water-down mission type, it becomes clear that they were added as padding to fill the story real quickly.
This next section is going to have some spoilers, so if you haven't played the game yet, you might want to skip to the next section. The rest of the game had very worthwhile missions like the goolag and the new no Russian, and the best part of the entire story was the post-credit scene where Price kills Shephard, because it raised the stakes and actually showed Captain Price, this main character, doing something insane and awesome, but the game just ends after, and we'll need to wait another few years to see if they'll be able to stick the landing in the next campaign.
Soap's death was also handled terribly, coming out of nowhere, and it feels like they just killed him because they needed to have something happen in the game; there was no buildup and there was no time to connect with Soap's character in the entire two games beforehand, so it didn't hold any weight if his name wasn't Soap, and longtime fans didn't have a special connection to the original.
No one would have cared; Marov even escapes at the end, leaving one for one exactly where they were at the beginning, so the entire story ultimately went nowhere. It all shows a sad decline in this new trilogy's quality, as each new installment releases starting with Modern Warfare 19, which rebooted the franchise into this new grounded world with complex characters and believable stakes coupled with fun iconic missions like Clearing House House, where you need to go floor by floor checking rooms for the enemies, and even the more open levels were fun to play, and the story was topnotch.
Then Modern Warfare 2 will be released in 2022, and they started taking on some water. The new and returning characters like Graves Shepherd and Ghost were strong, but the plot began deteriorating, with the DLL villain and story beats that didn't make sense. The game play was still mostly fun and brought that classic Cod to the table, and they even introduced some interesting new ideas like the crafting system and backpack that ultimately were abandoned.
There was that awful driving segment, though, and far too much time spent on the AC-130.
Multiplayer
MW2 hold up pretty well for me, with some of my favorites being subbase. Afghan faella that's right Sumi I like that map and while some of the larger maps from MW2 like the rail still feel way too large the return of map voting makes it so you're most likely to play the actual good ones and others are effectively removed from the pool but we need to address that every map on dis was either a fullon remake or repurpose, from somewhere else in that game from 6v6 being made up entirely from those MW2 maps to ground war being cut from urzikstan and even the soul War mode map being from Hideout stitched together with Crossfire and countdown from cod4, the maps are what's driving a lot of people's argument that the game is just a $70 DLC as reports that these Maps were originally meant to be released in MW2.
As part of a year-two drop, but when MW3 was greenlit, they moved them all over to this game instead; it'll never be officially confirmed by Activision or Sledgehammer. Because that's not how businesses operate, things like the entire MW2 sandbox, including weapons equipment and field upgrades, carrying forward into this game, and zero new maps on launch with new content only now dropping in postlaunch seasons definitely point to these rumors being true.
Let's talk about that post-launch content quickly. So far in the first season, they've released two new 6v6 maps, one of which meat offers a pretty solid alternative to shipment with all the chaos that camo grinding and small player maps love, but with a layout that's a little more complex, making it honestly a welcome change up from another year of shipment 24/7.
MW3 post-launch has even seen an unprecedented number of events so far with unique rewards, and some even have new modes and map reskins with their own theme, like Christmas highrise or shipus, where you could have snowball fights or fight over the ray gun on Satan's quar, spard, and a neon, space-themed rust named Tenon ice tenton ice Tenon ice I don't know what it's called again.
We're only 2 months into the game, but there's already so many fun and unique limited-time modes that make the game feel alive. The counter to that, though, is the ever-present Call of Duty drip feet. This is the phenomenon where every year the game launches with a few base game modes but saves other core features for the release and postlaunch seasons, rebranded as new content.
For instance, Gunfight is almost never available on launch and releases in the first few seasons. Instead, what are we doing so far? MW3 seems to be following this trend to the tee with party modes, ranked play, and even headquarters. All are packaged as season 1 content, so it's looking like the majority of post-launch content for this game will likely be made up of the same usual suspects we've come to expect over the last few years outside of Core 6v6.
