call of duty game review

Test: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - A very good reboot that borders on excellence

For its sixteenth installment, Call of Duty gets a facelift and marks the occasion, bringing out the Modern Warfare section which offers a kind of reboot here. Exit the total war with great blows of nuclear missiles: we are here on a rewriting less fantasized, but also more raw, which sticks much better to the current reality. From the Middle East to the alleys of London via Russia, Modern Warfare sauce 2019 immerses us in a three-part adventure, focusing on well-felt adjustments and optimizations, usable in solo, multi and coop. But then, is the heir up to the illustrious fourth episode of the saga? We will see…

We were invited to Los Angeles for a test session in mid-October 2019. The “Review Event” therefore took place over a total of three days, or around twenty hours of play, allowing you to alternate between solo / coop / multi with journalists from around the world and developers who were there to answer our questions. We played mainly on PS4 Pro, sometimes with the joystick, sometimes with the keyboard-mouse combo, and during several games in multiplayer mixed the peripherals and the platforms, all on private servers hosted specially for the occasion. Note however that by noting that the Survival mode was not in the test version, and that the title suffered from certain technical concerns (notably linked to the display of textures and some intense latency phases at the start of the game), we learned that this was not a final build and that these problems should be fixed for the release. We will however take them into account in our test and wait for the final versions, deployed upon release, to correct, if necessary, our assessment. Please note that this test does not take into account the stability of online servers and is currently only dedicated to the PS4 version. In addition, the developers have announced that the Ground War mode will not be available until Friday evening for the public.

A VERY CURRENT CAMPAIGN, QUITE TO SHOCK?

When we say Modern Warfare, we obviously think of CoD 4, which proposed in 2007 to forget a little bit about the Second World War to turn to current conflicts, taking advantage of the Bush years (father and son) as d '' a base for a solid adventure, in the four corners of the world. Twelve years later, this desire to stick to reality returns to the gallop and allows the series to restart on more tangible bases.

With its very dark frame, borrowed from terrorism echoing Al Qaeda and Daesh, while taking place in a world marked by proxy wars and the threat of chemical weapons, the campaign of this WM is very strong. It also starts on the wheel hats. No sooner are we familiar with the gameplay, including in particular the possibility of “mounting” the weapon on any ledge or using very successful night vision goggles, when already a large capital of Europe finds itself at fire and blood. Bruised by a wave of simultaneous suicide bombings, which we live live in the heart of Piccadilly Circus, London is counting on us to protect it from these civilian killers, armed with AK47, without forgetting those who, C4 belt plugged in, run towards us to blow themselves up…

Note, however, that before you start the campaign, there is an option to define whether or not you want to see “shocking” content. However, if you choose to attend all of the footage in the campaign, a question may cross your mind. "Is it really necessary to play such phases, in the current climate, at the heart of a public action game which generally includes fairly young players, despite the PEGI 18?". We will often do this reflection quite often as the title tries, at regular intervals, to put our eyes in front of an embarrassing situation, of a fairly pronounced violence, rarely seen before in a war game. Killed children, gassing of civilians, arbitrary hangings, torture: we sometimes have the impression that the developers had in mind strong and shocking images, and tried to embroider situations leading to them. Certainly, the campaign has its “disturbing” side that developers were looking for by building a solo dealing with modern wars, which inevitably involve battered civilian populations, a quasi-taboo theme for the series since Modern Warfare 2 and its mission-controversy “ No Russian ”.

The result is successful here, make no mistake, but the very short duration of the solo (about 5 hours) means that these somewhat trashy sequences inherit on the one hand “did you see me”, because they are too little diluted in the countryside. In terms of rhythm, we therefore follow phases of classic, but sustained actions, and narration with a sometimes conventional subject, worthy of a Hollywood war film, sometimes very mature and black, as if the specifications stipulated that it is imperative to tickle the audience every X minutes with shocking content. Even if that does not change the quality of the title, this paragraph on the hardness of certain images seemed necessary to us within the framework of a test of Modern Warfare. Make way for the continuation and return to this famous sequence of the London massacre, which serves as an introduction to one of our heroes.

ONE LEADER: PRICE

Humanly enough formatted for the exercise to be shocked by the horror of the situation, our SAS “hero” embarked on this crusade alongside his new mentor, the legendary Captain Price. Others will join them to cleanse the world of this terrorist threat. Further on in the countryside, on another continent, a childhood shattered by military atrocities generates a generation of combatants who, themselves, will be led to commit irreparable acts. The vicious circle of war, in short. Modern Warfare tells us well, war is never clean. In this whirlwind of violence, we are presented with our four protagonists who, in the end, do nothing more than “their job”, without really letting anything show through.

Only Farah Karim, one of the two strong women in this episode, whose treatment is particularly successful, will make us feel a real personality. Throughout the events, it carries out real work of ethical reflection, which goes far beyond the orders it receives from its various superiors or collaborators. His sequences are generally very successful and we take pleasure in navigating between his desire for personal revenge and his warrior ethics which will lead him irreparably to the liberation of his people, savagely abused by a fraction of the Russian army. Moreover, the latter are, in this “very American” game that is Modern Warfare, the source of all the evils of the universe: they are bestial, rude, do not hesitate to enslave civilians and squarely to gas the populations and the helps which help them after the bombardments. Islamist terrorism, which we will not name as such in the game: it is also the fault of the Russians, of course. Rest assured, if the United States does not have much to reproach itself with in this title, it does however have a virtual flaw that sticks terribly well to reality: the propensity to abandon their former allies ... obviously said no more so as not to spoiler, but it is quite striking. So remember that one thing, the people on the ground all understand each other and usually have little to do with the bureaucrats who run them. Here, the bosses are Farah or Price, in other words the two natural leaders of the group.

The latter therefore makes a triumphant return, camped by a new actor who also holds him very well, emphasis on support. And if the VF is correctly dubbed, as usual, we advise you to play the game in English to take advantage of all the nuances of accents that populate this adventure, on the 14 missions that we will go through, rarely surprising but never disappointing. However, certain stages stand out clearly, like the mission in the embassy, which will recall the famous hostage-taking of Tehran between 79 and 81. We will also experience quite exhilarating moments, especially on the last missions which put at your disposal several tools directly from killstreaks of multiplayer or offering a fairly new freedom of action, while others will confine the player in intense and hyper-scripted sequences. Sustained staging and action at the rendezvous: this campaign proves that Infinity Ward always knows how to do it, but would have benefited from being more generous over the duration of the adventure, the depth of the subject, and the variety concerning gameplay situations addressed. So let's see if, on the multi side, IW is doing well.

A MULTI FOR ALL, AND FOR ALL TYPES OF SESSIONS!

What strikes you when you try your hand at multiplayer after having visited it in beta, is obviously its number of launch maps: 21 to be precise, 4 of which are night variants, usable in night vision mode. Obviously, they do not all meet the same structural standards and some are designed for 2V2 mode, taking advantage of an ultra-simplistic level design favoring confrontation in very small areas, while others are dedicated to Ground mode War, whose dimensions allow to accommodate 32V32. By walking thus on the Battlefield beds, CoD diversifies its playing sensations, without however reaching the pin of the DICE saga on this format. Less immersive on the technical side, much less rich in terms of vehicles and almost devoid of elements used for tactics and squad strategy, Ground War remains still a good “large-scale” mode, if however you n 've never experienced its direct competition. Overall, it all comes down to a "bigger domination" on which the vehicles record the high scores while the infantry struggles to counter them, since they lack an adequate class system or a “ping” system to coordinate the attacks. Fun, but fairly quickly limited, Ground War will still shine with the verticality of its 3 maps, which offer vibrant hide-and-seek games between snipers, while the main body of troops evolves in a perpetual shambles. It is therefore towards the 2V2 that we will always return willingly on the novelty side in multi, even if his nervousness and his interest ultimately result only from a modification of the rules, and not from a real improvement of the Call of experience. Duty.

For the more conventional modes, Modern Warfare brings us the usual big game with Kill Confirmed, TDM, Domination, Headquarter, Cyber Attack and other modes which will take advantage here of the gameplay modifications in force (bending over and mounting the weapon) , making it possible to slow down the frantic pace of exchanges. We will still salute certain daring modes, which we told you about in preview, like the “NVG” mode, dedicated to night vision goggles and the overlay of gameplay they imply, since laser aiming then enters in force, and can be detected by allies and enemies. Playing in Realism mode (ATH minimized and without crossair) on this type of map is a real pleasure and we can clearly see what the developers of Infinity Ward wanted to do by shaping all these ways of living modern operations, which 'They look like urban guerrillas, duels with random weapons, or big sequences of air and ground warfare, under a rain of missiles and killstreaks.

DOES THE COOP HAVE THE CHARM OF ZOMBIES?

Big novelty of this opus, the co-op acts as a replacement for the Zombie mode, which was at its best during the Black Ops III episode last year, and revives the "small missions with friends" that we had once experienced. In this way, 4 players can join forces and try to overcome 3 missions all taking place in Eastern European environments. With fairly simple objectives, these operations are no less complex and will require a lot of testing because the challenge is damn tough. Infiltration into armored areas of enemies, reinforcements who disembark with Juggernauts armed with gatling, watchtowers and snipers: almost everything will want your death, and the sounding alarm will often sound the passage to the "system D" for your small squad. Consequently, planning leaves room for improvisation and we often find ourselves facing hordes of increasingly tough enemies. It will then be necessary to pay attention to its allies, to raise them if necessary, to move away to calm the hordes of enemies, and to use your class skills (quite simplistic moreover) while taking advantage of the supply crates offering armor, ammunition, turrets and air strikes.

Just keep in mind that, just like in Zombie mode, the grounding of all the members will rhyme with the game over. Note that everything does not work by wave, unlike the Zombie, and that a player can return to airdrop after a minute if his friends are still in play. Initially skeptical about the interest of the adventure, much less neat in terms of atmosphere and devoid of “secrets”, we however got caught up in the test. After several games, the observation is quite clear: everything is in suspense over time and turns out to be both pleasant and stressful, offering at times beautiful sequences where the staging turns out to be successful. We regret, however, an AI with a fairly "robotic" behavior, with perception sometimes very limited, sometimes very precise, and not hesitating to show up at the tail leu-leu in the event of an alert.

THE LITTLE PLUSES THAT MAKE A LOT

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - A very good reboot that borders on excellence
Besides all that, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare shines with many good ideas. Crossplay and cross-platform, the game offers to mix or not the peripherals, granting console players the possibility of plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse. From then on, the game recognizes the hardware directly and adapts, offering the same customization options as on PC. On the matchmaking side, everything works well and you can even transfer your experience from the PC to the console, because everything is linked to your Call of Duty account. The experience is also shared within CoD MW: if you unlock content in co-op, you can use it in multi and vice versa, thus avoiding splitting up the experiences too much.

In addition, the game does not have a Season Pass and will opt for a battle pass whose imprint is already sleeping and already visible, because missions, in principle very lambda, are present to unlock relatively dispensable things: “Do so many frags with such weapon to unlock such coating ”. The regulars of free to play will not be disoriented, but is that really what we expect when paying for a full pot title, even if it does not provide a season pass? Everyone will find an answer to this question. The good news is that all of the post-launch content will land for free, which is a great thing, it remains to be seen whether the release rate and the quality of the content will be there. Finally, we salute the work of the Beenox team, who made the game a very good title on PC, much more beautiful than on the 8th generation of consoles. The game then takes full advantage of the photogrammetry, used for textures, and does not suffer in any way from a few micro-freezes, concerns with the display of textures and delay in passing SD-HD on certain elements, observed in multi (and especially in Ground War) during the review event.

What is the PC version worth?
The PC version of Call of Duty Modern Warfare aims to be as "flexible" as possible and adapts to a lot of different configurations. Pending a full video on the subject, here are our first results on 6 different graphics cards (more models will be added in the coming days). First of all, note that we have noticed big instability problems with certain capture tools, on Nvidia GeForce graphics cards. The use of OCAT (which allows you to calculate the average number of FPS in a sequence) made the game crash regularly with Nvidia GPUs. A concern that we have not encountered with the Radeon 5700XT. Panthaa, who did the test on PlayStation 4, also encountered some instability concerns on PC with his AverMedia LGX capture card, including trying to make Alt + Tab to return to the Windows desktop. A technical concern certainly not a problem most of the time, but it should be noted. The PC version of Modern Warfare also has a little trouble with the cinematics of the solo mode: regularly slowed down, they also display occasional freezes and the lip sync is regularly found in strawberries.

With these technical concerns over, let's take a look at the performance of the Infinity Ward FPS. We captured the start of the solo mission “Hunting Party”, which offers a good overview of what the game engine is capable of, and we also made a multiplayer match in “Domination” mode in 6 vs 6, on the map Arklov Peak. All graphics settings have been set to the highest level.

If the title is not of a stunning beauty, it has the advantage of shooting most of the time at 60 frames / second and more on a majority of our GPUs. Playing in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 FPS remains however reserved for the RTX 2080 Ti and Radeon RX 5700 XT duo. From WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels), fluidity is foolproof on most graphics cards and only the aging GTX 1060 does not reach 60 FPS in this definition (but remains firmly set at 48 FPS).

Finally, be aware that Modern Warfare offers, from launch, compatibility with Ray Tracing dear to Nvidia and available in hardware on “GeForce RTX” models. Big advantage of the title compared to others, also compatible: the activation of ray-tracing has little impact on performance, losing only between 10 and 15 FPS on average. On the other hand, the improvement in rendering clearly did not jump out at us. But we will come back to this in more detail in the coming days.

In conclusion, and if we ignore the faults mentioned at the beginning of the article (which can be resolved with updates), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on PC is what we can call a game “ very clean ”: packed with graphic options, the title wants to be playable at more than 60 FPS on a maximum of different configurations, even if it is less visually impressive than the competition. A habit for the series.

The notes
+ Positive points
Nervous gameplay, which welcomes new well-felt features that take the action a bit.
A fairly massive multi content: 21 maps and a vast customization of weapons.
The Spec Ops mode, which represents a good big challenge with its 3 long-term missions.
The palpable tension of the 2V2, perfect for quick confrontations and for eSports.
The very good Realistic, Night Vision and Cyber Attack modes.
A good engine, which holds up on PS4 and really emancipates on PC.
Cross-play, cross-platform, free choice of peripherals, and without Season Pass.
A solo “topical” campaign that takes advantage of highlights, with a cast enhanced by the character of Farah Karim.

Negative points
Only 5 short hours to complete a campaign with a rather questionable geopolitical approach…
A Ground War mode sometimes very messy, which lacks tactics and balance ...
Even if it is pleasant, the co-op mode (with very limited AI) does not have the same charm as a good old zombie campaign "handmade" and full of secrets.
A technique below on PS4 with some technical concerns during the test (textures which sometimes struggle to appear in Ground War and Spec Ops).

With its gameplay of exemplary nervousness, its massive content and its revisited engine, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare offers very good gameplay sensations. Its philosophy of life, including in its cycle of cross-play, cross-platform and excluding the usual Season Pass, swapped for a battle pass and free to play retention mechanics, give it a “good samaritan” aspect of FPS ”Which is a pleasure to watch and gives the episode arguments to last. The proposal is solid without being infallible, far from it, but enough to make the opus one of the legitimate spiritual sons of CoD 4.