Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered Review

Available now on PC, Xbox One & PS4

Version tested: Xbox One X & PC

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is finally here for Xbox One and PC but how does the remake to the iconic 2009 original hold up against the test of time and the other shooters around today.

MW2 has to be considered one of the best Call Of Duty’s ever made. Modern Warfare 2 had a story that was both gripping and shocking, multiplayer that was fast and frantic and visuals were well ahead of their time. It is great to see Activision has decided to revive this old classic and made it a game that can even compete with some of the games around today!

MW2 Campaign Remastered gladly keeps the same storyline but this time with much better visuals! The story still gripped me all the way through like it did back in 2009, showing that even today the game’s story is fantastic for players who have already played the game through before and for new players playing the game for the first time!

The plot of MW2’s campaign is pretty simple, in the original Modern Warfare main villain Imran Zakhaev died and was hailed as a god in his homeland Russia. After his death, a new group hellbent on revenge get to work on trying to start a World War. The scene from the airport explains a lot and after gunning down hundreds of civilians with a team including Viktor your character is shot dead by Makarov and left for dead, leaving one dead American at the scene with hundreds of innocent Russians gunned down in the airport.

Viktor Makarov is the mastermind behind the plan and sets the ball rolling for a full-blown World War. The plot is a little far fetched but the way its told from multiple perspectives really helps tell the story, keeping you hooked throughout.

All the old favourite characters are here again such as Captain Price and Soap Mactavish to name a couple, all played with impressive voice acting and great personality.

The multiple perspectives of the story keep things interesting throughout, constantly switching what you are doing. One minute you will flying down the snowy slopes on a snowmobile, then the next sneaking around rescuing hostages! It is this variety that stops the story from ever really slowing down or getting stale and keeps you gripped and wanting to play till the end. I won’t spoil the ending but it’s worth the playthrough! If you have seen the ending you know who to shoot at the practice range, its a nice little achievement pop on the Xbox One.

Characters have had some special attention when it comes to visuals, all the old favourites are back and all improved! The character models themselves look fantastic with plenty of detail and also some animation enhancements, watching the way characters move now is very realistic as well as some real improvement in the facial animation and lip-syncing.

Playing on the Xbox One X the game looked fantastic in 4k with HDR on as well, environments looked incredibly detailed as did enemies. The performance side of things here doesn’t take a hit either with no slowdown at all on the One X, everything ran perfectly smooth.

The one part of the game that seems to have aged well is the combat, it’s still fast and frantic while being accurate and still feeling surprisingly refined! The ability to slide into a crouch would have been a nice touch if they added anything to the way the game handles, it just doesn’t feel right running and then crouching without some sort of slide. The shooting itself feels great and the blood when enemies are shot makes the shot feel more realistic. A couple of additions like motion blur and focusing on a target when zooming in make a real impact on the shooting side of things.

Weaponry isn’t in short supply which is impressive for the games age, lots of different weapon types all with different attachments are found spread out all over the game, ammo seems to be well supplied throughout so you are never really left without ammo at any point.

Playing on the PC performance was much the same as the Xbox One X, no slowdown and visuals looked fantastic, the only major benefit on the PC is the framerate and with the right hardware playing at 144fps is night and day compared to the Xbox One, this goes for most games when comparing PC and consoles though. The other thing to consider is the controls as well, the Xbox One controller in the game was fine, very accurate and sharp but compared to a mouse and keyboard the accuracy isn’t quite the same.

Verdict:

Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is a worthwhile experience for new and old players alike. It is a shame it is only the campaign and no multiplayer but in saying that the story is one of the most iconic ones we have ever been treated to! It is a shame the story is a bit short but it really is great fun to be able to play through it again all these years later with enhanced visuals, performance, animations and sound, just to name a few things to make the whole experience even better than what was already a really solid one before! If you have the PC with the power to run it 144fps is fantastic but the Xbox One version is still more than up to the job and the game looks fantastic regardless!

Score:

8.1 / 10

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