Call of Duty Changes Scope – Modern Warfare Multiplayer Hands-on

We came to the village on the back of a truck. It was already dark when we hurriedly exfilled the car, so everyone turned the NVs on. In an instant, I was able to make out all the details: the silhouettes of friendlies, some barrels and stones surrounding the entrance to the cave. In the greenish glow, everyone looked a bit like Jedi knights, with the lasers that cut through the air in all directions with thin, perfectly straight beams. At first glance, it almost looks like a disco club – except the harrowing silence.

There was only the sound of boots pressing against the sand, the creaking door, and, after a while, the first, suppressed gun shots. A laser beam suddenly appears from a completely unexpected direction. Its source is certainly not friendly. I just wait for the guy to pop-up in my crosshair. A single burst from the M4 and we move on. Near the cave's exit, we could hear someone's hurried footsteps increasingly loudly. This time, the exchange of fire got more chaotic, but after a while, we pushed on again. Confirmed hit? Hard to tell for sure, he doesn't move though.

Zero Dark Thirty

Without a GUI, without hitboxes and a crosshair in the center of the screen, the bright laser beam is the only guarantee of precision in the night skirmishes of the “authentic” mode. It's a hybrid of the “hardcore” mode from previous installments and a variation of the standard mode – with disabled HUD. And this is how I liked my Call of Duty: Modern Warfare the most. The HP stays the same, friendly fire, beloved by trolls, is off, but you get +100 to atmosphere – both because there's no interface, and because the night-time operations are done with rare mastery.

Light sources on the map now gain tactical importance because the NV isn't always going to help you get your bearings. Some rooms will have lamp switches that, if switched on at the right moment, can completely blind the enemy using an NVG. This is one of the many details that make the multiplayer in Modern Warfare feel genuinely fresh. Of course, there's no escaping a certain de ja vu because – wait for it – CoD is CoD; the series isn't going to go all tactical all of the sudden, won't turn into a Squad overnight. The new engine, however, introduces so many fixes and refinements that a few hours with the game is not enough to satisfy the curiosity of exploring them all.

See it, hear it, feel it

Changes are evident in the completely new animations, as well as the audio layer. The naturalness of animations is not only visible when watching other players, but also when moving yourself – even though it's an FPS. You've got the feeling of looking through the eyes of a person, rather than a camera lens. The character is agile, but at the same time, the weight and inertia is also clearly there. You can jog or sprint, and the amount of time it takes to aim down sights changes according to movement speed. You can slide, and the weapon on elements of the environment to reduce recoil – these are all nice additions that are basically elements of a soldier simulator.

Generally, for the first time in the Call of Duty series, the shooting felt solid, comparable to Battlefield. Weapons swerve around naturally when we walk, recoil is evident because of the retraction of the gun barrel and the slight movements of the head and hands, rather than some arbitrary spray pattern. Gunshots could be a little louder, but it's still a lot better than in the previous game – the force of guns accelerating pieces of led to deadly velocity is, finally, apparent through sound. All the auxiliary noises, such as shells falling on the floor, or debris pelting around after explosions, are also great. Another nice detail is that guns sound different outside and indoors. All this has a positive impact on immersion and improves the overall experience.

Battles scaled up

One of the biggest surprises in the multiplayer presentation was a big battle with 40 players on one map! In Call of Duty! Can you imagine that? But it gets better. The developers promise that they are technically able to further increase the number of players – not only in battle royale! It was a taste of what's to come with the so-called large-scale battles. Combat obviously takes place on a larger map, where instead of narrow alleyways, we have landscapes sprawling beyond the horizon, and a shotgun to the back is pretty rare. Rifles with scopes are much more useful.

This is a mode in which life expectancy after respawn is significantly longer than in the other ones, and the enemy will often stay beyond the effective or accurate range of fire. Thanks to killstreaks, we have helicopters flying over the battlefield as a sort of mini-bosses, there are also combat vehicles that can be manned by several players, and the that ATVs allow to quickly cover larger distances. This mode didn't feel like CoD at all – it's obviously an attempt to challenge the game modes that, up until now, were almost exclusively a domain of Battlefield games, but with more emphasis on straight-up infantry combat. The 20 vs. 20 made the best impression on me – right after the night mission – and I'm curious how it will look in the final version.

Real fakes

The multiplayer in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare means not only brand new features and new expectations – there are also some things that I didn’t instantly like. For example, the devs consciously gave up any environment destruction. I can understand why they wouldn't implement total destruction of buildings (or their version of "levolution," if you're feeling dramatic), but the game doesn't even do a good job depicting minimal destruction indoors. I think it looks even worse than in Medal of Honor 2010.

Some redress is offered by the fact that bullets are able to penetrate various covers, depending on the caliber. A handgun bullet will not pierce a wooden fence, but a Kalashnikov will easily break it. You can destroy all doors, but no one in the MP seemed to care about blowing up the entrance or peeking through cracks. The developers are very proud about this and emphasize the number of available ways to enter a room, but it feels like this mechanic will mostly be used to dramatize the singleplayer campaign a bit. Amidst the multiplayer rampage, you just sprint into rooms without bothering about that sort of stuff.

I'm also not sure how to feel about the returning killstreaks. The offensive ones include white phosphorus screen, mortar barrage, gunships, or assault choppers, and they again carry the familiar problems, such as blocking the map for one team with continuous spam of artillery strikes. You could see exactly that in the original Modern Warfare remaster. The developers, at least for now, do not plan to introduce stringent restrictions, similar to Destiny, where, on average, a player could run the most powerful weapon once per match. For now, they're just making sure the team can hear a warning about "death from above" coming, and create opportunities to fight off vehicles.

The least important issue from gameplay perspective, one which many players will probably not pay any attention to (and which I didn't like a lot), is a certain fake realism of the new CoD. With all the talk about the game attempting realism, it's somewhat weird that practically every piece of gear or heavy military machinery in Modern Warfare is fictional, merely stylized for the real weapons, just like the Soviet helis in Rambo 3. Entering the gunsmith mode or the killstreak choice menu is like entering a kiosk with 5-dollar fakes – it's so distorted and generalized. This is a slightly different approach compared to previous entries in the series, where, in Modern Warfare 3 for instance, the armory was one, huge platform for product placement of manufacturers of guns and accessories.

Devil's in the details

I played all of the previous installments of Call of Duty and after Modern Warfare 2, none of them really did anything for me. But I've got to it the new multi is a different beast, and it’s not just because of the improvements in gunplay, graphics and sound, but also because of how universally approachable it seems to be. There's something for almost everyone – fans of fierce competition in small, tight teams; fans of the classic CoD formula, and, oddly enough, those who enjoy large-scale battles and fighting over bigger distance. There's a slew of different game modes for anyone.

It seems as if the developers from Infinity Ward noted the bad rep around the last Battlefield, and are trying to offer everything that game didn't deliver, or just messed up, while also significantly refreshing the new Call of Duty in technical . It looks like a game that will cater to a broader audience than ever before, betting on realism instead of silly, cartoonish absurdities. The annual CoD naysayers have fewer and fewer things to complain about. If only the general vision will not be corrupted by microtransactions, the new Modern Warfare may again prompt a new wave of shooters set in modern times.