Modern Warfare 2’s campaign eases off the bombast and takes inspiration from Naughty Dog

^ Stay tuned for our review chat with lots and lots of great 1440p games.

modern warfare ii (2022) takes place around two years after the events of the first game and barely follows through on them, opting instead to carve out his own path with the same set of characters and the same world state, culminating in a surprisingly innovative set of missions that contain a lot of downtime filled with moments of quiet and introspection.

It also does a lot of nifty stuff with the gameplay: a memorable stealth section with an injured Soap has a very Naughty Dog feel about it. Sneak around a hyper-realistic location, search for crafting pieces, deftly dodge one checkpoint after another of the chattering guards.

And let’s not forget to mention that this game is absolutely beautiful. As ever, Call of Duty represents a true snapshot of the medium in terms of what’s possible with a linear game on an infinite budget: photorealism, almost. Without a doubt, the closest thing to that ideal that we have ever seen. The Amsterdam level went viral for a reason.

So it innovates in terms of story and gameplay and excels on a technical level, while also finding time to be a classic Call of Duty campaign: there are plenty of action scenarios, tense firefights, and exploding stuff.

But this is a CoD that isn’t afraid to back down, and for our money? It’s all the better for it.