YMMV section for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
YMMV section for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
- Abridged Arena Array: Shoot House and Shipment (much like in other CoD games) have been the go-to maps for many players since launch. The chaotic, frantic action makes it a preferred map for leveling up guns and working on camo challenges.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- How far is Captain Price going to go? While he willingly sacrifices hostages in survival situations and talks about dirty hands, he gives you an unloaded gun, and it's a game-over if you execute the Butcher's family. Is it all just a big bluff and bravado with him?
- Is Hadir wrong about anything he does? While Al-Qatala is a terrorist organization that should have no access to WMDs, the fact is that they have more resources and weapons that can be used to take down General Barkov's chemical weapon factory on Russian soil. He insists he's not actually against America and Britain as well as proves it in multiple ways. While using nerve gas is considered a Moral Event Horizon, he intended to use it against Barkov's forces attacking them at the Highway of Death. I.e., a military target that has used the gas against civilians. On the other hand, Al-Qatala does target civilians, has targeted Hadir's allies, and his actions alienate his sister's group from her few supporters. Oh and Al-Qatala is also a pawn of the Ultranationalists as we find out in the ending.
- Is Colonel Norris The Neidermeyer and a Smug Snake for wanting to take down Farah? While he takes a little too much relish in trying to arrest someone who risked their lives against their brother, it was Colonel Norris' Marines who were killed in the original theft. He also has orders to arrest her and her group has committed a war crime by using the gas at the Highway of Death. From his perspective, they've been playing their allies for fools. Either that or, as some commentators suggested, he's just a racist prick. Why he chose to stand down in front of Captain Price is also questionable: Dirty Coward or realizing he doesn't want to alienate his Special Forces team in a covert operation?
- Is Barkov completely unjustified in what he does? He's a complete General Ripper who targets civilians with nerve gas and commits numerous war crimes. However, as we see with Al-Qatala's embassy assault, there are vast numbers of fighters among the civilian populace, and almost as soon as Barkov's forces are driven out of the country, Al-Qatala takes complete control of it to continue their attacks unimpeded. Even Farah and Hadir have killed three soldiers by the time they're taken prisoner by him.
- How much does Russia know about Barkov's activities? He's using nerve gas against civilian populations and committing vast numbers of war crimes, but FSS officers are perfectly fine seeing his people taken down. He's declared a Renegade Russian at the end, but before that point it's clear that he has full military support as well as an enormous mansion in Russia.
- Aluminum Christmas Trees:
- The handheld drones with explosives strapped-on and improvised mortars firing propane canisters are real weapons used by militant groups in Syria and Iraq.
- As silly as it may seem to most players, using an oil filter as an improvised suppressor is a real thing and it does work, though you typically can't just screw one right onto your gun without needing an adapter for the different threading. They also tend to only last a few rounds, as, unlike purpose-made suppressors, oil filters aren't really designed to handle the stresses of firing bullets through them.
- Americans Hate Tingle: Predictably, the Russian internet quickly came out in an uproar over the game's content, which depicts a Fantasy Conflict Counterpart that has shades of the real-life Soviet War in Afghanistan, Second Chechen War, and Syrian Civil War. The game depicts the Russian military as a brutal and antagonistic occupying force opposed by both extremist and seemingly more moderate rebels, the latter of which the player allies with and even plays as in the game. Sony's Russian division
refused to sell the game on the Playstation Store as a result of the controversy. It doesn't help that the game alludes to certain controversial but now-obscure moments in American history like a "highway of death", but made more brutal and attributed to Russia.note Most of the negative scores on Metacritic are Russian users very unhappy with the perceived unfair treatment of Russia. - Anvilicious: Some fans criticized the games critique on Russia's involvement in Syria for being over-the-top villainy (though those criticisms died down after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022).
- Awesome Animation: The animations for the weapon reloads (all of which were hand-keyed with no motion capture) have been widely praised as some of the best in not just the series, but even the entire genre. Even shooters released afterward, both within and outside of the Call of Duty franchise, seem to have taken nods from MW2019 in terms of said reloads.
- Best Level Ever:
- "The Embassy", which is both eventful and lengthy. After surviving a helicopter crash on the roof, you and Price make your way down to the saferoom where The Wolf is being stored. Needing a keycard to exit the garage, you prepare to guide the American ambassador (who has a keycard) to you, only to watch him get gunned down on camera. Instead, you guide his assistant Stacy to safety, by directing her over the intercom to you while avoiding the invading Al-Qatala forces. Making your way to another safe house just as the consulate is overrun, you spot Al-Qatala forces preparing to ambush you in the field, but it's too dark to spot them, so you use flares to provide enough light to take them down. You retreat slowly as they begin to overwhelm you, but a drone packed with missiles provides some relief. Making your way back to the safe house (after saving Stacey a second time) you discover that the attack was a diversion and the Wolf had escaped.
- Perhaps in a different way, the levels "Clean House" and "The Wolf's Den", where you're tasked with a breach and clear of a residence can be fairly stressful. Unlike previous games, where clearing houses wasn't too much of a struggle, these buildings feel very real-world. Tight hallways with lots of blind corners, doors that conceal individuals of unknown hostility, and the people in the homes making use of the environment to ambush or hide can get you killed. The slow pace you take in these missions is also a stark change from the usual Call of Duty MO, where your team very gingerly goes up stairways and moves in deliberate, cautious ways. The atmosphere is tense, with no music, dead quiet but for your team's footsteps, viewed through your NVGs. Modern Warfare pretty accurately represents the real challenges of having to enter a potentially hostile place of residence, more so than most games in this setting.
- The penultimate level, "Going Dark", combines the tense room-clearing motif with a wide-open map, as Garrick stealthily infiltrates Barkov's heavily-guarded mansion solo (with the occasional guidance from Price). In contrast to the typical linear campaign design the series is known for, you are free to take on your objectives in any order you like, using stealth or going One-Man Army on the forces within.
- Catharsis Factor: After all the horrible atrocities Barkov committed against Urzikstan, getting the chance to kill the evil general is just so satisfying, and you can choose how you want him to die, either by stabbing him, or a single shot.
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Complaints about the multiplayer map design and how it contributes to excessive camping opportunities have been prevalent since the game's launch. Almost everyone and their dog will either stick to a corner near a high-traffic area with a 725 shotgun or M4A1 or stand in hard-to-reach vantage points to score potshots with their sniper rifles.
- Good luck finding anyone who isn't using the game-breaking M4 or 725. Usually with both in the same loadout.
- For light machine guns, the PKM is widely used due to being a versatile and stable starter weapon with a high ammo capacity, which can reach up to 200 ammo with one of its ammo box attachments, allowing the users to shoot down aerial killstreaks with ease. It can also be easily converted into a long-range weapon or a CQB weapon depending on the situation.
- In Warzone, players opt for weapons with good accuracy and high magazine capacity given the longer ranges of combat and higher time-to-kill. Among those preferring sniping, the HDR is the go-to weapon for its high bullet velocity and good handling. Other popular weapons include the Grau assault rifle (low recoil and clean iron sights when equipped with the Archangel barrel) and the Bruen light machine gun (raw firepower of a LMG but with superior handling comparable to an assault rifle when equipped with 60 round box magazines).
- A non-weapon variant for both multiplayer and Warzone comes in the form of any operator skin that's overwhelmingly black or otherwise dark colored. As most maps feature plenty of dark corners, dim interiors, and shadowy overhangs, players consider these skins to be the meta choice for anyone looking to corner camp or otherwise take advantage of all the low lighting. In particular, the Rook skin for Roze and its permutations along with the default skin for Velikan are considered the worst offenders, with Velikan's skin, being seen as the go-to choice for tryhards since not only is it nearly all black, the operator has only one voice line and doesn't make callouts, which was seen as a huge advantage back when the callout problem was still prevalent, as seen under Scrappy Mechanic.
- Complete Monster: Roman Barkov is a monstrously bigoted general from Russia who invades and conquers the country of Urzikstan by unleashing a poisonous gas upon numerous cities, killing countless citizens of all ages. During the twenty years under Barkov's dictatorship, citizens are oppressed, imprisoned, tortured, and executed, including women and children. Siblings Farah and Hadir Karim, among the many victims of Barkov's cruelty, were imprisoned and tortured for a decade by him. When Captain Price and his men storm his prison, Barkov tries to burn the prisoners alive to destroy any trace of his brutal war crimes. Despite claiming to be protecting his country and people, Barkov executes his men for incompetence, proving to be nothing more than a cowardly psychopath only out for himself.
- Contested Sequel: On the one hand, the general reception to the game's campaign has been extremely positive, with praise given towards the redone gunfight and a more down-to-earth tone. It's even got some multiplayer praise with a very in-depth customization feature. Time Magazine even said, "It is when Call of Duty grows up." On the other, the game still has problems with weapon balancing, weapon design, netcode, grossly large storage size, the emptiness and rushed nature of its Spec Ops mode in comparison to even the worst attempt at Zombies, and a campaign whose attempts to be gritty and realistic are either hilariously edgy and childish or distressingly biased and hypocritical, depending on who you ask. The best most say is that it's better than the last COD but considering what an absolute trainwreck that game was to many (and lacking the campaign, to begin with), that's not saying much.
- In general, the fanbase is split on the more realistic and tactical approach that the game took in terms of multiplayer. Those who enjoy similar feeling games like Battlefield and even milsims, along with those who were able to adjust to the slower pace generally like it. However, those who prefer the more traditional COD feeling of fast-paced run and gun action across smaller more focused maps dislike the style it went for.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Surprisingly, J-12 became a favorite character among the Russian player fanbase. With strong masculine features and the fact that he was killed unfairly by a couple of children, he quickly rose as the "hero that they don't deserve." As a result, hundreds of memes have been created and even a memorial was made in respect for him. To make matters funnier, his popularity rose dramatically to the point people began to treat Barkov's forces as the good guys and the Urzikstan Liberation Force as the bad guys. One can even see the Suspiciously Similar Substitute of him in Warzone as the devs' way of making the man playable.
- Fandom Rivalry:
- With Battlefield V. Despite being set in different periods and released a year apart from each other, the two games became competitors for chasing after the hardcore shooter audience. While both had their share of controversies, Modern Warfare appears to be more popular thanks to having better performance and including a free-to-play standalone Battle Royale mode. Not helping matters is how some dedicated Battlefield fans have migrated to playing Modern Warfare instead of BFV following that game's troubled post-launch as well as Modern Warfare's inclusion of the Ground War mode to compete with Battlefield.
- As of December 2020, there has been a bit of fan vitriol with its successor, Black Ops Cold War, largely due to fears of Cold War displacing Modern Warfare, given the series' precedent for even its most successful entries being dropped like a hot potato the instant the next one releases. The two games now advertise themselves inside of their respective games, being right there in the main menus alongside Warzone, making comparisons inevitable. Making matters worse on PC, through the Blizzard launcher, Modern Warfare has its icon replaced by the Warzone one. The rivalry only intensified following the addition of Cold War weapons to Warzone, which many players thought was unbalanced. To top it all off, Activision seems to have shifted all of its focus to Cold War and its integration into Warzone while Modern Warfare barely gets any new content. Aside from all of this, the different gameplay and art style of the games with Modern Warfare's more tactical, realistic approach and Cold War's more arcadey, colorful approach leads to a Broken Base on which game is a better experience overall.
- Franchise Original Sin: This game would replace the Create-a-Class system used in previous games with "Gunsmith", allowing for far deeper weapon customization than any prior game in the series. When the system was introduced for this game it was lauded for how in-depth it was, including the ability to completely change a weapon's identity and role with the right attachments (e.g. turn the basic mid-range M4 into a long-range marksman's weapon with a longer barrel and solid stock, or optimize it for close-range spraying with a shorter barrel and a conversion to pistol bullets). An important point is that it also didn't break immersion for several reasons: all of the attachments are based on real attachments used in modern militaries for specific mission profiles, and are designed to fit their parent weapons (e.g. both of the aforementioned conversions for the M4 are based on existing parts for or variants of the AR-15 platform). Black Ops: Cold War kept the system, where it still fits since the game centers on the types of special forces operators who would have access to heavily-customized weapons even in The '80s, the universal attachments simply look more primitive to fit that they were made 30 years earlier than the ones from MW2019 (e.g. bulkier sights with simpler designs than what we have now), and which attachment goes on what weapon still fits, with even the outliers being easily explained away (like a barrel for one rifle taken from another of a similar design in the same caliber). Then came Vanguard, which was criticized for its Gunsmith system robbing the game of any sense of realism for letting you slap attachments onto weapons that make no sense and don't fit the period, such as red dots made by arbitrarily scaling down aircraft-mounted sights, folding stocks based on weapons that wouldn't be built until after the war like the Uzi or AK, or ammo conversions that make no sense (an MP 40 converted to the StG 44's 7.92mm, but with the magazine not changed at all to account for the larger and wider bullets) and/or are anachronistic (a Thompson converted to 5.7x28mm, a round not developed until late in the '80s), to say nothing that the previous two games limit you to five attachments on any one gun while Vanguard lets you put something on all ten slots, allowing you to swap out every possible part for something anachronistic or just silly.
- Game-Breaker: Has its page.
- Good Bad Bugs: At some point during Season 3, a glitch was introduced where after the warmup period ends in Warzone, you would hear your character's death cry before the actual match started. The results are hilarious, and it's been received so well that the developers chose not to patch it out.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- The plot point where the Urzikstan rebels are declared as a terrorist organization and have their support cut off, allowing an ascendant Al-Qatala to seize power in the resulting vacuum, comes off this way as the game was released soon after the US government withdrew support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, causing a surge in the conflict that led to ISIS cells re-establishing themselves in the chaos.
- Likewise, the U.S Embassy raid chapter became pretty relevant after the U.S Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq was raided in December 2019 by Iranian-backed militiamen.
- While the depiction of the brutal occupation of Urzikstan in the name of "preserving peace" and eradicating Al-Qatala was previously seen by many as a deliberate act of Demonization of the Russian forces in the game to such a comical degree, the reveal of horrifying war crimes such as the Bucha massacre and Izium mass graves during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Russian government's main goal to launch the invasion (eliminating the "Neo-Nazis", for example) subsided many of these opinions.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Just a day after the game's official release, the actual leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in a raid. As a bonus, he died by detonating a suicide vest while being pursued by American special forces to avoid capture, exactly like Omar.
- The new "Gunsmith" system for customizing weapons in multiplayer bears a lot of similarities to the identically-named system used in 2012's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier - ironic considering that Future Soldier, like many other shooters of its day, had a story that basically was the original Modern Warfare trilogy in a blender.
- And what's even funnier, depending on how you look at it, is that one of the many complaints leveled at Ghost Recon Breakpoint, a contemporary competitor, is that their version of the Gunsmith system was greatly neutered compared to the ones in Future Soldier and Wildlands, and all three are downright anemic compared to the absurdly in-depth weapon customization system in Modern Warfare.
- Gene Farber plays Kamarov here, using a strong Russian accent he previously used for Grigori Weaver. A year later, he reprises his role as Weaver for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, but his accent is much more subtle.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Press F to pay respect to Russian J-12. note .
- People also twist the scene of Farah's home invasion into J-12 being an innocent man who was just checking to make sure the residents of the Farah house were alright and got unjustly attacked by Farah's father, since Farah's dad attacked first, pointing out that if Farah's dad didn't try to attack him then the plot of Modern Warfare wouldn't have happened.
- Gear up with my M4+Shotgun loadout. I'm ready for some intense, exciting, and tactical gameplay. Set up shop in any building of my choosing. Place a claymore near the single entrance of my room. Tactical.note
- The developers have said the game, set in a wartorn Muslim nation subject to a Mêlée à Trois between Russians, local allies, terrorists, and the United States is "not political." Whatever the game's politics may be, it's very hard to say it's not saying something.
- The game's file size has become a meme as players have begun making lists of how many games they can fit in the same space as Modern Warfare continues to expand. Full articles have been written about the size as it grows larger, with it clocking in at over 250 GB by October 2020, with much ado being made about the fact that by that point it could no longer fit on the most common size of a solid-state drive.
- Project Aurora Logonote
- Moral Event Horizon:
- General Barkov crosses it when he uses poison gas indiscriminately on the population of Urzikstan and then sends his soldiers to execute any male survivors while rounding up the women and children.
- Jamal "The Butcher" Rahar crosses this during his second scene from "The Embassy" when he holds a woman's family hostage, only to execute the husband and then the sonnote seconds later. What makes this act especially horrendous is that it's later revealed he has a wife and son whom he cares a great deal for when they're used as leverage against him, making the aforementioned executions an act of great hypocricsy.
- A surprisingly subdued one, but Colonel Norris' disgust at and desire to execute Farah after she comes back from a mission to apprehend her brother is this. Colonel Norris, unlike the rest of the US military, knows that her organization isn't responsible for the chemical weapons theft and deployment. His attitude can only be described as being a Smug Snake extraordinaire.
- Most Wonderful Sound: Oh boy... Any noise that comes from firing or from equipping is certainly going to satisfy gamers because of how crisp and amazing it sounds. Hear it for yourself.
- Narm: There's a section in the mission Hometown where you play as a seven-year-old Farah Karim stabbing a Russian soldier in the cut with various household sharp objects, including a knife. What makes this even sillier is that after each stab, he knocks you away, and you have to scramble to hide, get another weapon, and attack him again. You have to do this three times. Somehow, this well-trained mountain of a man (who even his squadmates consider to be a big guy) dies to a kid playing violent hide-and-seek.
- Obvious Judas: Who is the traitor to the Urzikstan Liberator Army? Who could it possibly be? How 'bout the one who holds the same weapon as one of the members of Al-Qatala (AUG with white tape wrapped around the gun), having the same haircut and eye shape when compared to the lieutenant Alex encountered in the intro, and having an easily-distinguishable voice, even when speaking in Arabic while wearing a gas mask? The real plot twist is that nobody thought to question Hadir before everything went to hell.
- Older Than They Think:
- One of this game's chief gameplay concerns, which its sequel shares, is the more "down-to-earth", slower-paced gameplay with a high TTK and a focus on tactical map control in favor over constant rushing and gunning, the latter being what the series became known for. This actually is intentionally harkening back to the original sub-series starter, where players died fast and slower movement and map control were essential to victory.
- Many people criticized the game for its inclusion of white phosphorous as a killstreak reward, citing that its use against people is considered a war crime. However, Homefront had one mission where white phosphorus was used against enemy military targets in 2011 and Spec Ops: The Line prominently included the use of white phosphorous in its gameplay in 2012.note Going back even further, those same people have also apparently never heard of Call of Duty: Black Ops, where it is a tactical grenade (albeit not particularly deadly like it is in real life, more like a glorified damage-dealing smoke grenade).
- It should be noted that White Phosphorus is in reality classified as a smoke-producing agent, not an incendiary, and is thus exempted from the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. In any case, the COCC merely bans deliberately using incendiaries on civilians.
- With Frank Woods becoming an Operator to promote Black Ops Cold War, many assume this is the first major crossover between sub-franchises, which normally keep to themselves. Disregarding Online and Mobile (both picking and choosing characters and weapons from all of COD, though with mobile games that are to be expected), Captain Price had earlier crossed over with Black Ops by becoming a playable skin in Blackout mode in Black Ops 4.
- Gunfight mode, a two-versus-two duel mode, originates from the Counter-Strike Global Offensive Wingman mode released at least two years prior.
- Player Punch: The only thing you can do to help the child being held by The Butcher during the embassy siege is to take the bullet meant for him - and, presumably, get all the other civilians on your side of the bulletproof glass killed - by opening the door. Other than that, he will die and you won't be able to do a thing about it. This also shakes Kyle to his core and he swears brutal vengeance for it (and, if you're feeling the same, can have him go all the way later in the campaign).
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- The fact that XP bonuses can only be activated pre-match doesn't sit well with a lot of players, because they will start ticking down immediately after using with no way to pause the timer. Matches, in general, tend to take some time to set up and properly load in, the process of which could take up to a couple of minutes, minimum, making it so that players receive much less bonus time than they should. 15-minute bonuses will be over in an instant, while longer ones are too rare to be used willy-nilly. And as the cherry on top, the timer will keep counting down even if you've exited the game.
- Regardless of the situation, your character will yell whenever they spot an enemy or reload the guns. What makes it a problem is that enemy players can hear your character shouting, and the dialogue displays on the subtitles regardless of the factions, significantly hindering players who prefer to go for a stealth playstyle. Even worse, there's no option to turn off your character's dialogues and prevent them from shouting "Contact!" or "Cover me, I'm reloading!" toward their enemies whenever you're trying to sneak up from behind. The first major patch remedied this by making your combat chatter completely inaudible to enemy players, but for those burnt by it, it's still quite disconcerting to hear those spotting lines when they least expected them.
- While multiplayer spawns in the Call of Duty series were never really good, to begin with, the spawns in this game are horrendous on many maps. Oftentimes, players will spawn right out in the open and get shot instantly, or other times immediately in front of/behind another player, resulting in a cheap kill. Smaller maps tend to suffer the most, such as Shoot House, where one could run into and be killed by the same player several times in a row should that enemy be camping. Spawn camping, while weeded out quite thoroughly in the past titles, seems to have returned with a fiery vengeance.
- It isn't helped by the map Shipment where if your skill is high, expect not to get out of the spawn due to SBMM.
- The Battle Pass system remains a sore spot for those transitioning over from Black Ops 4 and who was burned by it back then. While some of the content can be unlocked without paying, which includes the two new weapons, the operator Mara and many of the more appealing rewards such as Epic and Legendary operator skins can only be gained by shelling out 1,000 CoD points to buy a pass, or 2,400 for a pass and with 20 tiers already unlocked from the get-go. And to rub salt into the wound, the XP gain rate of each tier is maddeningly slow even with boosts, if the player isn't a top performer, thus incentivizing them into spending even more money to buy their way up to those shiny new guns up there. Guns that, incidentally, are rather overpowered as a large portion of the player base could attest to.
- The flimsy anti-cheat system has remained a source of ire for the community, especially in Warzone. The mode's free-to-play nature and Activision opting to use their own weaker proprietary anti-cheat system made Warzone very susceptible to hackers. Not helping matters is that due to PC-Console crossplay, many cheaters on PC end up ruining matches for console players as well.
- Another point of criticism among Warzone players is the game's inconsistent directional sound. Most Call of Duty games have sound as an important mechanic (with many of the games having perks specifically dedicated to reducing the sound you make or being able to better hear other players). However, Warzone's sound design appears to be poorly implemented, as many players have complained that the direction they hear an enemy doesn't correlate to where the enemy actually is, if they can even hear them at all. Not helping matters is that gunshots are significantly louder than footsteps, which makes it more difficult to react to attackers.
- Sequel Difficulty Drop: Well, reboot difficulty drop at any rate. Compared to previous titles, the game is pretty tame when it comes to difficulty levels. Sure, on Veteran the player is still a Glass Cannon who dies in an instant, but so are the enemy, who (with the reboot's shift in focus to smaller, more intimate, more realistic firefights) no longer spawn infinitely from Clown Car closets or Grenade Spam like it's going out of style that once made the series infamous. Now, enemy spawns come in reasonably strong, but surmountable numbers, that can be defeated if the player knows what they're doing, and barring certain segments, once sufficient ground has been covered, they will stop spawning. Checkpoints are much more liberal than before, if only slightly more random. By series standards, the Veteran difficulty in this game seems to be more on the level of Hardened in prior titles, and Realism only adds the caveat of having a very minimal HUD while you play, so while this is by no means a walk in the park, it is much less maddening than the games preceding it. Furthermore, with the ludicrous snapping power of singleplayer's aim assist, it becomes extremely easy to line up headshots. Overall, you still die in a few shots, but you're no longer being shot at from 20 different directions at once all the time. Veteran and Realistic are more of a tactical shooter experience and less of a test of whether or not you possess genetically-superior superhuman reflexes.
- That One Level:
- Euphrates Bridge. Depending on who you ask, it's either a haven for snipers and campers or hell for anyone else trying to play the game properly. For the majority of players not specced as snipers, they will be constantly one-shot or killed by Claymores as they desperately try to secure the high ground, which is doubly frustrating when playing Domination, as the B point is smack-dab in the middle of the bridge. On Euphrates Bridge, it's usually victory for whichever side has the most snipers, not so much for everyone else. Not helping matters is how the northern side of the map is vastly more covered with objects for players to hide behind, making it so that snipers won't be able to pick them off as easily as those approaching from the south.
- Arklov Peak. It's usually fine as it is, but when playing Domination, just getting to the B-point quickly becomes an exercise in frustration and futility due to it being almost completely out in the open. Players could try to use the SAM batteries around the flag to hide, but they could only do so much when the enemy's spamming grenades or air support all over the place. And that's not getting to the campers that love to sit around the area getting potshots at whoever trying to capture. Unless you could overwhelm the enemy spamming with even more spamming of your own, chances are once they've secured a foothold, you've already lost.
- For non-multiplayer examples, Operations Kuvalda and Crosswind. Both are gimmicky to the point of practically being stealth-mandatory, as even though going loud doesn't cause an instant fail, it does send waves upon waves of footsoldiers, Juggernauts, and attack choppers crashing down on the four-man-team. Unlike Operations Paladin and Headhunter, the objectives in Kuvalda and Crosswind are often out in the open, forcing the players to brave endless gunfire to accomplish anything while more and more enemies spawn in to overwhelm them. Winning them usually requires either mad skills or extreme luck. Otter, Golem, and Zane probably won't get unlocked any time soon.
- That One Sidequest: Unlocking operator Domino is this. Domino has the unlock requirement of five Gunfight wins, which is harder than it sounds because you only have one life per round in that mode, and are usually given weapons that you aren't necessarily good at using. Due to the small scope of Gunfight, each match becomes a Luck-Based Mission, since a single enemy could get the drop on both of you and net you a loss, while at other times you could stomp the other team by your lonesome with impunity because you got them in a bad spot. Unlocking Domino is more annoying than it is hard. Thankfully, with the arrival of Warzone players are awarded a free Domino with a unique skin for completing the tutorial, making the five Gunfight wins only necessary for her default outfits.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: General Barkov never really rises above a General Ripper we're supposed to hate and every one of his scenes is one variant of Kick the Dog after another. We never actually get his perspective on why he's so determined to slaughter the people of Urzikstan (only referring to them as "terrorists" indiscriminately) or what his actual goals are. This is a shame because It's Personal is clearly at play between him and Farah. Made even worse that according to the developer team, he is supposed to be a Captain Ersatz of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, who went insane due to the hellish conditions of The Vietnam War. Whereas Kurtz's actions in the film are understandable since the audience knows the reason why he turned rogue, we know next to nothing about why Barkov turned into a very draconian military leader who uses extreme and indiscriminate violence as his primary MO.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite the writers' insistence that the game would force the player to make morally ambiguous choices, all of the major "choices" that occur in the game always play out to put the protagonist in a morally clean position, with anything the player can do that could be seen as even morally gray either being negated or immediately sending you back to a checkpoint. For example, in the embassy raid, Kyle is given the choice to open a secure door for the Butcher or let him execute a young boy. Opening the door for the Butcher merely results in the Butcher shooting and killing Kyle and forcing a restart. Later, Gaz witnesses Price use the Butcher's wife and child as bargaining chips in an interrogation. Gaz can choose not to participate, skipping the entire interrogation sequence. If Gaz does participate in the interrogation, he has no option to shoot the Butcher's family. His weapon will be unloaded the first chance you get, and once you do load it, actually shooting one of them results in an instant game over. All of the morally ambiguous actions are performed by the side characters, for which the player assumes no responsibility.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The game has so many "shocking moments" throughout the campaign that the player ends up desensitized to otherwise messed-up scenes - par for the course for games of this caliber but Modern Warfare doesn't even entertain the concept of something not dark and depressing, even off of the battlefield, accentuating the problem.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: It is meant to be a Kick the Dog moment when the United States declares Farah's group to be a bunch of terrorists. However, at this point, Hadir Karim has already attacked US troops and acquired a WMD for use in combat. Given he's a leading member of the Uzrikstani Liberation Force and needed help in carrying out his mission, it makes the US position a lot more understandable.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: There is no denying that compared to the previous titles, this incarnation of Modern Warfare is immensely eye-pleasing due to its film-like graphics. Combined with the film-like cutscenes that are different from the cutscenes from the previous games and the astounding graphics quality of the in-game environments, it is no surprise where all the praise comes from.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
- The developers have gone on to say the game is not political, which has been the subject of Memetic Mutation (though it's more likely they said that to avoid getting death threats from certain players who despise political messages in games).
- Time Magazine, amusingly, praised the game for its political stances as well as mature content, which makes the developers' claim that it's not political all the more Hilarious in Hindsight.
- Some fans have speculated the game is not meant to be political but a typical Black-and-White Morality (with some shades of gray with Good Is Not Nice and I Did What I Had to Do) single-player campaign. Yet the very act of using the "real" world has political consequences/meaning.
- Given the more realistic style and grounded approach to the storyline, some vocal detractors have raised eyebrows at how the ideology of Captain Price, who will do anything from sacrificing a hostage strapped with a bomb to avoid the rest dying to torturing a terrorist off the books and illegally capturing his innocent family as a collateral bargaining chip, is unfailingly seen as the way to getting things done because he's willing to dirty his hands with only Garrick raising concerns about it. Meanwhile, high-level commanders in the U.S. military are portrayed as foolish, cowardly, and hampered with apathetic bureaucracy, making poor decisions from up high that jeopardize lives and force the "real heroes" on the ground to make sacrifices for their victories.
- Win Back the Crowd:
- For the most part, the single-player campaign and the multiplayer gameplay have been lauded by many veteran Call of Duty players, for the campaign having a lot of different gimmicks and multiple action choices which gives the players the incentive to replay the game and the multiplayer being a massive improvement from the previous Call of Duty titles.
- The removal of the "Pick-10" system in favor of the new Gunsmith mechanics, along with revamped gunplay and sound design, was warmly greeted by players. The series had been considered to be lagging behind its competitors for several years in regards to gunplay, having not made many attempts to innovate (much less ones that were well-received) since the Pick-10 system was implemented back in 2012, and seeing real effort getting put into addressing the core gunplay got even those who had been unimpressed by the previous titles interested in the game.
- The new game engine was also warmly received, as Call of Duty's engine was beginning to show its age and staleness despite multiple enhancements (it is based on a modified idTech 3 engine, which debuted in 2005 and, despite claims to have replaced or rewritten it with every other release since Ghosts, hadn't been updated much except to add a new gameplay gimmick or two for each yearly game in nearly 15 years since) as the core gameplay loop and overall graphical quality never really improved, especially in later iterations (even up to Black Ops 4, since Treyarch's never actually used any of the new iterations of the engine in favor of continually updating their version from the first Black Ops, you can still see textures and assets popping in at distances you'd expect from a 2005 game because it's running on a 2005 engine). The new engine allows for far better graphical improvements, better textures, and ray-tracing, making it look far better than previous games.
- The addition of Warzone brought back many fans of the Battle Royale genre who were looking for an alternative to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. The game is also offered as a free-to-play standalone game, introducing players who haven't bought the full game to its mechanics.
- The announcement that Modern Warfare 2019 will eschew the series' traditional Season Pass and post-launch DLC model in favor of free updates being periodically released to everyone was very warmly received for making multiplayer content accessible for everybody. The loot box-style Supply drop of prior titles has also been removed, making most in-game items unlockable simply by playing multiplayer enough.
- Crossplay between all platforms has also received a skeptical, but otherwise positive reception.
