YMMV / Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

YMMV section for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
YMMV section for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: General Shepherd's motivation for conducting illegal arms dealing in the Middle East. Was he truly doing it for patriotic causes by arming American allies to fight back against the Russians? Or was it all a side job to earn cash on the side for his and Shadow Company's pocket book?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: As improbable and impractical as it sounds, the GS Magna, a fully-automatic conversion of the Desert Eagle AKA the .50 GS that was added in Season 03 Reloaded, does exist in real life.
• Best Level Ever:
  • While there are complaints that it is derivative of the original Modern Warfare's "All Ghillied Up", the mission "Recon By Fire" is one of the most open-box mission available in the game, allowing players access across a large map with many choices in how to approach their target locations. The mission also takes elements from All Ghillied Up, namely the coordinated targeting with Price, long-distance shooting, and ghillie suit sneaking, and jacks them up to eleven - for instance, there are multiple segments where you're meant to set up on a hilltop and take shots from more than 200 meters, requiring you to compensate for bullet drop.
  • The next mission "Violence and Timing" is also an exciting mission following Gaz and Price as they catch up with an Al-Qatala convoy to rescue Laswell. The mission sees the main characters return to Urzikstan and reunite with the supporting cast of the first game, Farah and Nikolai, as they chase the convoy. It starts with a conventional helicopter gunner supporting role until Gaz falls out of the damaged helicopter and is forced to perform High-Speed Hijacks across different Al-Qatala vehicles, avoiding various hazards such as rocket launchers, landmines, drone bombs and an APC before reaching the vehicle Laswell is on.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Anyone who has ever heard of the original Modern Warfare 2 knows that Shepherd betrays TF 141 and he is no different in this one, other than the outcome being far less favorable for him.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Heavily Armored Mooks are this. While they are less durable than Juggernauts of previous games, they are still well-protected and often don't flinch when shot at with assault rifles, meaning they can readily shoot back at the player while being shot at. Not only that, but they often come in numbers later in the campaign, with some instances having the player fight through five of them at the same time. Unless the player has access to a marksman/sniper rifle and headshots them, they are hard to take down.
  • In DMZ mode, any AI enemy with a shotgun instantly becomes a priority target for the simple fact that they've got surprisingly good range on those shotguns, and one good hit will instantly take out at least one full armor plate. The only upside is the vast majority of them don't wear armor themselves and as such are the epitome of a Glass Cannon - but go into an area with higher-tier AI and the likelihood increases that you'll find one with both armor and a shotgun. They're even worse in Vondel, as they upgrade from the two-shot Lockwood 300 to the semi-automatic, higher-capacity KV Broadside - combine this with the fact that getting the enemy AI on your case in Vondel will cause them to spawn indefinitely out of alleys, and a good half of the map becomes practically instant death. And may the Lord help you if you go up against the Pyro in Al Mazrah, as he's an enemy with a shotgun and a riot shield in addition to his armor.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: König is a truly surprising one. A good portion of fan content is dedicated to him if it's not about Ghost or Soap. Fans point to his eccentric personality, dorky quips, and his Cool Mask for the appeal.
• Estrogen Brigade: While the reboot has gained a lot of positive reactions from female audiences on the likes of Alex, Gaz, and a younger Captain Price, this game takes it up a notch by introducing more cool, badass, and easy on the eyes soldiers. The two standout examples are the badass macho Latino Hunk, Alejandro Vargas and Ghost, who despite the mask, is a bigger and deadlier unit compared to his original counterpart, which makes him more appealing to the female demographic.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Between Alejandro and Valeria. Alejandro already said that he and Valeria served together in the military. However, there's a great amount of intensity in their interactions that made them seem more than just 'fellow soldiers'. This got some fans assumed that both could be ex-lovers at one point, despite it not stated anywhere in the game.
  • Quite a few fans tend to ship König and Ghost and/or Soap.
• Funny Moments: Has its own page.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • It was fixed relatively quickly, but for a time something was very, very wrong with the MCPR-300's iron sights.
  • The "Articulate Response" blueprint for the .50 GS had a similar issue, where putting a different barrel on it would make the barrel completely disappear in gameplay. If you're just using the basic sights it's still vaguely usable, since the rear sight still lines up with the center of the screen more or less properly - if you've got an actual optic attached, good luck, because the model slips off the screen entirely when you aim. A similar glitch exists with the X13 Auto, where putting on the Impact Point barrel after attaching a sight results in it not aligning properly when you try to aim it.
  • At least as of Season 3 it's possible to glitch just about any weapon into having at least the barrel and stock disappear by putting one on, saving it as a custom mod, then changing to a different barrel or stock - the game counts it as having both options you picked attached and displays neither. Some weapons, like the STB 556 and its variants, don't even need any effort beyond equipping them to have some part of them disappear in the firing range or the menu, though in those cases they display properly once in-game.
• Genius Bonus: One of the KorTac Operators available in multiplayer is an Irishman named "Conor." His bio mentions his father was "involved in The Troubles" but doesn't specify on what group he was a part of. However, some may spot the spelling of "Conor" with only one N, which is the more traditional spelling as opposed to the Anglicized "Connor." This makes it highly likely that his father was fighting for Irish independence.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Claudia Doumit, who plays Farah Karim, went on to portray Victoria Neuman in The Boys (2019). As of Season 4, she gets to reunite with three of her co-stars in-game.
  • A lot of entries about Graves' fate made mention of his Villainous Valour, how he chose to go down fighting with his men rather than cut and run. Come Season 5, turns out yep, he did cut and run - he wasn't in the tank everybody thought he was in.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Reviewers noted that the campaign reuses a lot of iconic Modern Warfare setpieces, such as a gunship sequence, a raid on an oil rig and a cargo ship, a prison break, and a ghillie-suited sniper mission, making it feel derivative rather than breaking new ground. Oh, and Shepherd betrays you just like last time.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many of the collabs encourage this mentality. Many people who would otherwise have no interest in Call of Duty expressed interest in playing after certain crossovers were unveiled, such as the Shredder, Homelander, Nicki Minaj, Lara Croft and Spawn.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Price and Gaz getting sniped at the beginning of "Recon By Fire"? Yeah, it’s way too early in the game and too anticlimactic to kill off the main characters in such a manner (especially given their credentials). And we find out seconds later that the guys in Ghillie suits that got shot weren’t the captain and the sergeant.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 2009 is back ^Explanation The year 2022 featured a new Call of Duty subtitled Modern Warfare 2 (albeit with Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones) heralding games launching ten dollars more expensive than had been standard for the previous decade, a re-release of the film Avatar in theaters, and a global recession.
  • "Choices have consequences" ^Explanation Ghost looking tired or disappointed from the end of "Kill or Capture", which look surprisingly Adorkable behind the skull mask.
  • Foap ^Explanation  Ghost's skull mask makes him look like he has a comically large overbite, so memers got some mileage out of mispronouncing things with his accent.
• Narm:
  • Ghost may be Ghost, but graduating from the skull-print balaclava to a hard skull mask and his commitment to wearing the balaclava even in plainclothes takes his edginess over the top.
  • Then there's the part where you can clearly see his emotions through his eyes, particularly in the "Choices have consequences" where Ghost looks pretty disappointed due to the outcome of the mission.
• Nightmare Fuel
  • Shadow Company's purge of Las Almas during Alone, where they go about killing hundreds of people - members of the cartel, local cops, and innocent civilians alike. And given that you spend most of the mission unarmed, you can do nothing but watch them as they do so. Soap declares his intent to commit some war crimes as payback.^note Which he gets to do, two (chronological) missions later
  • The dreaded Tactical Nuke makes a return in Multiplayer, only this time it's far, far worse. Now it's called the MGB (Mass Guided Bomb), and this time you get to watch as a huge AC-130 gunship ominously appears from out of nowhere and looms over the battlefield. Suddenly, you see what appear to be flares sprouting out from it in the shape of wings. Those aren't flares, though. Cue the timer as five neutron bombs slowly make their way towards you and blow the entire map to kingdom come when the countdown hits 0. Game Over.
  • With the launch of Warzone 2.0, there's a special surprise awaiting those who somehow manage to get 5 straight victories in a row. The player(s) who are currently on a win streak will be given a special "Champion's Quest" at the start of the next match. This special mission? Create and arm a Tactical Nuke. That's right, after over 3 years of being teased with the prospect, players can now earn a Nuke and end the game in Warzone. The champion team must collect 3 elements: one which distorts their vision, one which harms them and those around them periodically, and one which scrambles their radar, then wait until the match is almost over for the bomb site to be revealed. Once it's revealed, they need to then deposit the elements within the site and then arm the Nuke themselves a la Search and Destroy, then simply wait while defending it from those who attempt to defuse it. A successful defense equates to the entire map being reduced to a crimson mushroom cloud.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Technically, it's more of a return to form. While MWII's campaign on Veteran/Realism retains the absence of Clown Car closets and the Glass Cannon for most of the enemy AI from 2019, it also added back in the Improbable Aiming Skills, twitchy trigger fingers, and (to a smaller degree) Grenade Spam present in the older COD games. Armor Is Useless is also averted with some enemies sporting armor that takes a considerable amount of bullets (albeit not to Juggernaut levels) to take down unless the player uses a powerful enough weapon (like a sniper rifle or a DMR) to land a headshot.
• Special Effect Failure: The multiplayer beta showed that inspect animations change to account for whether your gun still has bullets in it or not, but the actual animations were otherwise still identical and often caused weird issues, such as several guns still visibly having a bullet in the chamber that moved on its own as the player character pulled on parts of the weapon, several of the mag-fed Lachmann family guns showing a bullet start phasing through the front of the magwell if you inspect them with an empty magazine, or managing to eject a shell from an already-empty Expedite 12, which hovers several inches in front of the user's hand, by pulling the charging handle through the body of the weapon. Some of these animation issues were addressed with the Season 1 update, which also introduced separate inspect animations for most weapons that only play when a completely empty weapon is inspected.
• That One Level
  • "Alone", where you play as Soap after Shadow Company betrays Task Force 141. While it does emphasize the dire situation that Soap is in, the mission starts with Soap's movement drastically slowed down and without access to any weapons (though both of which are resolved half-way through the level). Until then, Soap is forced to scavenge the dark interiors of apartments to find essential material to craft items required to progress through the level or take down the enemies. Finally, after a certain point, Soap is then forced to fight/evade Heavily Armored Mooks with nothing but the weapons he scavenged and the items he crafted to reach Ghost.
  • "Violence and Timing", where Gaz and Price launch a rescue operation in Urzikstan to save Laswell from Al Qalata with the help of Farah and the ULF. This mission involves having to drive down a highway, periodically carjacking other vehicles when yours becomes too damaged, while dealing with gunfire/returning fire, obstacles, and traffic as the unit pursues the AQ convoy. The constant juggling of gameplay focuses can make this mission a headache to manage when things get too hectic and the player overlooks something that proves to be fatal.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The new perk system, which provides two base perks at the start of each game, and adds on a bonus perk and an ultimate perk at approximately four and eight minutes into the game respectively. Beta testers have argued that it takes too long to unlock the whole set, and if a player joined a game halfway they might not be able to acquire all four perks. While Infinity Ward did not respond at first, by the second week of the beta they halved the unlock times for the bonus and ultimate perks.
• Unexpected Character: Prior to his announcement, nobody expected the Shredder to make an appearance in the game.