The new Modern Warfare takes some serious inspiration from Sicario, one of the greatest action-thrillers ever made.
While the Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare games are loved for their multiplayer maps, it is unfair to completely brush off the main campaigns within the series.
Over the years, there have been absolutely jaw-dropping, proper water-cooler topic missions in the single-player section of the games, with immediate highlights including “No Russian” from the original Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, “All Ghillied Up” from Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and “Clean House” from 2019’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare.
The brand new Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II has also got some exemplary missions, including “Tradecraft” (set in the perfectly recreated Amsterdam), “Recon By Fire” (feeling like a hard nod back towards “All Ghillied Up”), “El Sin Nombre” (which could double as a mission from a high-end Hitman sequel) and “Violence and Timing” (a car chase sequence that the directors of the next Mission: Impossible movie are likely giving the side-eye).
But the campaign mission that feels like an immediate classic is “Alone”, an incredibly tense section which feels like it was simultaneously watching Sicario and Zero Dark Thirty.
The overall mission of the entire game centres around a group of international agents attempting to trace back the origins of a set of missiles, involving an Iranian terrorist who is working with the Mexican drug cartels to get into America.
This involves travelling all over the world attempting to track him and his associates down, and – without giving anything away – you find yourself alone, without any weapons, and grievously injured in a rain-drenched Mexican town.
What follows is a nail-biting hour of pure tension, as you must source medication to heal your wounds, a knife and/or gun to defend yourself, any kind of lock-picking devices to get around the shutdown town, a landmark to find your teammates… all while evading being captured and/or killed by the soldiers patrolling the streets and buildings.
The cutting edge visuals and pin-drop sound design are all as immaculate as you’d expect from the lated COD game, but it is in twisting the formula so completely that we find new levels of enjoyment in the game. Earlier in the game, you’re loaded with the biggest and best weaponry in the world, and some missions find you simply reigning down missiles and machine-gun fire from drones miles up in the air.
But “Alone” takes all of that away from, putting you in the most vulnerable and weak position imaginable. All you’ve got on your side is your wits, and hopefully a bit of luck.
The new Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II is available on PlayStation, Xbox and PC from Friday, 28 October.
