Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Review (PS5)
Another Call of Duty title to add to the pile
I have an on-again, off-again relationship with the Call of Duty franchise. I have phases where either PlayStation Plus gives away a free Call of Duty title, or the developers come up with a decently new/fun twist on the classic point-and-shoot Team Deathmatch game I used to love, and I play it for a solid month before returning to one of my go-to videogames.
This happened to me a couple of years ago when Call of Duty Cold War came out, and again with the latest Modern Warfare 2 release. Though, I will say, advertising MW2 as the “new era of Call of Duty” is a bit over-the-top and gives the franchise way too much credit for what it has become.
Because Call of Duty has successfully sold every year of its release, it was nearly impossible to find a sale on the title during the week of Black Friday. I was able to swipe a copy of it through Walmart for $55 and recently got to experience it for myself after the heyday of the holiday season had passed.
Was it worth the $55? Let’s find out.
Gameplay and issues while playing
Most people buy Call of Duty for the online mode, where you pick from a variety of team vs team-based timed competitions.
My favorite of these modes is Team Deathmatch, where you and a bunch of other players are placed on a map with the sole purpose of racking up 100 points for your team first. Each kill is a point, and players that successfully kill multiple players in a row without dying gain access to Scorestreaks that help increase your team’s chances of winning.
It’s a tried and true formula for the franchise that keeps players coming back. You’d think they’d have it perfected by now after having released forty-two of them (and no, that’s not an exaggeration.)
So, what’s wrong with this game? There are three key things.
First, the gameplay lag. I haven’t experienced gameplay and input lag like this in a video game for as long as I can remember.
When I flick the right analog stick to the right to turn slightly, there’s a quarter-second delay before my player character moves to the right, only instead of a couple of degrees, he moves almost 180 degrees to the right.
Keep in mind that I didn’t have high sensitivity turned on; I was using the standard input setup.
This made online matches pretty much unplayable. I’d aim down the sights and pray to God my character would be pointed in the right direction and not sway left, right, straight up, or straight down at the ground.
And this issue isn’t exclusive to me. A quick Google search revealed hundreds of players having the same issue and dozens of articles and videos being uploaded to try to address the issue, which, at the time of writing, hasn’t been fixed.
The second thing that affected my game was my Wi-Fi connection. My family has an average, run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi setup. If someone is face timing and someone else is streaming and another plays an online game all at once, interruptions are bound to happen.
It’s pretty commonplace that if I decide to play an online game, the connection could be severed briefly, hopefully reconnecting in time so the match remains undisturbed.
It happens all the time when I play Fortnite, and most of the time it doesn’t affect the match that much.
In Modern Warfare 2, if the connection is severed, even for a half second, it kicks you from the match. Say goodbye to all the experience points you may have racked up.
The third thing that doesn’t sit well with me is how gun customization has changed. In the glory days of Black Ops 2, I had nine possible attachments to equip to my weapon, and I could only pick three (or a fourth, if I used a “Greed” perk.)
In Modern Warfare 2, there are 48 just for the M4 assault rifle, and you have to unlock every one of them.
I don’t have the time or the patience to exclusively play Call of Duty to unlock all 48 attachments for one weapon, let alone 51 total weapons in the game.
Final thoughts
When I play video games, I turn to them to relax and/or briefly get angry at the other player that killed me if it happens to be an online shooter game.
But when a game released on a next-generation console features significant input lag a couple of months after launch, kicks me from matches whenever my shoddy Wi-Fi connection conks out for a half second, or provides me with a confusing and unnecessarily complex gun modification system, the experience becomes more frustrating than it’s worth.
I wish I could love Call of Duty again, but the gaming sessions I had with this title ruined the chances of that for a long time.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will gather dust in my PS5 gaming collection until these issues are resolved, and even if they do, I might still just end up trading it in for GameStop’s in-store credit.
