For as long as I can remember, whenever I decided to play a new Call of Duty title, my goal was never limited to escaping into the multiplayer modes. In fact, I spent far more time with Zombies than I ever did in multiplayer, but the mode that always drew me in was the campaign. Although I have only played a handful of entries in the series, most of those experiences left a positive impression on me thanks to their storytelling and narratives.
I was never fortunate enough to experience the original Modern Warfare trilogy when I was younger, but I had always heard endless praise for it. While browsing the Game Pass library, I noticed a game called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. After doing a little research, I discovered that it was a modern reimagining of the original story, and I thought to myself, why not give it a try?
From the very first moment the campaign begins, you immediately notice the amount of care invested in the visual details. The trees, faces, weapons, and buildings all look remarkably realistic. But this realism goes beyond the quality of the models themselves and extends into the use of color. At night, darkness consumes most of the scene while bluish-green hues seep through the shadows, creating a cold and suspenseful atmosphere. During the daytime, where most of the events take place in desert environments, sandy yellow dominates the entire landscape.
The game features fourteen missions, each lasting roughly half an hour, and they all revolve around two primary gameplay styles: stealth and combat.
The stealth missions are, for the most part, built around the concept of real-life special operations. You use suppressed weapons, night vision goggles, patiently clear corners, exploit the darkness, and sometimes even create your own cover by destroying light sources that could reveal your position. These missions do an excellent job of portraying the professionalism of elite military units. At other times, however, the game abandons military stealth entirely in favor of what could be described as social stealth, where you do not hide in the darkness but among civilians, making your greatest weapon your ability to blend in and avoid attracting attention.
Combat missions, on the other hand, place you in either wide open spaces or narrow corridors to test your reflexes, accuracy, and ability to manage ammunition under pressure. The game does not stop there, however. Every so often, it introduces new mechanics that prevent combat from becoming repetitive. Sometimes you call in air support using a laser designator. Other times you pilot a drone, provide helicopter support through a thermal camera, or participate in long-range sniper engagements that demand patience and precision. There are also hybrid missions that begin as quiet infiltration before suddenly erupting into large-scale firefights, combining both gameplay styles within a single mission.
Reading this description may make the mission design sound rather limited. After all, you either sneak or you shoot. Yet these words fail to capture what the game actually delivers. I finished it only a few days ago, and what has remained with me the most was neither its characters nor even its story, but its level design. Despite relying on simple foundations, it constantly reinvents them, presenting each mission with different circumstances and contexts that make it feel fresh, even when it relies on familiar mechanics.
This is evident from the very first mission. It begins with your squad quietly moving through a forest, silently eliminating enemies one by one under the cover of darkness. It gradually evolves into a full-scale firefight before throwing you into a narrow, pitch-black building. At that moment, the rules change entirely. Yes, your weapon is equipped with a flashlight, but every corner may conceal an enemy waiting for the exact moment you look the wrong way to end your life. Suddenly, you are no longer playing a fast-paced arcade shooter. Every single step becomes a decision that may determine your survival. You move slowly, check every corner, and think carefully before pulling the trigger, because a single mistake is enough to get you killed.
The very idea of reviewing the gameplay of Call of Duty feels almost amusing to me. This is the identity that built the franchise from the very beginning, and something it has refined over many years.
I have always searched for shooters where every weapon feels distinct, but most games disappointed me. I would pull the trigger only to feel that the assault rifle, SMG, and pistol differed only in their statistics. Here, the experience is entirely different. I am not talking about the difference between an assault rifle and an SMG, but between two SMGs belonging to the same class. Every weapon has its own weight, recoil, sound, rate of fire, and even its own personality. Simply firing at a wall is enough to notice the difference in bullet impact and recoil. The distinction becomes even more noticeable when bullets strike different parts of an enemy's body, making shooting satisfying in its own right.
Then comes the game's enormous arsenal of weapons, giving you yet another reason to keep experimenting. At any moment, you can simply pick up a fallen enemy's weapon and immediately begin using it. There is no need for menus or loadout screens. You transition naturally from one weapon to another in the middle of battle, discovering firsthand how differently each one feels.
The cover system also came as a genuine surprise. I honestly cannot remember the last Call of Duty game I played that featured this level of environmental interaction. Yes, I have played many cover-based shooters before, but they were third-person games where you could see everything around you. Here, you view the world directly through your character's eyes, your field of vision is realistically limited, and yet the cover system feels smooth and natural without slowing down the pace of combat. For me, it is one of the finest cover systems I have experienced in a first-person shooter.
The enemies behave more like real people than artificial intelligence. They do not simply stand still waiting for you, nor do they possess unrealistic knowledge of your location. One enemy may hide beneath a bed, another may pretend to be dead, while others use civilians as human shields. At the same time, they are never foolish enough to hide in obvious locations and expect you not to notice them. More than once, I genuinely felt as though I was fighting another human player desperately trying to survive rather than a collection of scripted behaviors.
Criticizing the game for lacking enemy variety seems unreasonable to me because it is attempting to portray realistic warfare. In games like this, you are not fighting monsters or fantasy creatures. You are fighting human beings, so it is perfectly natural for the differences between them to stem from the weapons they carry, their positioning, and the tactics they employ.
The game handles this aspect well by giving different AI behaviors to different battlefield roles. A sniper behaves differently from a mortar operator or a rocket launcher soldier, while a rifleman fights differently from a machine gunner. Each enemy behaves in a manner appropriate to their weapon and battlefield role.
Now, let us leave the technical aspects behind and move on to what brought us here in the first place: the story.
Although rather superficial, it revolves around an Arab nation trapped between three sides: an oppressive occupying dictatorship, which naturally turns out to be Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea; a barbaric faction attempting to harm everyone, which naturally turns out to be the Arabs themselves; and a third faction led by a woman trying to liberate her homeland with the help of a major Western alliance led by the United States. It may sound like the plot of yet another Hollywood film, but its simplicity does not prevent it from being enjoyable.
Just as the story inherits its superficiality from Hollywood blockbusters, it also inherits one of their greatest strengths: cinematic presentation. You are not merely watching a movie. You are living it. Every gameplay element discussed earlier comes together with direction that knows exactly how to stage every scene, when to destroy a building, when fighter jets should roar overhead, and how color grading transforms every moment into something memorable. Combined with an outstanding voice cast, emotionally expressive motion capture, and solid dialogue filled with powerful moments, this becomes one of the game's greatest strengths.
The game also deserves credit for not shying away from sensitive subjects. It depicts how ordinary people might live under such a dictatorship, where human beings are bought, tortured, hanged, and murdered for the smallest reasons, and where children are killed without mercy. These are brutal scenes, but they effectively serve the dramatic purpose for which they were created.
However, it completely fails to deliver a memorable soundtrack comparable to those found in Hollywood films. In fact, I can barely remember whether there was music at all, which is especially surprising considering the strength of every other audio element.
Despite the excellent sound design, from gunfire to explosions, the soundtrack leaves virtually no lasting impression and fails to create moments that remain with you after the experience ends.
Once we move beyond the cinematic spectacle and the excitement generated by the complex missions and intense firefights, and begin digging beneath the surface of the narrative itself, we discover that it hides a surprising number of flaws that are easy to overlook.
From the very beginning, the story attempts to appear more complicated than it really is. It throws you into the middle of a war whose origins are unclear, bombards you with countless names of cities and characters, and constantly jumps between different time periods. This complexity initially appears intelligent because it convinces you that everything is deeply interconnected and difficult to unravel. Yet I believe it can be unraveled quite easily, just as many players have likely done.
The first thing that stands out is the enormous cast of characters. Every one of them benefits from excellent performances, strong cinematic presentation, and unique defining traits, yet they all remain surprisingly shallow. The story tells you who they are, but rarely allows you to explore their inner struggles, personal conflicts, or emotional depth. It simply introduces them and moves on, almost as though it fears exploring them any further.
I do not mean one specific character. This problem affects nearly all of them. The only real exception, in my opinion, is Farah, who receives noticeably more development and therefore stands out as the strongest character in the game.
As for the rest, everything feels extremely superficial. Barkov, for example, is introduced as a Russian dictator simply because... he is a dictator. Then, near the end of the game, the story throws in a single line attempting to explain how he became that person, as though you are expected to think, "Now I understand the complexity of his character." Really?
All I can really say is that the game overwhelms you with dozens of characters while distracting you with cinematic spectacle and engaging gameplay, layering on an illusion of complexity that encourages you not to question the details hiding beneath the surface.
Before concluding this section, there is another issue that simply cannot be ignored: the story is filled with logical inconsistencies, and I will mention a few examples.
The simplest involves The Wolf. After obtaining the chemical weapons, his most obvious target should be Russia, the occupying force responsible for invading his homeland. Instead, he decides to attack London. How does that make sense? Yes, the West plays a major role in the conflict, and I understand that The Wolf opposes every foreign presence within his country. But if he is portrayed as an intelligent and patient leader, would it not make more sense for him to focus on Russia first instead of opening a direct conflict with the West simultaneously?
Another example is the existence of a fully operational American embassy, complete with diplomatic staff, in the middle of a country devastated by civil war while simultaneously occupied by the Russian military. From both political and military perspectives, such a scenario is extremely difficult to believe and feels far more like a plot device than something that could realistically exist within the game's world.
The biggest plot hole, in my opinion, appears during the final mission. Alex chooses to sacrifice himself by detonating the factory from within using chemical and thermite explosives in a scene that strongly implies survival is impossible, giving the moment tremendous emotional weight. Yet he later returns alive, having lost only one leg, which he replaces with a prosthetic. At that point, the sacrifice loses almost all of its impact because the scene was built entirely upon the idea that the character was giving up his life, only for the story to immediately reverse that decision. What was the point of giving the scene such dramatic weight if the narrative ultimately refused to face the consequences by actually killing one of its own major characters?
TL;DR
■ Pros
* Realistic and convincing visuals with lighting and color grading that enhance both the cinematic presentation and the atmosphere of war.
* Outstanding cinematic direction supported by an excellent voice cast, emotionally expressive motion capture, and strong dialogue filled with memorable moments.
* Excellent voice acting and motion capture that greatly enhance the emotional impact of the scenes.
* Outstanding sound effects, especially weapon fire and explosions.
* Exceptionally satisfying gunplay, with every weapon feeling unique through its weight, recoil, sound, fire rate, and bullet impact, alongside a large variety of firearms.
* Smooth and natural cover system that ranks among the best in first-person shooters without slowing down the pace of combat.
* Excellent AI that behaves more like real people, with enemies hiding under beds, pretending to be dead, or using human shields while adapting their behavior to their weapons and battlefield roles.
* Excellent mission design that continuously reinvents its simple foundations, making every mission feel fresh through different contexts and situations while avoiding repetition.
* Although simple, the story delivers an enjoyable and highly cinematic experience.
* The game deserves credit for tackling sensitive subjects and depicting the brutality of life under dictatorship in service of its dramatic themes.
■ Cons
* A fundamentally shallow story built around a familiar Hollywood-style conflict between predictable opposing factions.
* Attempts to create artificial complexity through constant timeline shifts and an overwhelming number of locations and characters instead of genuine narrative depth.
* Most characters lack psychological depth and meaningful internal conflict, with Farah being the only notable exception.
* Numerous plot holes and weak internal logic throughout several major story events.
* Certain dramatic decisions, particularly regarding the fate of key characters, significantly weaken the impact of the ending.
* The musical score is almost entirely forgettable.
