As Call of Duty has evolved as a franchise, it moved away from story, something that originally defined to series, to the multiplayer aspects. This eventually lead to Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII removing it entirely, a choice that was heavily criticized. For one reason or another, this year we’re getting a soft reboot of the ever popular Modern Warfare series, simply called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. To make up for the previous mistake, the E3 presentation focused on the single player campaign.
Their choice for a mission was, well, interesting. Usually it’s something flashy or action packed, whereas this one was more somber and slow. It starts with you infiltrating a building and eliminating a threat. There are civilians that you need to avoid, with the scene going switching from eerily quiet to intense. It does a good job of illustrating how things currently are, without going into the endless waves of enemies that you mow down.
Despite being a rather serious situation, it did have an on rails look to it. Several areas simply came down to noticing where the threat was and eliminating them before they get you. There were a few notables, both of the mechanics and of this cartoonish element.
Arguably the best scene was the guy in the bathroom. He escapes from a cleared room and is waiting in the bathroom. When you get near, he shoots the door in hopes of getting you, but you shoot through the wall to get him. It, ideally, shows combat will be more than shooting at people and something a bit closer to what Battlefield is known for. As for the cartoonish element, there is one part where someone is hiding under the bed and you get him before he can react.
Even though it was a good presentation, it didn’t do much to really showcase things. It’s clear Modern Warfare is meant to resemble that of today, which might make it the most haunting Call of Duty to date, but it also didn’t show a whole lot. Like I mentioned, it looked less like you were clearing a building and more you were able to do a little more than turn a corner and shoot people before they shoot you. Hopefully the final game will prove to be much more, but for now it looks, if nothing else, interesting.
