Note: This review contains spoilers for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
The explosive success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) would naturally justify production of a sequel, eventually confirmed and revealed as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (CoD:MW2). While I was in high school back in 2009, this was actually the first Call of Duty (CoD) game where I couldn’t escape discussion about it thanks to the massive hype surrounding it (even a teacher would mention playing it one time during a class discussion). Apart from hearing endless discussion about the multiplayer, however, I was mostly aware of one Mission, “No Russian”, due to its controversial content, which for years was the only thing I knew about CoD’s storytelling and knowingly out of context. Now, with much more knowledge about CoD than I had before, my approach is more informed by not only playing CoD4, which has an incredible campaign on its own, but also the knowledge that this was the last time that Infinity Ward would develop a CoD game with original creators Jason West and Vince Zampella still involved, a story that I’ll save for another time. For now, however, we celebrate this blog’s fifteenth anniversary with CoD:MW2, which holds up surprisingly well in spite of some issues with the campaign.
