The best moment in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one of near-absolute uncertainty. In it, an electromagnetic pulse has just shut down all electronics and communications systems in the game’s war-torn depiction of Washington, DC. As an Army Ranger, you and your squad, stranded in the middle of a battlefield gone silent, have to navigate your way to a rally point. It’s absolutely dark, drenched with rain, and all the indicators you have used up to this point to identify friend and enemy, from thermal vision to the red dot on your weapon’s sights, are dead thanks to the EMP.
Wrecked aircraft litters the ground, and you creep through the night uneasily. Your commanding officer pauses every time he sees movement ahead, shouting out a code word to try to identify friend from foe. For this brief stretch, you never know who’s going to be a friend and who’s going to be an enemy. In a game known for reckless action, it’s a brief and convincing stretch of horror.
Released 11 years ago, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to the original Modern Warfare, which turned the military action series into a juggernaut by shifting its attention from World War II to the present, reconfiguring its play around the technology and concerns of early-2000s American military culture. Recently, it got a fresh coat of paint, with Activision releasing a fully remastered version of the game’s campaign on PlayStation 4, and then later on Xbox One and PC. It’s an eminently competent, well done remaster that makes the game feel like a contemporary release. Which showcases how strange a relic of its era Modern Warfare 2 truly is.
As mired in American military adoration as it is, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a game deserving of at least a little praise. It manages to build authentic dread and disempowerment into what could have been straightforward jingoism, and in the process creates a game that reads as a sat