At the onset, the story seems like another episode of Captain Price and his buds preventing World War 3, but that’s kind of a red herring. Within the campaign, Infinity Ward has scaled back on thrill rides.

If the most interesting stuff is coming and going regularly, I can see my interest waning quickly. I like that the studio is trying out new things, but foundational modes like Team Deathmatch are so shallow that it’s easy to get bored. Infinity Ward is throwing modes at the wall and seeing what sticks. I see legitimate reasons for limiting the number of modes turned on at a time, but I don’t love the idea of getting locked out of my favorites. Non-standard playlists will cycle in and out of rotation at the will of Infinity Ward. But not all modes have a permanent home in matchmaking. Modern Warfare’s best ideas are on the fringes of its standard offerings. Cyber Attack adds depth to the elimination format by splitting priorities between playing the objective and reviving teammates.

Other modes stand out too, like the reimagined Search and Destroy replacement Cyber Attack and the Realism ruleset, which strips away all HUD and makes headshots a one-hit kill. Matches kick off like the unpredictable beginning of a battle royale as we desperately scrounge for a solid weapon to secure a slight advantage. An alternate mode called Gunfight OSP (on-site procural) wrinkles this further by forcing players to find their own weapons on the map. It forces me to expand my horizons and learn the guns I usually forgo for a standard M4. The maps are small, but cleverly constructed to support quick jousts or drawn-out cat-and-mouse circling. Every round is a burst of improvised strategy as both teams adapt to randomized identical loadouts. Gunfight ditches killstreaks and ratchets up intensity with 40-second rounds and no health regeneration. Gunfight, Modern Warfare’s new 2v2 round-based elimination mode, is my bastion away from that chaos. But when a new UAV or Predator Missile is thrown into the mix every 30 seconds, flying a dinky little drone or blocking a few grenades is comparatively inconsequential. Field Upgrades allow for tiny moments of real teamwork, a feat for CoD’s typically selfish playstyle. I enjoy gadgets like the Trophy System, which zaps away enemy grenades mid-air, and the Recon Drone, which paints targets red for the whole team to see. The superiority of gunships and predator missiles also cheapen Modern Warfare’s new Field Upgrades-small-scale tools and abilities that add a bit of strategy to a standard loadout.

I got 30 kills, yay, but really I got 20. But when the roles reverse, the pride of a long killstreak is devalued by the ridiculousness of my power trip. I can’t help but imagine those enemy pilots blissfully chuckling at us helpless ants as we flee from the burn of their magnifying glass. Killstreaks shatter any semblance of balance and hand more power to players already topping the scoreboard. In my years away from the series, I haven’t missed getting carpet bombed by a $90 million jet while minding my own business. They represent the worst of CoD’s outdated traditions. We didn’t have much fun, but it’s easy to see where it can be improved. Almost no groups could finish a single mission (mine included). Enemies constantly spawned behind us in areas we’d already cleared, we never had enough ammo, and the balance felt totally off. It’s a neat conceit designed to be heavily replayable, but the version I played at the review event was in rough shape. The mode has its own custom, wide-open maps with segmented areas and character classes that support your squad in different ways. Modern Warfare’s Spec Ops missions trade bite-sized co-op episodes for operations more akin to Destiny strikes.

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