Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remaster updates a classic in a great way. The campaign is as great as you remember although some of the decisions made by the developers are a little odd. For example, there’s this strange tutorial in during the beginning of the game before all the important events take place. I feel that some sequences could be rearranged so that the story would feel better edited but all in all, it’s still fantastic and intriguing. In my opinion the kidnapping and execution portion should’ve started the game to give it more shock value. The tutorial could’ve come later.
All of you know about the story so I won’t keep pushing it and want to know about the visuals. Well, the first aspect of the game you immediately notice are how smooth the shooting mechanics are. The game still runs at 60 FPS but maybe the fact that a new controller is involved makes it feel that much more accurate than on last-generation consoles. I’m not sure what the reason it but the shooting feels incredibly precise. I went back and played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on my Xbox 360 and definitely noticed some floatiness when it came to the thumbsticks. Just using improved controllers make a massive difference.
All of the new graphics feature high-resolution textures aside from the occasional obscure object that many won’t notice. It looks stunning but the lighting could do with some work. While environmental effects like fire and nighttime areas are perfect, the daytime sequences seem to feature low-quality lighting and this seems a little jarring. For example, going from the tense hallways of the sinking ship which has gorgeous varieties of light coming through is a stark contrast to the scene in a desert city which has some of the most bland lighting I’ve ever seen. The developers should improve the lighting during the daytime segments because it just doesn’t even look like part of the same game. I’m not sure what happened there.
Apart from that, I can’t really complain about anything. The performance is solid and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has never looked better. Just our of curiosity I went back to the PC version and this remaster looks so much better even on consoles. The developers need to be applauded and I can’t wait to play the entire game—we just had access to the campaign—next month. For those of you who were wondering if Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered was worth it, I can tell you without a shred of doubt that it definitely is. While we can’t assign a score to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, this game just based on the campaign experience is at least a 9 out of 10. If the quality of the campaign is anything to go by, the multiplayer should be just as robust. Look for our full review closer to launch.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.