Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)

Task Force 141 is back for another global terrorist hunt

- IAN EVENDEN

YOU CAN TELL a lot about a game by the things it makes you sit through before you actually get to play it. Launch the 2022 iteration of Modern Warfare II for the first time, and you have to scroll through endless license agreements and privacy policies, remember your account password to log in, then wait for the game to restart if you choose to play the campaign rather than the multiplayer.

There are even multiple developer and middleware logos to enjoy—it’s an Infinity Ward game, but the studio had help—and you are left looking at a desert cliff while the shaders pre-compile on the first run. Birds circle, but you’re there long enough to notice they’re on a loop, fading out of existence before appearing again in the sky. The message here is that this game took a lot of work to produce.

Once you start playing, it’s immediately noticeable how sharp the environments are and how, as a result, character models and vehicles can look artificial in comparison. Glenn Morshower from 24 and the Transformers movies makes a great General Shepherd, although Captain Price’s beard is annoyingly distracting. Performance is generally excellent, recommended specs are low, and it will even run nicely on a Steam Deck as long as you’re running Windows on it (because the anti-cheat system doesn’t like Linux).