In the eyes of the majority of the fanbase, Call of Duty had been on a steady decline since the release of Black Ops 2 in 2014. But Call of Duty Modern Warfare’s new take on the series has been able to entice new and old players.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare’s campaign is one of the best of it’s kind to release in years. It is a reboot of the Modern Warfare series which brings back a fresh and newly-voiced version of fan-favorite Captain Price. The campaign isn’t for the faint-hearted, it deviates from the power-fantasy to focus on the horrors of modern warfare. One example is the second level, where you play as a British police officer during a terrorist attack, witnessing the deaths of civilians. But it pulls it off tastefully and with purpose. The game forces you to make tough and quick decisions, like figuring out if a civilian is reaching for a gun.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare’s multiplayer mode focuses on tactical realistic gameplay, even featuring a “Realism” mode that disables your heads up display and mini-map, the only way to tell allies from opponents are from small visual details that may be hard to discern from a distance. The new gunfight mode is a 2v2 mode set on small maps with random guns. It’s tense-sub 1-minute matches make it a highlight of the multiplayer. The “Ground War” mode features 100 players in a model similar to what is seen in the Battlefield franchise. Infinity Ward tried to deviate from the 3 lane maps that plagued previous games making them all too similar, but went too far in some places, making camping too easy on many maps. The game features twelve maps, with variants for some maps. Unlike in previous games, the “night” variants of each map have a large effect on the gameplay, changing your approach by requiring you to use night vision goggles. Modern Warfare is the first game in the series to add crossplay, which has worked flawlessly and allows people to play together no matter what console they use.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare looks beautiful without any performance issues. It is the first game to run on a brand new engine in a staggering fourteen years. It is a big jump from the lackluster Call of Duty Black Ops 4, and its new compression system has reduced the lengthy loading times that plagued the previous games. The new engine has also helped with performance, making it run faster than the four previous entries in the series. There is an amazing amount of attention to detail in every model of the game, even the watch some characters wear displays the current time set on your console/computer. It supports ray tracing for PC players with NVIDIA graphics cards, which doesn’t make a significant difference in lighting but is still a welcome addition.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is a must-have for any fans of the series. Its campaign is gripping and sad and its multiplayer is a blast to play with friends on all consoles. Because of this, Call of Duty Modern Warfare gets a 5/5.