Modern Warfare is making me feel young again

Having recently felt very old trying my hand at Blackout, Call of Duty Black Ops 4s battle royale mode, I thought I was done with FPS games. At least multiplayer ones, I really enjoyed Metro Exodus. Having picked up Modern Warfare Remastered as part of PS Plus playing multiplayer has been a revelation. It’s brought me back to a pace much more suited to my play style and grounded me in weapons and maps I know and remember well. Modern Warfare Remastered is making me feel young again.

Playing is an interesting mix of nostalgia and muscle memory, but there’s something else. Something I’ve yet to be able to express. A feeling almost. I know which corners to cover for incoming enemies. Know when to fire whilst rounding a corner. Know where to set down for a quick reload and when to move. It isn’t just the muscle memory of the controls and movement. It’s my brain actively remembering a map and the loadout then plotting what I will do. It’s taking all of my experiences with the original game and running through them swiftly calculating how to proceed. The unknown element of a new multiplayer game gone and just my speed and skill on show. Perhaps I could feel like this if putting enough time into Black Ops 4 but who has the time these days.

I felt a similar way with Battlefield 1, a game I went into not knowing maps or the weapons. The slower pace and larger maps gave me a little more time to understand and explore how I wanted to play the game and how I enjoyed playing. CoDs smaller maps don’t usually afford you the time to get to know them in only a couple of games. You spawn you die. You spawn, run a little, shoot an unfamiliar gun, then die. With Blackout I found myself hiding a lot, trying to find weapons I liked the feel of. I didn’t get much chance to experiment. I felt the same with the multiplayer. With any multiplayer FPS I usually run through the single player first to get a feel for the speed and movement. It lets me try out a number of weapons but I didn’t have that chance with Blackout, which has no single player campaign. I felt thrown in at the deep end. Whilst I first played the multiplayer in Modern Warfare Remastered I jumped into the single-player campaign. Playing through one of the best FPS campaigns made again hasn’t been a chore. Although it’s a different beast playing on Veteran difficulty is helping to refine my play style which I’ve taken back over to multiplayer.

Yeah, I’m nova_47

A simple explanation for my renewed skill at FPS is that MWR is slower than most modern shooters. My reactions have time. I’m coming face to face with another player and pulling my gun up slightly quicker than them to get a few shots off, unlike my experience in Blackout. It also doesn’t feel as bullet spongey. I can get a couple of high powered shots into someone and take them out. I’m not spraying towards a player only to slightly damage them. There isn’t body armour to take into account and we don’t have to worry too much about where we hit someone, a simple head or body hitbox. The modern CoD games have given us more features and more options to play with but the loss of simplicity has turned me off.

I’m really enjoying Modern Warfare Remastered and the CoD formula of old. If Activision bring out more remasters of the earlier Call of Duty’s I’d be much more inclined to pick those up than a new installment. Especially the original Black Ops, which is still the best Call of Duty game ever made. If you disagree add me on PSN, Nova_47, and we can shoot at each other across the Bloc.