The Modern Warfare 2 campaign offers much more than a photorealistic Amsterdam
Every few years the Call of Duty series hits a new technical milestone – a definable moment where developers like Infinity Ward make a clear break from what came before. The 2019 Modern Warfare reboot was exactly that, its IW8 engine delivering an enormous boost in geometry, a new lighting model, updated physics, materials and a streaming system for large-scale maps. It was a breakthrough for the series, iterated on in last year’s Vanguard and improved once again for the new Modern Warfare 2. Now dubbed IW9, Infinity Ward’s custom engine offers up a wealth of upgrades, including stunning character rendering, improved water simulation and AI upgrades. However, it’s the game’s beautiful recreation of Amsterdam that has captured the headlines – and rightly so.
Modern Warfare 2’s story gives the IW9 engine a superb workout. Each mission really is a vehicle – a self-contained showcase – putting each of its new visual tricks front and centre in ways the multiplayer modes cannot. Every set-piece escalates too, level to level: from upside-down shoot-outs to hopping between exploding cars, from dodging container units on a rocking tanker to swimming the Amsterdam canals at night – there’s huge variety.
A huge highlight here is the Recon By Fire mission, where we see the IW9 tech pushing a vast, sprawling, misty landscape of green. It plays perfectly to its strengths. All linearity is thrown out the window in favour of a more open-ended design. You get to choose dialogue, you choose what points to strike first, and you choose how to do it: by stealth or all guns blazing. It’s the classic All Ghillied Up mission from Call of Duty 4 taken to a new generation, a brilliant reinvention with multiple ways to attack it. And while there are certain missions that outstay their welcome – particularly the top-down gunning in Close Air – more often than not, its set-pieces at least hit the mark.
The most memorable mission – visually speaking – is the now iconic Amsterdam level. It’s a quiet story beat, a moment of calm in-between the game’s more bombastic action. Strolling down the red-light district, every small detail here is almost directly lifted from the real world: the stylings of the cafe signs, the bikes flanking the canal, the road markings – even the proportions of its brick roads, the arcing bridge, and the spire of the Old Church are precisely measured. There are exceptions but the team at Infinity Ward uses photogrammetry to take most real-life materials – each brick, each restaurant sign – and translates their properties to the game engine. It informs the lighting engine, all playing a huge role in giving true-to-life results.
