News - What Warzone 2 Did Right. Final Review Part 1
Color palette & art style
And diving right in, let's talk about some of the more general things I liked about this game. The first thing is the color palette and art style; this is something that really stood out to me immediately. And I know people have different tastes when it comes to this, but for me. I really like nice bright, vibrant colors in a Call of Duty game, and this game definitely provided that while it may be a little too arcadey and a little too vibrant for some people's tastes.
I definitely prefer this style over a more dark and gritty sort of experience with lots of grays and browns in the color palette. I love the fact that there was lots of vibrant color, and things really pop in this game.
Animation quality
Additionally, from an artistic perspective, I really like their animation quality across the board, and their animation is handled really well visually. Although this comes with a caveat, I think gameplay-wise, some of the animations were very unnecessary.
Or took way too long, and that definitely created some gameplay confusion, but if we're just looking at it purely from an artistic standpoint, the animations were excellent as well.
General map design
After that, we've got a bit of a controversial opinion here, but in general, their map design was pretty solid as well.
I'm definitely not saying every single map in this game was a winner, but in general, looking at the map Pool. I like the amount of diversity we see not only in the various settings and color pets but also in the layouts and how they play, but unfortunately. I don't feel like we really got to see the true potential of these maps due to the spawn system.
I think the spawn system really held these maps back, and spawns will definitely be in Part 2, but just isolating things and looking at the maps themselves. I actually quite like the maps in this game, of course, with a few exceptions in.
General weapon balance
After that, let's talk about overall weapon balance.
This is another area where I actually feel like they did quite a good job overall in Modern Warfare 2. Again, there's always going to be some exceptions. There are a few guns that will of course rise to the top, and there were a few guns that were really weak for maybe a little bit too long, like the M16, for instance, that was practically unusable for a good portion of the beginning of the life cycle of the game, but if we ignore the exceptions and look at the weapon balance in general.
I felt like throughout the entire life cycle I could use a wide variety of weapons and still find consistent success while playing the game, and that felt great. I never really felt like I was locked into playing with just three or four different guns. I could use just about any assault rifle—SMG or battle rifle, for instance—and not feel like I was holding myself back significantly.
Camo unlock structure
As for the next area that I actually really liked with Modern Warfare 2, this was their general camo structure. I'm not talking about specific challenges I think there was definitely some room for improvement there but when it comes to the structure itself I love the fact that for the base camos on guns when you unlock one of those base camos for one gun it unlocks it for all of your guns, of course that excludes Mastery camos for weapons but that makes sense, and I thought this was a great evolution of the camo structure and I actually like to see a similar structure going forward with Call of Duty as well additionally just a little side note with the camos I love the solid color camos and I'd love to see those return as well that's something I feel like I've always wanted in Call of Duty and we finally got it and while they nerfed the vibrancy, early on in the game's life cycle I still really like having those solid color camos.
I think they're some of the best-looking camos in the entire game.
Seasonal events
Next, sticking to that topic of camos, another thing I liked about Modern Warfare 2 was the seasonal camo unlock challenges. This was excellent for many of us who really like having something to work toward, especially once we've got the Orion Camo unlocked. This was great because for just about every mid-season update there was this seasonal event that gives you these challenges that require you to actually change something up in your game play, so it gives something to work toward, and it actually affects how you approach the game play unlike other forms of progression like a battle pass, for instance, where literally existing is all you have to do to progress that battle pass.
Gunsmith (some exceptions)
Next, let's talk a little bit about the gunsmith. While I don't think the gunsmith was flawless in Modern Warfare 2, I definitely have some peaks, and we'll talk about that in Part 2. I do think there were good aspects within the gunsmith. I like that we were once again restricted to just five attachments; 10 attachments was way overboard in Vanguard, in my opinion, which destroyed a lot of the weapon character because you could just build the gun into whatever you wanted it to be.
With this. I feel like they found a nice middle ground for the most part here where you can still make very noticeable adjustments to how your gun performs, but the guns still maintain their individual character, and there were also a lot of different selections within each one of the attachment categories; they give you the ability to really fine-tune things to your liking.
Firing range
Speaking of fine-tuning things, something that helps with this is the firing range. I love the fact that we finally have a firing range in a Modern Warfare game, and while it was quite limited in the things that you could do in the firing range. I'd love to be able to do a lot more in a firing range.
Also, there were some bugs, like damage values and multipliers, with the dummies. I still really like the fact that they at least brought it to the game, and this very limited version of the firing range is much better than no firing range at all, so I'll at least give them credit for bringing that to the game with the hopes that they will be taking things to the next level going forward.
Killstreak/scorestreak toggle
As for the next thing, this is actually one of my favorite parts of Modern Warfare 2 and something that I hope becomes a staple going forward. I absolutely love the score streak-kill streak toggle. I love the fact that unlike Modern Warfare 2019, you don't have to use one of your valuable perk slots just to be able to get access to score streaks, and if it were up to me.
I would make it score streak by default but with the ability to toggle to kill streaks, especially if you're playing one of the objective base modes. I'll admit that is getting a little bit on the nitpicky side, and I just love the fact that we at least have this toggle where you don't have to give something up just to be rewarded for properly playing the objective.
