Girard Watson

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I truly envy the people who give this game 4-5 stars and say they love it, it's the best COD, etc. I truly wish I felt that way. I watch current and former CDL pros play, and many of them say it's the most fun they've had playing a COD title in years. I genuinely wish I could experience that joy playing this game. Instead, I mainly experience the following, hence the 2 star review. I'll update the review if I see the following change, but I'm not going to hold my breath. First and foremost, the devs appear to have overclocked the skill-based matchmaking--or engagement optimized matchmaking, as I've seen it called more and more frequently, as of late. This has been an issue since Modern Warfare 2019, as the consensus goes, but I never felt overwhelmed by it before like I do right now. A lot of people did not like MW2 or MW3, but I enjoyed them and played them both a ton. In those titles, I felt like my average match was challenging, near wins/losses, and when I really started to cook, I would have a lot of fun slaying out. In this title, the average game feels like the sweat-filled blender that I would have considered a "hard" extreme match in previous years. I was getting turned off by the end of MW3's yearly cycle because a lot of matches were me + 4-5 players that simply appeared allergic to going positive (in TDM) or playing objective. This year, that feels like the average match. I've never enjoyed feeling like I have to carry Timmy-No-Thumbs, but this year, I feel like I literally cannot. The game feels stacked against me more often than not, and I've seen a lot of commentators in the community using words like "rigged". And on a final note about "challenging" and near wins/losses; the sheer number of matches in this game that end 100-97 or 75/73 or even 100-99 is simply absurd. I've caught myself wondering multiple times if the game fabricates those numbers for some reason, and I've started paying close attention to my kill feed at the end of the game to see if I can catch it. There are technical issues like "desync" that I've had plenty of first-hand exposure to. While I imagine this will be patched in short order (it seems to already be better) as more servers roll out or the post-launch player base drops and stabilizes, it is absolutely disheartening. One match, I'll have a great connection, hit registration, etc. and be in flow state, only to feel like I'm shooting marshmallows the very next match and get killed by people who aren't looking at me. My subjective experience has been that I do not enjoy this game. It looks great, and when it works, it feels fantastic. I can SEE how a lot of people have the most fun they've had in years, and how it's their favorite COD since [insert decade-old title here]. But I can't honestly say that's how I feel... because, well, I finally got fed up with matchmaking for tonight to come write this review that no one will read.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, because I'm just typing this up while waiting for friends to finish a match. I got booted due to "inactivity" after breaking my legs. I haven't quite developed an intuition for how far I can drop and be protected by "Mountaineer". My teammate was literally reviving me and it kicked me. Let's start with pros: 1. Maps. I know, 2009 maps. Nostalgia. It's great. Not much more to say about that. 2. Movement. It's nice to have some more responsive movement back after the last year. But this is not an improvement over years previous, just a revision of the mess they made last year. They do not get any points for fixing what should not have been broken in the first place. Cons: 1. Campaign is short and underdeveloped. This has been written about and beaten to death, no need for me to do so. 2. Bugs. See aforementioned bug where the game kicks for "inactivity" when I break my legs and get revived. This has happened more than just a couple times. 3. This is my own subjective opinion, but I feel like the devs didn't know how to make recoil for these guns. They either have none or it's so all over the place that it feels cartoonish. I felt like the recoil of the RAM-7 was unique and manageable in 2019. In this game, unless using the "mEtA" build, it feels like a janky cartoon animation. 3. I have yet to see "Rejoin Match" work once. Not only does it seem incapable of following through, but on many occasions, the game has frozen or crashed when I attempted to rejoin. 4. My personal favorite, spawns. The spawns are complete garbage. Spawning in front of an enemy (sometimes in his line of sight WHILE he's firing his gun, sometimes one foot in front of him while he's holding an angle). Sometimes behind. Sometimes right next. I've killed people only for them to spawn directly in front of me WHILE I'm still firing my gun; the reverse has happened as well. The spawn logic may be more broken in this game than it has been in years. While bad spawns felt like a fluke now and again in the last few years, it feels like a coin toss depending on the map and mode this go-round. Ultimately, this game was an add-on for the previous that they decided to pretend was a full-blown game to squeeze money out of us. It isn't a good game. Once you get over the nostalgia from maps and movement, the reality starts to set in. Note that this is not a review specifically for Warzone or Urzikstan.