The Modern Warfare 2 beta has ended and it feels extremely promising to me. Almost everything that made Modern Warfare 2019 great is improved upon in this game. 

It took me a bit to get the hang of the gameplay since it plays a bit differently than MW2019. This game feels slightly more arcade-like than MW2019, as well as having a few tweaks to movement. The player can now dive while sprinting and slide canceling was taken out. Players are now able to swim as well. There is also a leaning mechanism when aiming, but I think this only happens automatically when ADS. 

New vehicles were added like the support helicopter, which can fly over the map in ground war and allows for players to spawn in and jump out or stay on and shoot from above. We can also use 8 attachments on weapons and have extra perks that we earn in game as we play. There also a new killstreaks that MW2019 didn’t have, like the bomb drone, which is probably one of my favorite killstreaks so far (probably because I couldn’t get above a 5 killstreak). 

I tried to play every mode I could and my favorite mode so far has to be search and destroy. Even with the intense gameplay,  I think the trash talk aspect of this mode is what makes it the most enjoyable for me. I loaded into a game on the last Sunday of the beta and it was quiet at first until we lost the second round. There was someone on the other team that basically had their mic in their mouth and was screaming unintelligibly. A kid on our team, who sounded like he was in middle school, told him to shut up. The next round that we won, someone else on our side started trash talking the other team and in response, a man who sounded like he was in his 30s and had kids in the background started talking trash as well. This sparked a giant trash talk cluster where people were screaming at him to shut up and go take care of his kids. I am going to assume those were his kids since he didn’t deny it. 

My second favorite mode is ground war. For some reason, ground war in MW2 feels so much better than ground war in MW2019. I think the fact that maps aren’t as linear is what makes it better. The AI in the Invasion ground war mode also plays like (almost) real players. While you can obviously tell what is an AI and what isn’t, the bots have definitely improved a lot from the last games which makes me more excited for the campaign.

While technically a sequel to MW19, it’s actually a sequel to Black Ops: Cold War since these three games take place in the same timeline. The Cold War was a massive disappointment to me. While the zombies mode was fun, the rest of the game just felt like a massive downgrade. The graphics, gameplay, and just everything in general didn’t feel as good to me, and I ended up getting bored of it within a few months. I still occasionally play MW19, and I am hoping that MW2 will be able to have the same type of lasting effect that MW19 had on the COD community.