15 years later Modern Warfare 2 is still the biggest Call Of Duty has ever been

Modern Warfare 2 is 15 years old on November 10 (Activision)

On the 15th anniversary of Modern Warfare 2, GameCentral looks back at the legacy of one of the biggest sequels ever made. 

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard may have given the company free rein over several major gaming franchises, but none of them are as prized as Call Of Duty. There’s a reason the company has introduced pricier Game Pass tiers prior to the release of Black Ops 6, and given it special billing in livestreams, it’s one of the biggest money-makers in the entire industry. 

While Call Of Duty has been popular since its inception in 2003, it hasn’t always been a juggernaut. The big game-changer was 2007’s Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which swapped the typical Second World War setting for contemporary action with a topical bite. The change in style catapulted Call Of Duty into the big leagues, selling over 15 million copies. 

If Modern Warfare represents the turning point for Call Of Duty in design, the success of its sequel cemented its status as the biggest first person shooter in the world. Beyond the game itself, the heightened anticipation for Modern Warfare 2 became a cultural event which made the franchise a household name.

Modern Warfare 2’s big controversy

Much like Grand Theft Auto, Call Of Duty’s entry into the mainstream was greatly helped by controversy. Following the eerie nuclear bomb sequence in Modern Warfare, the sequel tapped into prescient fears through its now infamous No Russian mission, where players assume the role of an undercover CIA agent who participates in a Russian terrorist attack at an airport. 

It was widely criticised at the time for being in poor taste, and playing it today 15 years later, it stands out even more so as an immature, crass way to generate attention.

The level invites players to shoot civilians alongside the Russian terrorists (who are hiding their identities to pin it on America, hence the instruction to speak ‘no Russian’). You can choose not to shoot the civilians if you wish, and act as a passive observer to the mindless slaughter, but it feels like a cop-out excuse for what could have easily been a non-interactive cut scene.

While ending on a strong note, with a climactic knife brawl in the desert, Modern Warfare 2’s campaign is generally far less memorable than its predecessor – which packed in classics like the Ukraine-set sniper operation All Ghillied Up and Death From Above where you eerily rain death on enemies through the black and white lens of a AC-130 gunship.

Modern Warfare is memorable because there’s a chilling edge to its realism, whereas the sequel blows out its action blockbuster tendencies in a clumsier fashion.

Modern Warfare 2: a multiplayer revolution

If the campaign was slightly underwhelming, Modern Warfare 2 represents a key shift in priority towards its multiplayer modes. The sequel is known for many beloved maps, from the plane slides of Terminal; Favela, which was cropped up in several Call Of Duty games since; and the close quarters chaos of Rust. The latter is an evolution of Shipment from the original Modern Warfare, but it is far more memorable in design – especially if you’re partial to knife-only matches in split-screen mode. 

An underrated aspect of Modern Warfare 2 is the Spec Ops mode – the game’s co-op mode, from a time when only Treyarch-developed games had Zombies. Here you could team up with others to tackle specific missions against waves of enemies. At the higher difficulties, it was surprisingly challenging and often required a level of coordination unseen in the traditional multiplayer experience. This mode was first introduced here, and while it appeared in Modern Warfare 3, it was largely neglected until the 2019 reboot.

The campaign doesn’t reach the heights of Modern Warfare (Activision)

What’s striking about playing Modern Warfare 2 today is how contemporary the gameplay still feels. Call Of Duty has made minor adjustments to the formula since, adding omnimovement mechanics in Black Ops 6, but this is still the same highly polished template we’ve been playing across all 15 (yes, really) mainline games released within the past 15 years.

Call Of Duty might’ve fallen into a creative redundancy in the last decade or so, but there’s a reason these same fundamentals have continued to consistently sell millions of copies every year – and why no first person shooter since has come close to threatening its position. 

Call Of Duty hangs over the games industry today like a reliably entertaining sitcom you can’t escape from, which, thanks to its consistent success, has lost any desire to reinvent itself. In hindsight, Modern Warfare 2 marks the series’ cultural peak, the sophomore album which isn’t quite as revered but is relevant because of how its monumental success (22.7 million copies sold as of 2013, and one of the best-selling games in the UK ever) shaped the franchise’s future. 

It remains to be seen whether Call Of Duty will ever be knocked from its perch (the early sales of Black Ops 6 suggest not) but as it stands, it’s unlikely Call Of Duty will ever capture the cultural zeitgeist in quite the same way again, as Modern Warfare 2.

Call Of Duty has never been more relevant than in Modern Warfare 2 (Activision)

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