Reaction: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Is Beating Battlefield At Its Own Game

Infinity Ward took a very different direction, at the time, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2019. The reboot grounded the series in a modern combat setting similar to what made it famous in the first place, after years of misguided attempts at propelling things into the future (and one look back to the past). The franchise also, finally, moved onto more modern tech with a huge engine overhaul after more than a decade rooted in the same technology. With this year's Modern Warfare 2, the development team has built on the groundwork laid down by that tech overhaul, to the point where it's starting to beat its biggest competitor without even really trying.

Hear us out. We've been playing a lot of MW2 over the last 5 or 6 days, particularly across the game's various multiplayer modes that are offering up some of the best CoD action in a decade. In and amongst those modes are 'Ground War' and 'Invasion'; two large-scale multiplayer offerings that stray quite far from the typical Call of Duty formula. They're more Battlefield than anything else, so much so that these two modes alone provide a more impressive BF-esque sandbox than last year's Battlefield 2042.

Recent iterations of Ground War are CoD's answer to Battlefield's 'Conquest'; huge sprawling maps with multiple capture points, vehicle spawns, and a ton of friendly and enemy players. Ground War is a far cry from the 6v6 deathmatch on tight, three-lane maps that Call of Duty is known for, but the mode is something the new engine has afforded the franchise in recent years. CoD running in this format is an impressive spectacle and Ground War works surprisingly well as a new segment of Call of Duty's online sandbox.

In this year's release there's also 'Invasion', another Battlefield-esque mode that pits two large teams against each other in a battle of attrition for enemy territory. If you've played 'Breakthrough' in DICE's series, you'll know what this mode is going for, although CoD's version is more of a large scale deathmatch than a huge objective-based push for land. For our money, these two modes in Modern Warfare 2 are the best that COD multiplayer has to offer this year, and they're starting to show Battlefield up a bit.

Call of Duty's recent work with the free-to-play Warzone also shows that the team at Infinity Ward is starting to hone its craft when it comes to modern warfare on a large scale. The series' battle royale game has supported over 100 players in certain modes across a selection of gargantuan maps since it launched in 2019, and as we seem to be mentioning a lot recently, Infinity Ward is starting to create a real 'sandbox' with these newer CoD releases. Thankfully, MW2 does a better job at balancing this new direction out with its core 6v6 experience than the last Modern Warfare title, and the series is beginning to master multiple playstyles.

It remains to be seen where DICE takes Battlefield in future, but one thing's for certain, the team has more competition than ever. EA has always wanted to pit DICE's series right up against Call of Duty, even if the two games have usually offered up their own unique FPS experiences. CoD is starting to deliver on both sides of that coin extremely well and if Battlefield wants to continue to compete at the highest level, it's going to have to master its modern multiplayer sandbox to knock Modern Warfare off its perch.

What do you think to MW2 multiplayer so far? Drop some of your thoughts on it down below!