Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) is the continuation of the beloved rebooted trilogy and a direct sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare. The campaign puts Captain Price, Soap, Ghost, and Alejandro Vasquez front and center in a fight against a drug cartel and General Ghorbrani's terrorist network, emphasizing both close-quarters interior action and sprawling open missions, including a nighttime thermal-vision insertion and an underwater port infiltration. Multiplayer introduced an improved Gunsmith weapon customization system, and the game also serves as a springboard for the battle royale Warzone 2.0, with which it shares weapons, operators, and seasonal progression.

The PC version launched via the Battle.net launcher and technically fared best among the platforms: it offered an unlimited frame rate for owners of powerful rigs, support for ultrawide and multi-monitor resolutions, a full range of graphics settings, and ray tracing at the highest level for cards that could handle it. Players could also make use of DLSS and FSR technology for higher performance while retaining a sharp image; keyboard-and-mouse controls were a given, along with support for cross-play and cross-progression across consoles, and installing the game together with the shared Warzone 2.0 content took up considerably more disk space than simpler titles.

A shadow was cast on the version by recurring discussions around the Ricochet anti-cheat system running at the kernel level, and around cheaters in the shared Warzone 2.0, which the PC community dealt with more noticeably than console players, where the hardware is fixed and modifying the system is far more difficult. In terms of content, however, it was the same game as on PlayStation and Xbox – the same campaign, the same Spec Ops co-op missions, and the same multiplayer – the difference lay in the technical performance ceiling and in the control comfort that the PC offered thanks to mouse and keyboard, appreciated especially by players focused on the competitive side of multiplayer.

Why play it: For the same content as on consoles – campaign, Spec Ops, and multiplayer – but with a higher performance ceiling and the precision of mouse and keyboard, appreciated mainly by competitive players; just expect more annoying cheaters in Warzone 2.0.