Refreshing History With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered [Preview]

In a time when World War II games had been done to death, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare refreshed the series and gave players an all new reason to fall in love with first-person shooters. The news that this gem of a game was set for a remastered edition was good enough, but when Activision announced that it would come packed alongside legacy and deluxe editions of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, it gave fans both old and new a good reason to look back to the roots of the one of the most successful modern shooters ever created. After going a few rounds in MW Remastered’s multiplayer, we can safely say that despite the high-sheen gloss, the classic beats were left intact to make this the definitive version of Modern Warfare.

The big draw here is the graphical update. Every single aspect of Modern Warfare has been reworked to current graphical expectations. It not might seem like a big deal, considering the original game’s visuals were nothing to scoff at, but put against what we saw during our playtime, MW Remastered blows even the original Modern Warfare out of the water, falling more in line with the visuals you might expect to see in a current generation Call of Duty. It’s pretty great to revisit all of those old locations and get a look at every building, obstacle and object cranked up to an astounding level of detail.

For all this recreation of the good old days, it doesn’t really seem to suffer anywhere either. The whole experience was left intact with nary a frame rate drop, despite the hectic amount of action going on in each match. The character models, guns and environments are as crisp and clean as can be, and everything moves so fluidly that if you didn’t know it was a remaster, you might think it was a new game. We spent our time on the Crash and Overgrown maps and despite nostalgia of racking up kills, running in and out of battle, holding down points with our friends and landing those delicious killstreaks, the whole thing was built to be the kind of experience that would easily invite new players in as well as the old.

It’s more than just the actual gameplay and visuals left intact too. We already knew that Modern Warfare Remastered would be getting many of its original multiplayer maps back, but then news broke that the game actually be receiving all of its original 16 maps. Ten of the classics will be released along with the game when it drops with Infinite Warfare and the other six will come in December as free downloadable content. All of this comes on top of MW Remastered also getting the rebuilt single-player campaign. We didn’t get a chance to try it during our hands-on time, but given the integrity of the multiplayer, it’s easy to have faith that the single-player campaign will get the same royal treatment.

If you weren’t on board when one of the best first-person shooters ever created hit, you missed something truly special. Modern Warfare is a classic and set the bar extremely high for every first-person shooter that followed. Remastered takes that magic, buffs it up to a sleek shine, makes sure the gears are oiled and presents it as good as new. It shows a little bit of age for the simple fact that it doesn’t host all of the comparably absurd mobility and speed of recent Call of Duty titles, but it still has all of the nostalgia to delight old fans with enough polish to give new players a definitive and enjoyable look at what they missed.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered will be available alongside Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on Nov. 4, 2016.

This preview was completed at Call of Duty XP 2016. Travel and accommodations for Call of Duty XP were provided by the publisher.