Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II multiplayer debuts October 28 with decoy soldiers

Activision is taking the wraps off of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II multiplayer today, a day ahead of a massive beta test on Sony’s PlayStation platforms.

The full Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II campaign game and multiplayer will debut on October 28, while
Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 will arrive on November 16 and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile will come in 2023.

I’ve had a chance to play multiplayer on the Valderas Museum is set in Spain. It’s a two-story building with very clean sightlines, easy-to-read thoroughfares, and modern architecture. There are some shortcuts where you can camp and watch enemies round a corner from above.

While Infinity Ward, Beenox, and Raven are leading development, there are a total of seven Activision studios that are working on the game.

And you can deploy a decoy soldier who rapidly inflates and draws the fire of other players. When they shoot it, it slowly deflates and hopefully they will groan as they realize you’re now shooting at them.

This revamped of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is a sequel to the 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but it’s on a next-generation game engine that unites all of the game platforms. That is, Modern Warfare II’s campaign and multiplayer, Warzone 2.0, and Warzone Mobile are all built with the same engine. This is the first time in Call of Duty history where the teams across multiple studios are using a unified engine.

That means you’ll see better visuals on all of them and better mobility for your soldiers. Modern Warfare II features a new Gunsmith, where during pregame you can customize your weapons and swap between them easily.

It has all new water mechanics where you can swim or fight underwater. It has vehicle gameplay, where you can lean out of a window and shoot. Kelly said the weapons will make you feel more like you’re in the game. The camera makes you feel more connected, makes your hands feel connected to the gun. The trailer has a heavily armored soldier with a gatling gun, presumably one of the perks you can earn with a lot of kills in a multiplayer match.

Hopefully cheating will be a thing of the past. Activision’s Ricochet Anti-Cheat is the most advanced anti-cheat in series history coming day one, globally for both Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0. It has both server protections and more rapid mitigations, as well as a kernel-level driver. That means that if you’re banned, it won’t be so easy to just create another account to cheat again.

Modern Warfare II multiplayer changes

The game will be about infantry soldiers fighting again, but players will now have to consider the role of stealth, amphibious assaults, vehicular warfare, and more. Both Modern Warfare ll and a new Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 experience will deliver innovative new advancements in Al including squad mate positioning, enemy patterns, non-player characters (NPCs) and civilian movement, that all dynamically react to your choices. It looks like you can call in a tank to be dropped in a map in multiplayer. That could be quite devastating.

Special Ops is a revamped as a two-player cooperative experience allowing you to explore large-scale hot zones with your fellow teammate. You will see missions like an overwatch mission where one player in an elevated place looks out for another on the ground.

New gameplay features and movement tactics include tactical sprint, dolphin dive, mantle and ledge hang. New dynamic vehicle gameplay with all-new vehicles including enhanced destruction and more action-oriented maneuvers such as leaning out of vehicle windows, mantling onto a vehicle roof, destroying environments and more.

Raids — a brand new mode — will be coming later this year after launch. Raids will be 3v3 and focus on team communication and coordination. Kelly said it’s very different in terms of gameplay and it’s very intense. There are quests and gameplay challenges for the different modes.

Open beta

The Modern Warfare II Beta is set to feature a robust multiplayer experience going beyond the core 6v6 experience with a variety of meticulously designed maps of various sizes, and an equally impressive set of Modes, Progression experiences, and other aspects.

The Modern Warfare II Open Beta will be free across all platforms, with players who preordered digitally, at retail, or received Beta codes gaining early access. The beta begins on September 16 on PlayStation and September 22 on Xbox and PC for those that pre-ordered the game digitally.

Large-scale Ground War Battle Maps will feature 32 players against 32. And they are nested within the worlds of Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 as POIs. During weekend one of the beta, players can jump into Sarrif Bay, an up to 32v32 map set in the Republic’s main port of call, home to the country’s valuable fisheries and where there is plenty of action on land, sea, and air. It has a lot of rooftops and narrow alleys. You can hang out there and fight other snipers.

Patrick Kelly, franchise creative lead and studio head at Infinity Ward, said the teams iterated on everything in the game, from third-person view combat to massive player counts in Warzone 2.0 and Warzone Mobile. The teams have always wanted to do third-person as a modifier on the game. This creates a chance to do something in VR.

“It all comes back to one thing. It comes back to fun,” he said at the beta launch event, whether you play as a casual player or hardcore, on console or mobile, as a camper or a slayer.

All core 6v6 MP maps are custom-made, built exclusively for 6v6 game modes. During weekend one of the beta players can jump into the following core MP maps: Valderas Museum in Spain. Farm 18 is a classified shoothouse-like location in the center of the map.

Mercado Las Almas is a small bustling marketplace in Mexico with fast-paced routes and lanes that blend together. This is the map in the video where you are running down a freeway crowded with cars at a border and shooting a rocket at an AWACs plane.

I like the maps in the trailer that looks like you can come in via water and launch stealth attacks against enemies. You can throw a spike into a wall and it becomes a camera. You can also throw a spike into a ceiling and set off an explosive for enemies who are on the floor above. One of the new features is you can shoot from the water into the surrounding area on land, as you can see through the water.

Aside from the core modes like Team Deathmatch and Domination, the following three brand-new modes are scheduled during the open beta: Knockout is a very fast, very tactical round-based 6v6 mode. Eliminate the opposing force or hold the package to win. No respawns. Teammates can revive each other.

In Prisoner Rescue, each 6v6 team has a prisoner to protect, held close to their spawn area. Locate the hostages and get them out alive or defend them at all costs. There are no respawns. Team revives are enabled. It’s an attack and defend mode. The prisoners are spread out and you have to pick them up and when you are carrying someone you can only use a pistol. But you get an advantage of having a radar sweep and the defenders have to retreat to defend the exfil spot. There’s a revive mechanic.

Invasion is a different mode from Ground War in that it has a lot of AI characters on each team. In Invasion, the match is a massive Deathmatch of up to 32v32 set across sprawling maps. The goal is straightforward — eliminate or be eliminated — but the fighting is fraught and combines player-controlled operators and AI combatants.

Modern Warfare ll features a physically based material system allowing for state-of-the-art photogrammetry, a new hybrid tile-based streaming system, new PBR water and underwater rendering system, world volumetric lighting, 4K HDR, and more as well as a new GPU geometry pipeline.

You can see the results in the trailer with pretty realistic smoke, fire, water, and shattering glass effects.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare ll will be available globally on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Battle.net and Steam on October 28. Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 will be available globally on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Battle.net and Steam on Friday November 16.

The Modern Warfare ll Open Beta will be free across all platforms, with players who pre-order gaining early access.