Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has captured my attention. To be honest I haven’t always been a fan of CoD over the years, mostly because I just didn’t get chance to play it, and when Battlefield 1 came out in 2016, I was hungry for some World War I action, so I stuck with the Battlefield series for some time. But in November, a friend of mine who works for Blizzard ANZ (Blizzard & Activision are production partners), sent me a game code for their new release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and I installed it, but waited until December to have a crack at it during my annual 12 Streams of Christmas.

I found I was sliding nicely into the gameplay and soon found myself enjoying the action. I played a bunch of multiplayer maps for MW2, and then had a tackle of the Campaign, which was also alot of fun. But, when I tried the DMZ mode, something in me came to life.

I had tried Warzone some years before and didn’t get captivated by it. I was playing with some friends when I checked out the DMZ mode, and I quickly fell in love with the game mode.

Three players per squad, compete to complete missions, storm strongholds and battle with NPC’s as well as other human player squads. I found myself becoming addicted to DMZ more and more, while still playing MW2 multiplayer maps when I had a short splurge to game. So, what was it about DMZ that I loved.

The best I can liken it to, is my love for the pirate game Sea of Thieves. Now SoT and CoD are vastly different games, but both games have a number of similar attributes that make the game more interesting for say your standard FPS.

Both games have a huge sand box, SoT would probably win the larger of the maps there as you need all that ocean space to sail around. CoD DMZ is set in a huge region of a place called Al Mazrah. So what, you might say. Minecraft has unlimited boundaries, and many other games have huge sandboxes too. The size of the map is just one ingredient in what makes these games fun.

Secondly, they both have Player Vs Environment (PvE) missions. SoT is mostly PvE missions, digging up buried treasure, fighting skeletons, phantoms or sirens, delivering cargo, you know that sort of thing. CoD DMZ has a variety of missions, from bombing supplies, Hunting High Value Targets and Cargo runs while being chased by an Apache helicopter. Again, so do most other games. I mean, Skyrim has both of the ingredients above, which is probably my I also loved Skyrim.

But, here I think is a clincher. Both games have elements of Player Vs Player (PvP) where your adventures among the PvE can come to a sudden halt as you trade bullets with another group of Human players also on a mission in your area. The PvE/PvP wrapped together make’s the game more interesting. The threat that another player squad can stumble across your team, make’s for a lot of unexpected carnage.
In Sea of Thieves, you lose your treasure to an attacking team. In Call of Duty DMZ you lose your weapons, money and equipment.

The risk is real, and even when you’ve been gunned down and you’ve lost your favourite sniper rifle, you get hungry to go back in and try again.
Sea of Thieves is due for Season 10 to release shortly.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II just released Season 2 on 15th Feb 2023.