Again, it effectively confronts you with the reality of the conflicts that Modern Warfare bases its campaign upon. Later on, there’s a flashback mission centred around a bombing in Urzikstan which is even more fraught and disturbing than the attack in London. The terrorist attack at Piccadilly Circus effectively portrays the confusion, disorientation, and fear induced by a terror attack, with you futilely trying to defend civilians from an overwhelming attacking force while one atrocity after another plays out around you. The general idea is to provide a realistic warts-and-all portrayal of the difficult, unpleasant, and traumatic situations that soldiers on the battlefield are confronted with.

The best way I can summarise my feelings about this direction is 'conflicted'. What this basically means is that Modern Warfare regularly exposes you to some absolutely fucking horrible scenes, which include, but are not limited to terrorist attacks, public hangings, mass executions, torture, civilians being gunned down, and child murder. In the run-up to launch, Modern Warfare’s marketing has made much of the game’s grittier, more realistic edge, shifting away from the cinematic, action-movie feel of the originals. While the opening missions sets the scene, it’s the second mission, which portrays a terrorist attack in London, that sets the tone. With a potential crisis brewing, weaponised moustache Captain John Price is assigned to track them down, eventually joining up with Alex alongside S.A.S Sergeant Kyle Garrick, and Farah Karim, the leader of a militia known as the Urzisktan Liberation Force. Devastating the compound with an airstrike (which given what you’re searching for seems somewhat reckless), the weapons are retrieved - then immediately stolen by what is believed to be Al Qatada – one of the sides in Urziskstan’s civil war. The opening missions sees you assault a Russian military encampment across the border, assuming the role of the CIA operative known as “Alex” as he searches for a brace of illegal chemical weapons. First they fought the Russians, then they started fighting themselves, and now they’re fighting themselves, the Russians, and the Americans in a messy civil war with proxy nations interfering on both sides. The primary setting is the fictional Middle-Eastern country of Urzikstan, a nation embroiled in a cluster of wars for the best part of 20 years. The new campaign has been dubbed a reimagining of the original, which in reality means it muddies the water between being a prequel and a reboot. There are three strings to Modern Warfare’s bow (making it less of a bow and more of a guitar): single-player, cooperative spec-ops, and competitive multiplayer. Sometimes to the point of being disturbing. But when Modern Warfare gets smaller, more precise, more specific, that’s the point at which this latest iteration gets interesting.

Modern Warfare 2019 has more of these moments both in single and multiplayer, and they’re as technically impressive and unoriginal as they have been for about a decade. There’s only so many times you can do the big explodey-whistley-ear thing (official designation) before it starts to feel like you’re running out of ideas.

Call of Duty has blown me up and battered my eardrums so many times over the last 16 years that it’s hard to feel much when it does it all over again. Modern Warfare is at its most distinctive when it is at its least spectacular.

Modern warfare call of duty points