I’ve been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s Gunfight Alpha for a few hours now, meaning I have completed roughly 5,359 2v2 matches in that time. Not really, but man, this is quite a different Call of Duty experience that I’ve ever had before, and I think…I quite like it?
This new Gunfight mode is an experiment with Call of Duty doing microscopically small maps and more tactical, focused combat. It’s supposed to make things a bit more like Rainbow Six Siege, and yet it’s a lot more streamlined than that, and still feels very much COD.
You are trying to win six rounds before the other team of two, and everyone is given the exact same loadout to work with each round. Quite simply, you have to kill the other two players before they kill you, and if this takes anything approaching a long time, the winner is either who has the most health left, or who can capture an objective on the map.
These maps are tiny, like, smaller than most indoor paintball courses I’ve played on. This can often mean that rounds are hilariously short, quite literally over in a matter of seconds, depending on the lines of sight and weapons. On the smaller maps, you can spawn and see an enemy across the other side of the map within a half second of starting to move. On the larger ones, you can still end rounds almost immediately if say, everyone has snipers and two quick headshots end things right after spawn.
And yet, I sort of love this about the mode?
I feel like Gunfight is the logical evolution of multiplayer into bite-size chunks that you can jump into and out of quickly. There’s a sliding scale that goes from bloated 40 minute MOBA matches, to 20 minute battle royales, to 10 minute Team Deathmatch fights to now Gunfights, which can be over in maybe 5-6 minutes, depending on how things go.
This is nice because even if you’re getting stomped (which in my 50/50 win/loss trial period here, did happen a few times), those matches are over quickly and you can just move on to the next one. Stuck with a bad teammate? Well, you won’t have to deal with him for long. Cowardly partner leaves halfway through the mode? Again, you’ll probably be dead with the round over in two more minutes, so no need to bail yourself.
It feels good to win, too, naturally. I am a thousand percent a rusty Call of Duty player given that as the years have gone on, I find myself playing new entries less and less. And yet I am able to hold my own through pretty basic map awareness and tactics, and unless you’re playing 100Thieves bros on the other end, you will probably be able to get a kill or two in these games through sheer luck of positioning alone. And if you’re even moderately okay like me, you can get 6-8 kill games pretty easily.
The other part of Gunfight is that Call of Duty is showing off its newly redesigned “visceral” combat, which I have to say, is impressive. This has to do with how the weapons fire, as shown off in a recent video which details exactly how that’s all designed:
But for me it’s more than that, as it’s also about how enemies react to being shot, which has always been a problem for Call of Duty, as its deaths, particularly those showcased in killcams, always felt extremely floaty and disconnected from the action at hand. This not the case as you now pelt someone with a shotgun in the gut and watch them fly back like Superman just punched them in the ribs. Everything feels more grounded, and this entire game feels like a blend of WWII, old school Modern Warfare with a bit of Rainbow Six Siege thrown in. But not enough where COD loses its identity or feels like it’s chasing that rival series too much.
It is very stupid to say “this Call of Duty is gonna be big!” because COD is the best-selling game of the year, every year, pretty much no matter what state it’s in. But Modern Warfare does feel like it’s shaping up to be something special, which Activision should be glad to hear considering their nearly empty slate for the rest of 2019.
Hop into some Gunfights and see for yourself. I think you might like it more than you think. I did.
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