The fourth season of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 landed on consoles and PCs worldwide on June 14 to much fanfare, mainly from Infinity Ward, but both Warzone 2 and the increasingly popular DMZ mode have been met by mixed reviews from players who grind these modes.
Although Modern Warfare 2 is unlikely to win the coveted Game of the Year award according to the odds on sites offering sports betting online, the fact the game generates astronomical levels of revenue leads to players wanting all updates to improve the game without introducing any new, annoying bugs. While Season 4 comes with some improvements and positive changes, there is also plenty of negativity surrounding it. Let us start with the latter.
Resetting All Progress, Including Insured Slots, Has not Gone Down Well
As someone who has plowed more than 300 hours of their time into the DMZ mode, I, for one, felt aggrieved to learn all keys and mission items, faction missions, and insured weapon slots reset with the launch of Season 4. I usually infill by myself and let the servers randomly assign me teammates. This makes it challenging to complete missions and acquire rare guns because large sections of the DMZ player base like to run around like headless chickens.
Resetting all progress was a kick in the teeth for everyone, especially those who play solo or with random squad mates.
Unpatched Bugs Aplenty
Three bugs continue to bug me relentlessly despite the game reaching Season 4. I have lost count of the times I have deployed a munitions box on the train in Al-Mazrah only for it to be rendered impossible to use.
Second, how many more times will a team answer my plea, and revive me, only for the game to believe I am 100% dead and make it impossible for me to continue?
Lastly, do you think Infinity Ward has fixed the bug where you get stuck climbing the ladders to the hotel in Sawah Village? No, they have not.
Why do these bugs remain four seasons into one of the highest-grossing video games?
There is also a raft of new bugs when playing the new Vondel map. The most annoying is the now overly aggressive AI often clipping through doors and walls, allowing them to shoot you despite them not being fully there. Come on, Infinity Ward, this should not be happening.
It Is Not All Bad
Speaking of the new Vondel map, I like it. The map is much smaller than Al Mazrah and features only 18 operators at any one time. A compact urban map adds a new flavor to DMZ and is a welcomed addition. The bots could do with a nerf, and the fog is annoying, but those are another story entirely.
I am also a fan of the new Forward Operating Base, which acts as a central hub for DMZ. Players can still complete faction missions, including missions for the new Phalanx faction, and other upgrades unlock passively by extracting specific loot or killing certain enemies.
However, the expandable menus do need some work because it is difficult to see what you have unlocked and how to unlock the next stages. The passive upgrades, such as cheaper kill streaks, larger weapons stash, and a larger wallet (another new feature), make picking up random loot worth it instead of having masses of objects with no purpose.
Some of the cooler, more useful upgrades require you to kill commanders and bosses across all four maps. Many players, myself included at one time, used to actively avoid these hard-to-kill enemies but now have a legitimate reward for taking them on and putting them down.
Overall, I see why Season 4 is getting a mixed reaction. Personally, it is a positive but more like a 6/10 than an 8/10. At least the season is only 48 days long instead of the usual 60, so we may see even more changes by the end of July.
