Modern Warfare II multiplayer impressions: The core gameplay is solid

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I played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II multiplayer for a few hours over the weekend, bumping up to 15 in the game's first beta on the PlayStation 5 console. is one of the best looking Call of Duty games to date.

I was impressed with the gameplay of the multiplayer, which will debut on October 28 alongside Modern Warfare II's single-player campaign. The core multiplayer gameplay, where six human players face off against six others in infantry combat, is solid.

You can see some of my multiplayer games in the videos embedded in this story. At first, I had real issues staying alive in the game, and I thought this year's title was different. But eventually, once I upgraded my weapon, I was able to even the score a bit.

We've yet to see some of the deeper gameplay enhancements like underwater combat or vehicular chase combat, but the next-gen graphics on the PS5 were quite vivid and detailed. And after figuring out what was causing my initial network issues (the PS5 forgets it has wired internet every now and then), I haven't seen a single instance where the boosted graphics made my machine crawl on the front of networking. Instead, it worked pretty well. I only had occasional crashes, but overall I was pretty happy with the game's network performance.

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Together with the revamped Gunsmith customization platform, this will give people plenty of reasons to upgrade their weapons for the debut of Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 on November 16th. The good thing about the Gunsmith is that you can mod it quickly and change a loadout during the very short amount of time between matches. One of the great things is that the time between matches is quite short. So this Call of Duty doesn't waste your time compared to previous titles.

I mainly played Domination and Team Deathmatch on three maps: Farm 18 in a classified location, Mercado Las Almas in Mexico, and Breenbergh Hotel in an evacuated downtown Amsterdam. I also played a few games of Hostage Rescue at the Valderas Museum in Spain, and at Breenbergh, as well as Knockout. In both of these modes, you get one life. But teammates can revive themselves.

For all of this beta testing, the game focused on basic in-game infantry combat with 6v6 battles.

I was repeatedly fooled by the decoy soldier, which quickly inflates and draws fire from other players, exposing their locations. If you hit the decoy, the air deflates and you have to wonder where the real shooter is.

Fortunately, with relatively weak weapons that haven't been upgraded, I never encountered the giant armored soldier you see in the trailers.

Everything in these levels was about infantry combat, so we didn't see any of the more complicated scenarios where you see stealth, amphibious assaults, AI, and vehicular warfare. I was able to slide and dive with the dolphins after a tactical sprint, but didn't see any coats. I was able to grab onto a ledge and peek over the edge before jumping over a wall. It's a useful mechanic.