There are moments where I sort of think I like this, but right now I really don't think I'm going to buy it. It feels like a game where the design team are basically having a massive internal row that is pulling the game in completely contradictory directions, and in the end the row has been won by those who are terrified of losing the (ever smaller) audience that Call of Duty has rather than winning new people.
This feels like an engine, and you feel this in gunfight most profoundly, that would be a great upgrade for Rainbow Six Siege. The fundamental feel of controlling the character and the weapons in this game is superb. What they've actually done with that is extremely disappointing.
The time to kill is a real issue. It's lightning fast to the point where "Who sees first wins" is truer now than it has ever been. If you have a good idea that someone is about to appear around a given corner you will win almost every time and they'll have no chance of responding. I don't personally mind the damage the guns do, it's the lack of recoil on a lot of the guns that feels so problematic. It's hard to know how much of this is one or two out-of-whack guns, but historically Call of Duty developers have been extremely bad at balancing such cases (right back to the M16 in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare). There is no reason to believe that the TTK will be addressed.
The rapid TTK is particularly problematic because of the map design. Pretty much wherever you go in this game you can be seen from an enormous range of places that are often way beyond the edges of your field of view. This has entrenched a situation where moving through the maps (for example to complete objectives) is extremely dangerous and you'll almost always be better served waiting for enemies rather than looking for them. The maps are too round and too complicated. They are in no way preferable to the maligned 'three lane' structure which, done well, allows you to move through areas of the map with relative confidence that you can predict where danger will come from. Not being able to do so in a game where death comes so rapidly is gamebreaking, and not for the first time you have to wonder if the map designers were really in-tune with the mechanics designers (clearly a problem with BO4 which was designed around higher mobility than the game shipped with).
That brings me to the radar/uav/ghost/compass situation. While it's easy to raise an eyebrow at IW's decision to fold to the complaints so quickly about the lack of radar, I think the game probably does play better with it than without it. Knowing where one's teammates are is quite important in this game, both for determining which footsteps to fear and which to ignore, and also for getting some kind of idea where enemies are.
The UAV situation I am less okay with. In a game where killing is this damned quick, knowing where your enemies are is a gigantic boon. It felt like a relatively subtle advantage in a game where shooting would also put you on the radar as the UAV primarily picked up the positions of those using silencers, but now the UAV gives you a huge advantage against anyone not using ghost. Of course the problem is even more profound because they've added what is effectively a personal UAV in the shape of 'Personal Radar' which can be got with just three kills (two with hardline), meaning that an individual can have some kind of coverage almost round the clock. In much the same way that the UAV has got stronger, ghost has also got stronger as it is now the one thing you need to stay off radar (whereas in every previous game you also had to use a silencer and sacrifice significant amounts of killing power). The proportion of people using ghost right now is absolutely through the roof and it makes a mockery of it even being a perk choice - it's so obviously better than all of the alternatives at this point.
I think it's worth remembering just how far this situation has moved from where it was with the original Modern Warfare which had a smartly designed balance around the radar, silencers, UAVs and UAV Jammer. To be stealthy in Call of Duty 4 you had to take a silencer (significantly reduced your damage output) and UAV Jammer (preventing you from picking stopping power or juggernaut). Playing stealthy was absolutely an option in that game, but you did it knowing that you had to use the element of surprise to win fights because you would take at least an extra bullet to kill due to the lack of SP and even more if you were fighting at range because of the silencer. The setup in this Modern Warfare is quite different, because don't need a silencer to stay off radar and because there are no powerful Perk 2s that you'll miss having when you take Ghost. The whole situation with the radar/ghost/uav needs serious rethinking, and it's a shame that they have actually tried to rethink it and come up with something that is so blatantly inferior to the solution IW came up with twelve years ago. Call of Duty 4 is a game where a range of different playstyles were absolutely supported from patient assault to frenetic run and gun to tactical stealth to genuine sniping. This game supports nothing like that diversity.
In terms of what they can realistically do for this game's launch, I do think they should keep the permanent minimap. I would also suggest that they increase the kill requirements for Personal Radar and UAV to make them rarer to reflect how valuable they are (I'd be content if UAVs couldn't be shot down to make up for this). Ghost needs to be removed in its current state as it's completely unbalanced and I can't really see how you would balance it against any of the other perk sets. I think I'd suggest them making Ghost a Field Upgrade, combining it with Dead Silence, but giving it a slower cooldown. I think ultimately I would like to see them try move away from the radar/UAV dichotomy that has ruled Call of Duty forever, but the way to go with that must be via a ping based system like that in BF/Apex/R6.
There are other issues too that really disappoint me. I'm extremely frustrated that they haven't put in measures to weaken jump-firing as it makes a total mockery of the more realistic/tactical Call of Duty they seem to be trying to create. I'm also frustrated that they are unwilling to reduce the viability of no-scoping and quick-scoping for much the same reason. It's a real shame that the developers feel unable to stand up to these tiny sects of their community who adore abusing the franchise's longterm flaws.
Ground War is a bizarre experience initially, as it feels so weird to play something that is so obviously evoking Battlefield with the actual feel of Call of Duty. Once you get over that initial shock though it's a seriously ill-conceived mode. The Battlefield franchise has struggled historically with a variety of problems which marr the epic concept and Call of Duty suffers tragically from every one of those issues. The only positive here is that the game does seem to be able to manage really large numbers in small spaces, which should be a good sign for future Battle Royale modes.
As for other game modes, Gunfight is the only part of this game that I really truly like, particularly the OSP variant. It's a shame that the rest of the game doesn't evoke how tense and down to earth this feels, but it's a startling picture of what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare could have been if they had the strength of will to peel back the layers of complexity that clutter and imbalance the franchise.
The objective based modes are hammered by the lack of interest most users have in playing the objective, and the choice to go with killstreaks rather than scorestreaks is an obvious part of the problem. To be honest I think more people should question the 'streak' part of the whole thing too. As much as the concept of the killstreak was exciting in Call of Duty 4, objective modes will always suffer so long as you put a massive premium on survival and that is true even if you allow objective points to contribute. I'd like to see a system based on score where you lose points but not all of them on death. Right now the reality is that as fun as killstreaks can be, the overall effect on Call of Duty of this mechanic is a net negative. That's without going into how fucking unpleasant it is playing against a lot of the higher end killstreaks which are extremely proficient at abusing the spawns. Dying only to be killed instantly by a cruise missile or helicopter gunship or what have you is terrible game design and totally unavoidable on several of these maps.
With a better spawning system, TDM and Dom will probably be okay.
HQ is probably the best playing of the main modes right now.
Cyber Attack feels far too oriented around people sitting back and waiting for people to come to them. There just isn't the intelligence of design here to support engaging attack v defence. Once again the selfishness is a huge problem - I have literally not been revived in five games. Doesn't help that the game gives you a paltry 50 points for reviving, but it's completely in line with this game's design which is filled with objective modes and no incentives for playing the objectives whatsoever.
Finally I just have to rage about the spawns. As a game developer I find it incredibly hard to understand how Call of Duty continues to flounder in this area. It's not that spawning is a simple thing to get right by any means but they've been at this for over a decade and it is getting worse not better. The map design is a major contributing factor and it really feels like the developers need to take a step back and figure out what the necessary components of map design are to support fair spawning. I'd say the general components are pretty clear:
Maps need to have two distinct ends so that broadly speaking one team is spawning from each
It cannot be easy to get from one end to the other without major resistance
The spawn itself needs to be further back than the 'end, and certainly further back than any objective locations
The spawn should feature cover such that you can't simply be slaughtered by killstreaks
Beyond this the developers need to stop trying to design a spawning system which intentionally puts you close to danger.
....
This has ended up being really long, but I guess that's indicative of my passion for this franchise and for some of what they are trying to do here. I've had some fun, and that's more than I can say for several recent Call of Duty games, but as soft reboots go this is extremely underwhelming. They seem to have improved on about a quarter of the major problems with the franchise, and that's nowhere near enough. On undertaking this game they should have questioned every part of the modern Call of Duty game and decided whether it actually benefits the game or not. That might have lead to a truly great Call of Duty game for the first time in a decade. Instead they've changed the engine and left the chassis and as much as I enjoy the engine changes, they've don't nearly make up for all the rotten design decisions that have piled up on this franchise over the years.