Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II & Warzone Season 6 impressions — Fortified for the final assault

As we all know, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is almost here. In fact, it’s so close I actually thought Season 5 was the end. That said, I didn’t have a lot of hope for what might arrive in Season 6. Instead, The Haunting is a huge undertaking, bringing back a fan favorite and loading it with a bevy of new skins and cool stuff. My only qualm: Launch isn’t much to speak of. With quite a bit held back due to The Haunting event, and the Call of Duty beta starting this weekend, what we have here is short and sweet.

More or less, Season 6 has started with two new guns and four new maps, divided into Gunfight and 6v6 variants. Of course there is also the battle pass, which looks packed compared to other seasons. Even with this small of a beginning, the drop follows previous Call of Dutys, with the best being saved for last.

Starting with the maps, we have two small to medium ones in La Casa and Koro Village. Both of these are extremely pleasing aesthetically, and I’m also surprised at how well both flow. Koro Village is the only one that’s a bit odd (and I’ll explain that in a moment), but it’s nice to see yet another old map (this time from Call of Duty 2) get another chance at the spotlight.

Continuing with Koro Village, this is a classic three lane map in its basic design. It works well for anyone, with several flanking lanes for submachine guns, power positions for assault rifles and light machine guns, and long sightlines for snipers. You really can do it all on this map.

Where it’s odd is in the buildings of this map. I don’t mind some of the ones you can go through, it opens up the flanking lanes, but there are almost too many random headys that are godlike on Koro Village. There are some stairs that go to small porches on the outskirts of several spots, and those allow players to set up and become almost immortal. The same can occur on top of some of the buildings, there are more head glitches that give vertical players a huge advantage. I’m not upset; in fact, I was going on crazy sprees using them, but it’s a little rough if someone decides to camp at that spot.

Also, there’s a random porch near the middle of the map you can hide in that shouldn’t be there, especially since you can’t go into the building. It’s easy to cheese and punctuates the issues of this map, even if Koro Village is largely good. Oh, and spawns are really rough. I don’t get how this is still a problem when we’re at the end of this game and especially with this map being a remake.

La Casa is super neat in that it follows more of a two lane design (although there’s kind of a third lane that’s super small in the middle). It’s a tighter map, made up of a mansion and the estate it resides on. While it definitely skews towards a Shoot House size, La Casa flows well, with less filler areas and good spaces to run around. As with Koro Village, it’s another one you can use almost anything on, with positions for every gun in the game to be useful. That said, you’ll probably run into more shotguns and SMGs here than snipers, even with a few great spots to pull out the boomstick.

Gunfight is still rolling in Modern Warfare II, although it did take forever to get into matches. After our wait, editor Noah Rigsby and I dropped into the two new maps, King and Fight. King is the one you’ll remember most, given its popularity in Modern Warfare 2019 and presence in COD Mobile. It’s simply a great Gunfight map, with multiple lanes, great verticality that doesn’t supersede your flanking routes, and a fun warehouse aesthetic.

Fight is also familiar, but more in being what I’d imagine Shoot House as a Gunfight map is. This one is similar to King; it’s vertical without being overbearing, and has plenty of great routes and cover. Anytime you can spawn and not feel like you’re at a disadvantage given the side of the map you’re on, it’s well designed. Kudos to Gunfight for being consistently the best supported mode in Modern Warfare II.

As for weaponry, Season 6 also drops two of the best weapons we’ve gotten so far. While I don’t want every season to be this way, or for the meta to completely change, it’s nice when the newest additions to your arsenal are actually useful. Both the TR-76 Geist assault rifle and the Iso 9-mm feel great, and even though we probably have too many SMGs and ARs at this point, they’re worth using.

The TR-76 Geist is a bullpup rifle, and sounds and fires similarly to the FR Avancer that was released last season. While you might wonder why we’d get two of the exact same thing, this one does feel a bit different, and looks like the RAM-7 from Modern Warfare 2019. I usually don’t like these kinds of weapons at all, but the Geist is surprisingly OP. It still has a bit of the bouncy recoil that most bullpups do, but it’s more vertical than horizontal. This allows you to control it more easily, and the damage rate is awesome, killing in three to four shots consistently. It’s one I highly recommend at this point, a killer weapon out the gate.

Continuing on with the Iso-9mm, this is finally an Iso I feel comfortable with. After the Hemlock AR and 45 SMG, the 9mm finally nails the feel of the fast SMG I remember from Modern Warfare 2019. Not only can you move around the map at fiendish speeds, it’s a laser, with extremely low recoil. It is very much an SMG, requiring quite a few bullets to kill and isn’t great at long range, but that’s exactly what I want from an SMG. The easiest comparable weapons are the Fennec and PDSW 528 (P90), just without the ridiculous recoil that they employ.

Putting money into the battle pass has been hit or miss so far in Modern Warfare II, but Season 6 certainly goes out with a bang. It certainly helps when Halloween is around the corner, so there’s a lot of pizzazz that can be injected through collaborations. Beyond the normal stuff like COD points and XP boosts, there is a lot to like here.

Both of the new weapons have killer blueprints that are already set up nearly perfect. There are a ton of new operator skins and they aren’t just plain Jane, they are insane, with a creepy clown and the grotesque Violator skins as highlights. They don’t headline the skins though, with Spawn showing up. He even has voice lines from Keith David! It’s a great finale overall, and the BlackCell variants look amazing along with Valerias amazing exclusive skin.

You don’t always get to end things bigger than ever, but Season 6’s The Haunting is lighting the match. Whether the dynamite of The Hauntings mid-season explodes or fizzes is up to the teams behind it, but it’s definitely easier to succeed when you come out swinging.

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