Infinity Ward decided to tackle and replicate the gameplay of one of the most excruciating games of today’s world, Escape From Tarkov. On Wednesday, the developer of Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward, provided the first glimpse of the DMZ extraction-based game mode. A hype meltdown was triggered shortly after, which somewhat speaks for its success already.
A year ago, EA tried to release a similar extraction-based game mode in Battlefield 2042, Hazard Zone. A colossal failure that made the developer give up on it completely. I am not here to compare, but if you ask me, today’s Modern Warfare 2’s DMZ reveal was nothing else but Hazard Zone on steroids and overturned AI. Whoever pitched this as a Tarkov-like game mode made a huge mistake, as it is nowhere near. It actually looks more like Warzone 2.0 based on the player capacity.
Expectations…
My expectations were leaning towards slow-paced, hardcore gameplay, where awareness is key to success. I wasn’t anticipating an arcade shooter where you are running around out of boredom. I also expected severe consequences for each disastrous failure. Instead, players can just hop back in with a default loadout and no major penalties. It’s way out of the hardcore standards.
Another thing that would impact this writing is that there’s literally no progression behind it. People want to build wealthy inventories and brag about it, deck up their favorite and most powerful weapons, and obliterate other human players in raids. This is where DMZ is falling short, besides the fact that it is a free-to-play game mode. There’s no reason to go in a raid if you’re there just to have fun, again.
I doubt anyone will try to get close to what Battlestate Games has done over the past couple of years. Even if 10 AAA studious engage together in an attempt to get there, I doubt they’ll succeed. The gunsmith feature will be the first obstacle as it requires a lot of dedication, and we haven’t seen a developer adopting similar weapon tuning options with tons of customizations available at player’s hands. Escape From Tarkov’s complexity has so far proven to be unreachable.
All we can do is just agree that Modern Warfare 2’s DMZ is a fun game mode to play and will surely attract the majority of players during its early days. No other qualities can be seen as viable to sustain a robust player base, and it will probably wither as time goes by. On the contrary, Warzone 2.0 looks quite pristine, and I am looking forward to indulging myself into some Battle Royale game mode.
