20 Remakes and Remasters That Are Worse Than The Original

For so many of us, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the game that changed it all. Building on the characters and story of the first Modern Warfare, this title branched out with Infinity Ward’s 4.0 game engine, a bigger, better online multiplayer, a frankly spectacular narrative full of twists and turns, and all the coop goodies we could hope for.

This is the game that set the template for the CoD game as we know it, and dominated the first-person shooter scene, while courting just enough controversy (gunning down airport civilians in the “No Russian” level, anyone?) to boost its notoriety without getting an all-out ban. And the hours we sunk into it. So modern CoD developer Beenox being put in charge of the 2020 remaster, on a more advanced version of the engine used for Advanced Warfare, seemed like an easy win. And yet.

While the remastered campaign is a solid effort, and a definite update from the original, this is all they delivered. No multiplayer. No Spec Ops. These were the two features that made Modern Warfare 2 really stand out in its original iteration, providing a game that still feels impressively expansive, especially when the story is one of the first that offered reduced playtime (heading toward subsequent titles that could be completed in four-to-six hours). Without these play modes, it is literally half the game it used to be.