9 Reasons The Odds Were Stacked Against Titanfall 2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare boasts one of the greatest FPS campaigns ever created. Together with Modern Warfare 2, it marked Infinity Ward out as one of the genre’s top tier developers – and it helped to set a quality bar which none of the other studios working on the series have ever managed to reach.

Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and the version of Infinity Ward which remains have all produced work which is mechanically solid. By iterating on the series’ perennially solid multiplayer foundations, and adding some of their own twists, they have maintained CoD’s place as Activision’s great annual cash cow. But they have never made a world class campaign.

So while familiarity may have dulled the impact of CoD's multiplayer for some, the allure of a great CoD solo experience remains elusively high – and that appeal has only increased as the series’ singleplayer highs have receded further into the past.

Activision knows it, and it's why the remaster of Modern Warfare is so perfectly timed. If the publisher’s current flock of developers can’t recapture CoD’s heyday, then why not just copy and paste the heyday itself – plus a heavy coat of 2016 varnish, of course. For any solo players upset with the quality of modern day CoD, the reason to defect to Titanfall becomes a lot less compelling.

When Michael Jackson released Bad, he didn’t have to go head to head with a remastered version of Thriller. Respawn, however, are in direct competition with their own greatest hit.