The best thing about 2019’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot was a brand new 2v2 mode called Gunfight. Players would pair off with predetermined loadouts that shifted every two rounds. Everyone played with the same guns. Nobody had Killstreaks or Field Upgrades. If I had a frag grenade, so did my enemy.
The maps were small, often smaller than Shipment—though Shipment was one of them—and rounds were fast. You either killed the enemy team or captured the flag or ended the round with the most health to win. The first team to win six rounds won the match. It was brilliant in its simplicity and created one of the most level playing fields in Call Of Duty history since you didn’t get to choose your loadout or get bonus kills from Killstreaks.
Treyarch kept the mode in Black Ops Cold War and added what has been arguably its best new feature: Gunfight Tournament. Teams would compete across a bracket similar to the semifinals of a sports tournament. Eight teams would start four matches on one side of the bracket and eight on the other. Each winning team would move forward in the tournament to play the next team until only one team from each side remained to duke it out in the finals.
In Call Of Duty: Vanguard, Sledgehammer ditched Gunfight for Champion’s Hill, which was an okay mode but not as fun as Gunfight, which returned in the following year’s Modern Warfare II, though not at launch. Eventually, lots of maps were available in that game’s Gunfight, though only a few made the leap to Modern Warfare III.
In Modern Warfare III’s first season a new twist on Gunfight was introduced. Team Gunfight pits teams of 6 against one another on full-sized maps. The same rules apply. Forced loadouts, no killstreaks or field upgrades, last team standing / flag capture / most health wins. First team to six rounds wins match. It’s terrific fun, especially if you can get a full team of six.
It should be a permanent mode and part of the Quickplay playlist going forward. It appears the mode is going away with Season 2 this week, replaced by Team Gun Game, which also sounds fun. But there’s no reason to keep this or other modes like HQ out of the Quickplay rotation. It adds a fun no-respawn mode that isn’t Search & Destroy (which I love, but which feels awfully lonely in this game). I’d love to see Prisoner Rescue return as well.
Several other thoughts:
- Gunfight could be vastly expanded if there were permanent 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 modes. Why not? Let players pick their squad size!
- Please, Sledgehammer if you’re reading this, can you just port over all the Gunfight maps from the previous games??? There are so many great maps from MW 2019 and MWII and we’re stuck with just a handful in MWIII when it’s obvious this would be an easy port given the regularly occurring MWII Moshpit playlist. We just barely got a MW 2019 map in MWII before this game came out. Now it’s gone! Can’t you just do this for me as a favor since you love me?
- We really need Gunfight Tournament to return. I know this was a Black Ops thing, but it would work great here as well. I’d love to see a Team Gunfight Tournament, even if it was just teams of 4.
Gunfight is such a great game and I feel like Call Of Duty has just let it grow stale when it could be so much more.
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