Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's first beta access session is now up and running, allowing players to experiment with the game's new and improved selection of firearms, and YouTuber Venom Magnus is showing them all off in one of their videos. Being a flagship FPS franchise, modern Call of Duty takes particular care of how its many weapons are depicted and used, and it seems that Modern Warfare 2 is going to outdo all its predecessors in this respect.
As Venom Magnus has shown in their latest video, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's weapon handling doesn't leave much to be desired. The game builds upon its 2019 predecessor by making the firearms even more detailed, customizable, and satisfying to use, with reloading and inspection animations showing them off in substantial detail.
While much is already known about Modern Warfare 2's Gunsmith 2.0 upgrades, it wasn't until the ongoing PlayStation beta that players could actually see for themselves how the weapons behave in action. The beta only offers access to a select few weapon platforms at this time, such as the M4 (Armalite) and Lachmann (H&K roller delayed blowback), but that's still plenty enough to get a sense of how much depth and detail the game will provide upon launch. As the video shows, Infinity Ward's work is immaculately detailed and finely tuned, offering even some unexpectedly smooth firearm-switching animations.
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that different magazines have different inspect and reload animations, and since weapons share platform attachments in Modern Warfare 2, this suggests a truly impressive number of unique animations for each one of the available weapon platforms and subtypes. The specific number of available weapons in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is currently unknown, though Venom Magnus counts 17 variants in total that are available at this time.
As is usually the case, players can customize their favorite weapons to a substantial extent. One Modern Warfare 2 player created the MP5K as soon as they unlocked all the necessary attachments, for example. It is, however, worth pointing out that Infinity Ward has almost entirely foregone real-world naming systems this time around. In fact, while each weapon is fully recognizable and follows its real-world counterpart's design rather well, it also stands out as a deliberately fictionalized creation.
The long-awaited Modern Warfare 2 beta is on PlayStation first, with it running over the course of this weekend, until September 18. PC and Xbox gamers, on the other hand, will have an opportunity to see all the game's weapon handling animations themselves next weekend, from September 22 to September 24. The beta offers limited access to the game's content and features, but should give everyone a good idea of how it all behaves in action.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launches on October 28 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
