Missions // The campaign
Sixteen missions, four acts
The campaign opens on a rental house in Connecticut where a Russian cell is holding a family, and the trail it leaves takes you from the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan, then on through Mexico and Syria into Ukraine and the Arctic, until it finishes at the Nevada Test Site.
01 // How it plays
In order, with your squad
Walk up to the mission laptop in the lobby and press F to open the Ops Menu, where the campaign has its own page. Missions open up one at a time as you finish them, and it's the host's progress that counts, so the whole squad moves through the story together.
The story sets which force you're fighting and how many of them are on the map, and every campaign mission is played on Realistic. Each briefing gives you the area of operations and a recommended loadout, and each debrief hands you the lead that takes you to the next mission.
Your objectives are marked on screen as you work through them, and a mission is over once the whole team is standing on the exfil.
Act I
They have our names
Clean House
A Russian cell has taken a soldier's wife and her parents into the basement of a rental house across the street, and the FBI has called you in to bring them out.
Dark Waters
A freighter at anchor is holding three engineers along with a drive that belongs to a man called Lazar, and you're going aboard for both.
Forwarding Address
Hrytsenko runs his business out of a crate yard in Batumi, and you're there to kill him and bring back his log book.
Rail Freight
Two Strela launchers and a crate of missiles are waiting in the rail yard at Lori, and you're going in to destroy every piece of it.
Act II
The price
Zeroize
A patrol was ambushed with its encryption unit still aboard, and you need to get to it and hold the ground around it until it's been wiped clean.
Street Price
Farid is stuck in his flat in Kabul, and it's on you to get him to the edge of the district alive.
Compound Interest
Sabir is planning something from his compound in Logar, and you're going in to kill him and carry his plans home.
QRF
COP Cobra is under attack, and you're the quick reaction force sent in to hold it until the radio is back up.
Operation Red Wings
HAWK went off the net yesterday somewhere up the mountain, and you're going up after them to bring them home.
Act III
Follow the money
Cash and Carry
A truck is about to leave a depot in Sinaloa for El Paso, and you have to stop it before it goes and take their routes and numbers with you.
Heist
Box 1313 in the vault of a Westyork bank holds Harland's ledger, and you're going in to open it.
Return Address
Ostrog's paymaster works out of a compound in Deir ez-Zor, and taking him down is how you find out where Harland has gone.
Act IV
Off the books
River Crossing
You're after a CIA phone and a commander's papers at a crossing in Luhansk, and the Strela on the riverbank has to go as well.
Zvilnennia
Ostrog's soldiers hold the village of Zarichne, and your job is to take it back from all 45 of them without letting a single one get away.
Polar Plunge
You swim in to Station 9 to destroy its servers and its Strela, and Kalinov is waiting there for you.
Little Rocket Man
Harland has the last copy of the roster and a buyer lined up for it, and you have to stop him in the desert before the sale goes through.
02 // Our maps
Six maps we built
Most of the campaign plays out on the game's own maps, and six of its stops are maps we made for it. Their data downloads once with your first install, and you'll find our operations on them under DUKE'S OPS on the Cerberus laptop.
Operation Red Wings
A river valley that runs down to a mountain lake, with five camps along the water and a Black Hawk to rope you onto the hill above them.
Heist
A bank in the middle of the city with a police cordon outside and the vault downstairs, and it's one of the two maps Zombies is played on.
Boneyard
A maze of catacombs lit by moving flames, and the second of the two Zombies maps.
Zvilnennia
The village of Zarichne, forty kilometres north-west of the river crossing, with roads to come in along and a Chinook to lift you out once it's clear.
Polar Plunge
A forward base on a frozen coast with a two-storey command block, a tent line, a container yard and a helipad, and you reach it by swimming in from the sea.
Little Rocket Man
Two houses across a yard and a fence line, standing on ground that was laid out to be flattened by a bomb.
03 // Playing together
Co-op runs on the host's machine, so everyone in the lobby needs the same pack version as the host. Start the launcher and let it finish updating before you host, and compare the number at the top of the window if something looks different for one of you.