Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | Controls Walkthrough Video

Many of the people that we work with enjoy playing first-person shooters, with Call of Duty being one of the games that we’re most commonly asked for help with playing. In this video we’ll be having a look at Modern Warfare, focusing on the controls and the input accessibility options that might be helpful. In this video we’ll be focusing on the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game,  in particular looking at the gamepad inputs, although the game does also allow you to use mouse and keyboard on console as well as on PC, which we will also briefly touch on.

To play the game fully using a gamepad it does require you to use both analogue sticks and multiple buttons. This requires combinations of button holding and button pressing.

If this is difficult there are options that might be helpful which we will have a look at a bit later on. To start with let’s have a look at the controls when using a gamepad. Modern Warfare controls in a similar way to previous Call of Duty games, although it does have a few new controls as well. The game has multiple controller layouts and we’ll have a quick look at these now. We just need to go to the Options: there are 12 button layouts and 6 stick layouts that could be worth having a look at.

Controls

So now we’ll have a look at some gameplay using the default controls. When using a gamepad to control menus you tend to use Left Stick, and A or B, or Cross and Circle on PlayStation, and both bumper buttons are also needed for some menus , or L1 and R1.

·       You’re generally going to use Left Stick for player movements.

·       You then use the right analogue stick to aim and control the camera.

·       To aim down sights you hold either Left Trigger or L2 on PlayStation and then you’d use the Right Stick to aim the gun.

·       To shoot you then press Right Trigger or R2.

·       If you hold down sights you can then aim with the Right Stick and then shoot.

·       When prompted you can press X or Square to reload but you can also reload any time once you’ve fired.

·       To swap weapons press Y or triangle.

·       To crouch you press B or Circle.

·       To go prone you hold B or Circle, and you can then move as well using left stick when in this position. You can also move when crouching and you just press the button again to go back to standing.

·       And it’s either A or Cross to jump.

·       In the game you also have tactical grenades. You use these by pressing either Left Bumper or L1. If you hold the button down you’ll cook the grenade before throwing it. Or you can just tap it to throw straight away. So if I hold it and then throw it with either Right Bumper or R1 you also get lethal equipment, so here we have a hand grenade – again I can hold it down and then throw it or I can just tap it to throw it straight away.

·       Whilst moving forwards with the left stick you can tap the stick in to click and you’ll start sprinting. If you then press either B or Circle when sprinting you’ll do a slide.

·       If you click the Right Stick in you’ll do a Melee. It’s worth noting that in this Call of Duty sometimes you’ll need to do more than one Melee to get the kill.

·       D-pad controls are specific to the mode that you’re playing , but for many of the modes that you’ll play the following will apply: so depending on the weapon you’re carrying but for many weapons pressing Left on the D-pad will change the firing mode, so on this gun as standard we’ll fire off multiple rounds, if I press left on the D-pad it will just fire a single round.

·       Up on the D-pad controls gestures. Hold Up on the D-pad move the Right Stick to what you would like to do and then just let go.

·       Right on the D-pad lets you look at the kill streaks that you’ve unlocked.

 There are also a few new controls that feature in this Call of Duty for a first time, which we’ll have a look at now.

·       For example if we double tap the left click in, then we’ll do a tactical sprint. You’ll only do this for a limited amount of time.

·       Another new control in Modern Warfare is the ability to reload whilst aiming down sights. So if I’m holding down left trigger or L2 to aim down sights, if I then fire, to reload I’d now press X or square on the controller and I can reload whilst still aiming.

·       In this Call of Duty you can also open and close doors. You can do this by holding down either X or square to open a door and then you can close doors as well. The other way to open doors if you want to do so quickly is just to sprint into them.

·       In Modern Warfare you can also mount walls and other things that you can hide behind that can give you some cover. So if you hold down Left Trigger or L2 to aim and then click Right Stick in to come out of that you could just let go of aiming and then move away with the stick.

Options

Looking in the Options menu you’ll see that there are multiple options and also controller layouts that might be helpful for you. The game does not allow you to create your own controller layout although you could use the PlayStation 4 Accessibility Options or the Xbox One Ease of Access options to allow you to do this, but this does not allow you to map by context.

If using mouse and keyboard you are able to remap individual actions and also some menu options within the game itself.

·       So one of the things you can do is invert the vertical look. So there are three options here. It’s automatically set to disabled, and there’s air planes only, which means that the camera movement on the vertical axis will be inverted when you’re in an aircraft. Or if you put it to enabled then it means that the vertical axis will always be inverted. So if I move the right analogue stick up now I’ll look down and if I pull it down I’ll look up.

·       There are also options for Sensitivity, so if you find that when you’re aiming you’re moving either too slowly or too quickly, then you can change that here. So there’s Horizontal Stick Sensitivity, Vertical Stick Sensitivity and also two options for Aim Down Sight Sensitivity. The Low Zoom one is for when looking down the sights of a standard gun and the High Zoom option is for when looking down a sniper rifle, for example. So the first thing we’ll have a look at is the Horizontal and Vertical Stick Sensitivity if we move it right down to the lowest sensitivity. And now if we move it all the way up to the highest. So on this highest sensitivity just a slight movement on the right stick makes you move really quickly.

·       You can also change the Aim Response Curve Type. By changing the Response Curve Type it’s possible to make the action more or less sensitive at different points on moving the joystick. For example, Linear will respond directly to the amount you move the joystick while Standard will accelerate towards the amount you have moved the joystick.

·       You can also change the Aim Assist Type. There are four different types of aim assists and these apply to both online, multi-player and also campaign modes. The Standard Aim Assist is on by default and essentially slows down your aiming once you’re near to a target. Precision means that there is a stronger aim slowdown but this will only kick in when you’re very close to a target; the developer suggests that this is best for players who are very accurate. The focusing option might be worth having a look at if you’re new to this type of game or new to analogue aiming , as the slowdown kicks in even when you’re missing the target.  You can also disable Aim Assist which turns Aim Assist off entirely.

·       You can also change the weapon mounting controls if you find that holding down left trigger or L2 and pressing right stick click or R3 is difficult to do at the same time. You can disable Weapon Mounting entirely if you’d rather not use it. You can also map it to Double Tap Aim Down Sights. This means that you would double tap left trigger, or L2, and if you’re near to an object then you would mount. The Aim Down Sights and press Melee is the standard control, so the one that we’ve already looked at, and you can also map it to Aim Down Sights only. This means that if you’re near to something that you can mount you just have to press the Left Trigger, or L2, and you will automatically weapon mount.

·       You can also change how you exit Weapon Mounting. So you can either have it set so that you let go of Left Trigger or L2 to exit Weapon Mounting or you can have it set so that when you move the Left Stick in a direction away from the object that you’ve mounted then you’ll also exit Weapon Mounting that way.

·       So as Standard to Aim Down Sights I hold down either Left Trigger or L2, but if I set this to Toggle I only need to tap the button and then to stop aiming I tap again.

·       So as Standard to throw equipment you either tap LB and RB or L1 or R1 depending on which control you are using. So if I wanted to throw a grenade I just have to tap this button, but if I want to cook it before throwing it currently I have to hold the button down and then let go when I’m ready. If holding that button down is difficult I can change it to Toggle. To throw this now I’ll just need to tap the button to start cooking it and then tap it again to throw it.

·       As the Reload and Use Item button is the same there are a few options that can help make it easier. The first option is tap to reload and hold to use. So currently, if I tap X or Square then I would reload the gun and then if I hold it down I’ll open the door. You can also swap this over so you could map it to Tap to use and Hold to reload. If I wanted to reload now I would have to hold the button down and if I want to open the door I just tap the button. The third option is Contextual Tap. This means that you only ever have to tap the button, so if you’re away from an object and press the button it will act as reload. If I’m near to an object that I can use, like opening a door, it will always prioritise using that item over reloading. With this option on you can also hold the button to reload if you prefer.

·       If holding down buttons is difficult then setting Aim Down Sight Behaviour to Toggle, Equipment Behaviour to Toggle and Use/Reload Behaviour to Contextual could be helpful.

·       There currently isn’t an option to help with shooting, which will require either multiple taps or button holding, depending on the weapon that you’re using and the situation that you’re in.

·       By default when you run out of ammo in one weapon the game will automatically swap to your other weapon. You can have this off if you prefer, which means that when you run out of ammo you’ll still keep that gun and to swap you would have to press either Y or Triangle. So here if I use up the last of the ammo in this weapon the game automatically swaps to the next weapon; but with this option disabled if I now run out of ammo, the game doesn’t swap gun, so in order to swap to the next weapon I need to press either Y or Triangle.

 There are also some options that you can look at to help with movement.

·       For example the first one is Slide Behaviour, so currently in order to slide I would be sprinting, and then I would hold down B or Circle in order to slide. I could map this so that instead I just have to tap B or Circle in order to slide.

·       Currently to walk forwards I press up on the left stick and I have to keep that held to keep moving. I can also enable the option for auto walking forwards, doing this means if I move the Left Stick forwards very quickly twice, now I’m just automatically walking forwards, and in order to stop I just pull the stick back.

·       There are also some options for automatic sprinting. This means that when I push the stick forwards, I start running straight away so there’s no need to click the last stick in. You can also have the control set to Automatic Tactical Sprints. This means that if you push the Left Stick forward you go straight to a tactical sprint. You can only ever tactical sprint for a limited time, so once this runs out you’ll then go into a normal sprint.

Mouse and keyboard options

If you’re going to be using mouse and keyboard to play Modern Warfare on console then you do get a few extra options that might be worth having a look at.

·       Slide Behaviour and Automatic Sprint are the same whether you’re using mouse and keyboard or a controller.

·       So we’ll start by having a look at Crouch Behaviour. So our Standard Crouch is set to Toggle, so you’d press to Crouch and press again to Exit. You can also map this to Hold, which means that you have to hold the Crouch button down and then let go to exit crouching. You can also set it to set it to Go To. This means that you press the button to Crouch and if you press it again then it doesn’t do anything.

·       There are also options for Prone Behaviour. So you can have it set to Toggle. So if you press the button once you go prone and press it again to stand back up. You can also have it set to hold so you’d hold the button down to go prone and when you let go you’d stand back up. You can also have it set to Go To. So if you press the button you’ll go to Prone. If you press that button again it won’t do anything. To stand back up you would have to have another button mapped to act to stand up.

Thank you for watching this video. If there’s anything that we can do to help, then please do get in touch.