A very strange comparison today, especially since both of these games should be close in spirit and content. We have Free League's reboot of Twilight:2000 using the year-zero engine, and Zoser's OGL Cepheus Engine (2d6 Traveller style) game of squad combat, Modern War.
Twilight: 2000
You are on your own now...
This is more a Year Zero, survival, resource management, and sandbox-focused game. We have lots of special dice, a map to traverse in any direction you choose (preferably west), and a really tight set of rules that covers everything you need to know to survive and deal with everything the game's random encounters throw your way.
The game feels like sort of a throwback game to the old Avalon Hill Outdoor Survival game. You are given a map of hexes, there are specific rules for how far you move and how encounters go, you expend resources; encounters and combat may expend more resources; you track your health, food, and water; and along the way you are offered roleplay opportunities where you make decisions and expand upon your interactions with the locals.
The game can be played solo with encounter tables, cards, resource tracking, and hex movement - and that is a part of the core design. If you used a GM emulator you can have a lot of fun here since the game supports solo play.
The game assumes World War III has come and gone, and the world is in that post-war phase where everyone is either trying to establish order, get home, get ahead, or just survive. So there is this huge depressing pall over the game where none of this was really necessary, the war was a waste, and the world is struggling to find food and water for the next day.
The timeline stops at the year 2000, and that will be important when comparing these games - especially if you want to use Modern War as a vehicle and weapon resource for this game, which I am highly tempted to do since it is an excellent guide. So all of the equipment in Twilight:2000 will be about a generation out of date compared to today, a lot of these systems are still in service, but there are weapons used in current warfare (drones are a huge one, but not in this book) that only came into service in the last 20 years that have changed the nature of warfare.
Modern War
Let's play army men!
Seriously, this game is like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on crack. You get so many cool toys to play with, a squad-based "adventuring party" fully loaded out with all sorts of guns and explosives, an action-packed military objective like something out of a World War II movie, and you are cut loose to cause mayhem and deal with everything that goes wrong.
You need to survive, but not in the same way. Surviving here means playing smart, saving ammo, using terrain, getting to the objective, and unloading so much hell on your target they turn into a smoking pile of charcoal. And then you need to get out alive. It is like an action movie where a squad of soldiers goes in to "do something" and they deal with tons of complications and problems along the way.
It is like the movie Predator without the Predator. You know, just the cool part at the beginning where the squad goes in and raises hell with the enemy soldiers? That.
The tone of this game is the complete opposite of Twilight: 2000. There is an active military command. World War III is not happening (or has not ended yet). You are a part of an active unit, and you are (hopefully) going home. You are given a mission with an insertion, objective, and extraction. You get to play with all sorts of cool toys.
You do not worry about long-term survival, planting wheat for the fall harvest, marauders, random hex encounters, or rebuilding the world when you get home. When you get home, another action-packed mission awaits!
You are a part of a squad of soldiers. You can play any part of the unit, or create a specialist (like a sniper or demo guy) and have them escort you to the mission location. You can play the machinegunner. Or just a rifleman. The radio guy. The medic. The unit commander. If you play with friends, you can each take one and let NPCs fill the rest.
I am a bit gung-ho, but you can play this seriously and be realistic if you want. If you were in the military you can use all your unit procedures. You can try and get in and out without firing a shot. If all you know are the movies, go to town.
Since the game was published in 2020, all of the gear is up to date. This is not really a great weapon reference for Twilight: 2000 since there is a ton of modern gear in here, many antitank and missile systems that rely on a generation of electronics ahead of Twilight: 2000, and systems that were only in development back then. Many of the vehicles here are in the world of Twilight: 2000, so it is a good resource if you know your dates and hardware, but then again, some of these vehicles were upgraded from 2000 to 2020 so the details probably won't be exactly right. If you are willing to overlook that and "modernize" your war a little to 2020, then you won't have a problem (but you will be doing a lot of conversions).
Great Games, Different Tones
Both of these are incredible games, and the only place where they come close is in production values (but Twilight: 2000 wins that fight with all the extras in the box and color art). The research and data in Modern Warfare is a joy to behold, and you may find yourself on Twitter looking at pictures of destroyed tanks and looking them up in the book.
Twilight: 2000 is more of a "gamers" game and less of a simulation. There are encounter cards, tables, and special dice. Your skills rank up with dice size. There are a lot of almost Euro-game design parts to this, and it all works. They minimize record-keeping and abstract a lot. It all works from a game rules perspective. It also works on a macro-campaign level, much like Forbidden Lands, where you level up, try to improve the world around you, and be a roving group of heroes.
Modern Warfare is a military sim, like the Arma 3 videogame but in pen-and-paper RPG form. It does not assume a destroyed world, and there is a command structure to give you your next mission. You can play almost like the old Squad Leader game did, with mini-scenarios and linked missions, and take control of that unit sent to knock out a bunker or take a house and rescue the VIPs hiding in the basement. You get to drive all the cool tanks and trucks. You get to fly the choppers or call in air or artillery support. You get to take out the terrorist leader and raid his hideout. You get to rescue the downed pilot.
Both of them are incredibly fun, and both can coexist side-by-side. If you are interested in one, I would instantly recommend the other. And they complement each other because the technical, unit, country, weapon, vehicle, and order of battle information in Modern Warfare would be things that Twilight: 2000 would know.
Modern Warfare characters may want to know what is waiting for them should the world go to hell, or at least have that opportunity to play without a command structure and decide what type of hero you would be given complete freedom in a destroyed world.
Both of these have my highest recommendation, great games for different reasons.
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