Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 receives a detailed review.

Background: The Series Before Modern Warfare 4

It is easy to dislike Call of Duty. Over the past 22 years, its identity has been shaped by an annual cycle of development, marketing, and controversy, and the series has become an integral part of how video games prop up the military-industrial complex. Some stories, especially 2025's Black Ops 7, have deteriorated into science-fiction absurdity. Many narratives in the Modern Warfare subseries are more grounded in reality. When players take on semi-fictional UK and US troopers in illegal operations in foreign territory and wantonly execute people over differences in ideology, the game can feel gross: paper-thin propaganda designed to glorify war and reinforce lines between 'them' and 'us'.

Modern Warfare 4 shies away from this a little. The bar is low, but there is a slightly more humanitarian slant. In 2009, No Russian planted players in the shoes of the enemy. This year, a few missions do something similar and ask for moral choices that the reviewer found shocking to see in a Call of Duty game.

The series had already built a timeline of shocks. In 2019, developer Infinity Ward asked what would happen if there was a terrorist attack on the streets of London. In 2022, the studio pondered what happens when a coordinated international military operation goes awry on a Mexican oil rig. In 2023, it moved the lens to Lower Manhattan as the Russian army staged an attack on the New York Stock Exchange.

Development: A New Campaign Lens

Modern Warfare 4 moves the lens again by making the player a North Korean militiaman. If the player refuses orders, the character is summarily shot, and the rest of the mission plays out in front of the lifeless corpse. There is no game over state for not complying: the horrors carried out by the ruthless regime continue even in the face of the player's refusal. It might use baby speak by literary standards, but the source suggests Call of Duty is trying to make a point.

That message has landed beyond the game. Just this week, a South Korean politician urged the country's president to play Modern Warfare 4, so striking is its depiction of a theorised North Korean assault on the nation. The reviewer also calls the developers' inclusion of real disaster footage an even more regrettable gaffe, while noting that a country's population is not its leadership. North Korean threats and bluster have filled the news for many years, and Infinity Ward wanted to tell a story 'ripped from the headlines'.

The result is a slightly more reactive setup. A militarised nation responds to an invasion rather than instigates one, which gives the campaign a sense of urgency and speculation. The reviewer finds that more agreeable than another shadowy skirmish in the Middle East, or an insurgency in some proxy state secretly controlled by Russia.

The campaign flips back and forth between John Price, an ex-Special Air Service hard bastard followed since 2007, and a ragtag bunch of conscripted South Korean soldiers and US Marine allies who find themselves in the middle of a brutal, casualty-heavy North Korean invasion. Here, the reviewer sees Call of Duty campaign design at its finest.

There is a rousing John Wick-inspired shootout in a club that evolves into a parkour dash across Manhattan rooftops. There is a cinematic and genuinely impressive shooting-gallery-like encounter in a trainyard that evokes classic arcade lightgun design. There is an expansive open world area that toys with stealth and sniping, a car chase through the streets of Paris, and a beachhead assault that ties it all together.

The standout mission is Stranded, which places the South Korean team deep in enemy territory, fighting for their lives. It introduces crafting for a few missions. That could feel tacked on and rote, but Infinity Ward uses it as a lever to show how important each tool is. Want a thermal scope? Then you prioritise that over more munitions. Want explosives? Then your basic arms suffer. The point is to emphasise how well every aspect of the Modern Warfare toolkit complements the others, creating a rich, deep, interlocking design that makes older Call of Duty games look rudimentary by comparison.

Another setpiece, Traffic, puts the player on a breakneck chase through the streets of Paris, a romp the reviewer jokes will cost the Parisian treasury millions in collateral damage. It also shows the breadth and depth of the enemy AI, which likely went hand-in-hand with the new DMZ mode. The engine is pushed through destruction, cover mechanics, and many different kinds of visual effect all rushing on screen at once. The reviewer calls it overwhelming, intimidating, electrifying, and peak Call of Duty.

Between the standout missions, the game asks players to consider what it is like for the pawns on the board: the other soldiers, the unnamed, those whose strings are being pulled by forces they do not understand. The reviewer likens this to a bit of Fisher-Price, a bit of Advanced-Level, and a 'War is Bad' pin badge worn on a jacket from an Army Surplus store. Still, the reviewer would rather see this than a completely unobserved 'ooh-rah!' story about the US army coming to the rescue again.

Spoiler warning: campaign turn and Price's arc

The downside of the campaign comes more from its setup and pacing than from its content. Price's story wraps up without much applause. The reviewer avoids specific spoilers here, but his actions to quash the machinations of a very oddly-implemented Mads Mikkelsen are left in the dark to rot, while the desperate resistance of the South Korean recruits takes the spotlight.

The source suggests Call of Duty may be trying to say something: that morally ambiguous, collateral-damage-accumulating actions by one desperate operative who actually saved the world do not get to breathe in the daylight. Instead, the courageous defence of privates on the frontline should be lauded. War is messy, no one is in the right, and everyone loses except the multinationals putting hardware in the hands of humans.

Whatever the emotional impact, the physical one is clear: this is a tight eight-hour campaign with moments up there with Modern Warfare's best. It stops before it ever risks getting overlong. It has plenty of new ideas to throw at the player. Played on the hardest mode, it becomes a tight puzzle box of encounter design, as obsessed with detail as it is with Michael Bay-esque spectacle. The reviewer calls it a far cry from whatever was going on in Black Ops 7 last year.

Latest Progress: Launch-Week Multiplayer and Balancing

After the campaign, the reviewer turned to multiplayer, a mode refined into its near-perfect form: an ultra-fast, turbo-injected mosh pit of quick scopes, slide cancels, and kill corridors. Map design is great, of course, because it is Infinity Ward, and the gunplay is as good as it ever has been in the Modern Warfare games.

Since 2019, when Infinity Ward went to great expense to rebuild its engine, the Call of Duty experience has been luxurious. The sound design alone is worthy of applause: every clack of a bolt-action lever, every shell casing falling to the floor, every fizz of thermite boring through cover is immediately identifiable and extremely important. To play Modern Warfare 4 without a decent set of headphones or a good surround sound setup is to intentionally handicap yourself.

There are still qualms. Some respawn mechanics are vexing, especially on quicker, gnarlier maps. This week's addition of Shipment is called a hilariously bad example of that problem. Some weapon balancing has also yet to be totally calmed down, partly because of a last-minute change to weapon damage that extends the time-to-kill beyond Infinity Ward's usual fare.

For early adopters, that creates a bit of chaos. The reviewer also sees it as evidence of the nuance Infinity Ward has to play with, imagining the backend knobs and dials the studio uses to tweak and balance guns as players adapt. The slightly lower time-to-kill is described as a fascinating experiment in figuring out what Modern Warfare is beyond its selection of guns. The reviewer would happily accept odd balancing for a deeper, more intricate damage system.

The customisation system works nicely here. With the right attachments, some guns move from useful to essential. The ISO Nightshade SMG seems a bit busted right now, and the reviewer keeps getting chewed up by suspiciously powerful one-two taps of the Type 73 LMG. As a self-described born sharpshooter, the reviewer picks the Oris 8.6 as an early favourite for popping heads across the map, especially dressed up with a 2.1x scope and thermal image.

The overall economy of guns and range-versus-power feels a bit off as it stands, and the reviewer says it is quite literally being addressed while writing. That friction is also part of playing multiplayer in launch week. The material lists a trailer, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 - Official Accolades Trailer, available to watch on YouTube, and credits Activision Blizzard for an image.

Kill Block and DMZ: The Evolving Post-Launch Systems

Then there is Kill Block, an experimental and dynamic rotating multiplayer map and mode concept. Its pitch is absurd: using a selection of slabs, it can form 500+ unique combinations of map, meaning no match plays out quite like the last.

Call of Duty maps are famously defined by sight lines. If you stand here, you can shoot someone there. If you camp this corner, you will rack up kills. If you snipe on this lane, you will collect greenhorn scalps a-plenty. Kill Block turns all of that on its head, forcing players to be more reactive and engage more with the systems on offer in Modern Warfare 4 rather than rely on instincts baked in from two-plus decades of Call of Duty.

With the promise of more modular elements to come, including fan-favourite maps like Crash, the reviewer sees this mode and setup becoming another staple in the ever-expanding Call of Duty canon. It is presented as a way to breathe life into competitive-focused modes that often fail to shine alongside respawn-focused experiences like Team Deathmatch.

The reviewer also praises the complexity and wizardry of how the guns handle. Each attachment is meaningful, most guns feel unique, and the feedback from firing any armament is exquisite. It has all the production value of a dedicated military sim, but in action it remains readable and almost arcade-like in its simplicity. No one does it like Infinity Ward, and even though this feels like an iteration on the last three Modern Warfare games, the reviewer will not knock the developers for staying in their lane and developing a formula that works.

That brings us to DMZ. Initially, the reviewer was cynical, thinking it was Call of Duty chasing the bag or trend-chasing gone awry. But Infinity Ward is not afraid of change, and the reviewer accepts that the extraction shooter trend shows no signs of abating. Even Call of Duty can make it work within the specific arcade-cum-sim setup of its engine.

The reviewer goes as far as saying DMZ could be a standalone game, packed with enough content to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Marathon or Arc Raiders. The Hajin city map, repurposed from the campaign, is expansive and packed with nuance. The tasks inside the city limits are quick and painless, more than the reviewer can say of Marathon. Players can easily and somewhat permanently get cash that persists even if they die, and the material begins to describe a mechanic where players can sacrifice maximum health, though it stops before the payoff is explained.

Current Stage

By the material's timeline, Modern Warfare 4 is at launch week. Its campaign is a complete eight-hour experience with a more humanitarian, reactive narrative and standout mission design. Its multiplayer core is refined but still being balanced, with Shipment's addition and weapon tuning creating friction. Kill Block and DMZ point to a post-release direction built on modular maps, reactive systems, and extraction play. Activision Blizzard is credited for an image, and the official accolades trailer is listed on YouTube.