Modern Warfare 4 is the shooter you've been waiting for if you skipped the last few Call of Duty games
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Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) Price: $69 / £69 / AU$109 Release Date: October 23, 2026 Genre: First-person shooter
The Call of Duty season has arrived, and this year Infinity Ward is back in the driver’s seat. After back-to-back Black Ops games, Activision’s FPS cash cow returns to the Modern Warfare moniker and gameplay style, which I've always preferred (not that I dislike Black Ops; I just prefer MW's cast of characters and gameplay).
Modern Warfare 4 feels like a return to form for the long-running franchise, both in the single-player campaign and in the overall gunplay. The time-to-kill is a little longer than in the last couple of games, letting you use more inventive tactics in firefights. It’s not just about who shot who first. And I’m genuinely torn. It doesn’t feel like what I’m used to from the franchise , but maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
If you never liked COD games, nothing here will change your mind, but if you’re a lapsed fan of the series who wants to see how Captain Price’s story ties up and still enjoy a fun first-person shooter, this might be the one to come back to.
I'm generally not a Call of Duty campaign fan. I usually play a few hours a year and spend the rest of the time longing for multiplayer, so I fizzle out about halfway through. Which is why I was shocked when the Modern Warfare 4 campaign actually hooked me right off the bat and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.
Sure, the story is a little convoluted, especially the Price portion, which has the unenviable task of cleaning up the mess left by the last few Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. But I think it does a fantastic job of tying up all the loose ends into a coherent story that successfully caps Price’s story (at least until the next time Modern Warfare gets rebooted).
Price’s missions take place five days before the story’s other half (you’re essentially playing two campaigns at once and switching back and forth). His story crescendos with the start of the other plot and a massive Korean invasion.
Price’s story will make you feel like Jason Statham or John Wick, running around shooting and fighting in first-person hand-to-hand combat. The Korean story has a more traditional war-game feel and follows Park Hyun Jun and his squad. They’re entertaining, with a mix of Korean and US soldiers who add lighthearted humor during intense frontline moments.
The two interwoven stories contrast in a way that makes this the best Call of Duty campaign since 2009’s Modern Warfare 2.
Both sides of the campaign can get a little dark and heavy. An early scene puts you in the shoes of an invader on the Korean side, forcing difficult decisions that can make you wonder if you're the hero or villain (or somewhere in the gray middle ground). For example, an early Price fight scene ends in pure and utter brutality.
Then there’s the heavily hyped Stranded mission, a ramped-up version of the DMZ mode with a story and characters you actually care about. While most of the campaign is linear, this mission gives you a level of freedom we don’t often see in COD games. It’s dripping with tension and best of all, it’s fun. It was a dangerous call for Infinity Ward to include one mission that stands out, as it risked making the rest of the campaign feel inferior. However, because the more traditional COD missions are also so well executed and the stakes feel so high, this problem is negated.
I got seriously into Arc Raiders for about a month before some updates made me fall off. It was my first taste of an extraction shooter, and it felt good to return to the genre with DMZ mode. It’s definitely the weakest of the three main modes in Modern Warfare 4, but it’s still fun.
We already know the extraction formula is successful. In my opinion, Call of Duty is the best first-person shooter franchise from a pure gunplay perspective, so it makes sense that smooshing the two together would lead to a solid online mode.
The missions in DMZ are relatively generic and basic, but they’re motivation enough to keep you moving through a session beyond just grabbing the best loot and extracting.
My only issue with DMZ comes from the overall COD culture. Years of competitive multiplayer have created a shoot-first mentality that removes much of the tension that comes from talking to people in other extraction shooters. I love the “hey, are you cool?” interactions I experienced in Arc Raiders (and even in the Dark Zone of The Division), and in the DMZ matches I played for this review, every encounter with other players was instantly hostile.
The thrill of finding loot and getting out at an extraction point is as satisfying as any other game in the genre (perhaps even more so, because getting your loot almost certainly involved fighting another player who attacked as you tried to extract).
And while there wasn’t much in the way of enemy negotiations, I had great experiences with other players in my squad. In almost every match, my random squadmates cared as much about my survival and successful extraction as I did.
I look forward to seeing how Infinity Ward builds on DMZ, both in this Modern Warfare 4 and across future COD titles.
For me, this is the main event of any Call of Duty game. Sure, the campaign is fun for eight hours or so, and other modes like Black Ops’ Zombies and DMZ will hook a certain percentage of the player base; it’s multiplayer that has made this franchise one of the biggest in gaming history.
And while it had a few small flaws at launch (erratic spawns and skill-based matchmaking being all over the place with so many new players), the overall experience is there, and it’s great. The guns are fun to level up and add new attachments (the usual slots are all there), and it even adds new modes that borrow from other FPS games, like Collateral, a round-based plant-and-defuse mode with buy stages like Counter-Strike. It’s a well-executed game mode that feels fresh even if it’s been done before outside of COD.
Frontline is a spawn-campers' dream. Instead of spawning in logical, somewhat “safe” locations, you only spawn in your base. This becomes a problem when you’re on the losing team, because the other squad knows exactly where you’ll pop up next. Sure, you get a couple of seconds of invincibility, but that’s hardly enough to save this mode.
Map selection will always be contentious when a Call of Duty game launches. Some players will call them inventive and fun while others will say they’re more of the same. I'm in the latter camp, as the only map that does anything exciting is Kill Block, with its shifting, evolving nature. Sadly, that’s only available as a 10 vs. 10 map, so traditional 6 vs. 6 players won’t even see it.
However, even if no map in the normal rotation stands out as exceptionally good, none stand out as outright bad. Each map is good enough to have fun shooting enemies across, and that’s really all I’m looking for (though, like most COD launches, spawn points need a tweak, as I’ve had a few times where I died and spawned right in an enemy’s field of view). Hopefully this will be one of the first things IW fixes with the inevitable post-launch patches.
My favorite mode has always been, and always will be, Team Deathmatch. There’s something pure about two teams of six going head-to-head to see who can eliminate the other side more. But I’ve also enjoyed some Domination, another staple of the COD games. Fortunately, Infinity Ward kept these and all the other staples intact for Modern Warfare 4 (Kill Confirmed, Search and Destroy, Hardpoint, etc.). If you’re coming into this game looking for the stuff you already know you love, I can assure you it’s all there and just as good as ever.
I love Modern Warfare 4. I’m confident I’ll keep playing this version of Call of Duty through the rest of 2026 and deep into 2027, until the next game in the annualized series drops (with a break to follow soon for Grand Theft Auto VI).
Infinity Ward has reminded everyone that it is the “A” developer of Call of Duty, and Modern Warfare 4 will be a tough act for Raven, Treyarch and Sledgehammer to follow. All three modes are fun, and the campaign sucked me in and kept me playing, as none have since the original Modern Warfare 2 (which I still stand by as the best COD campaign ever released). I’d go so far as to say this is in the top three COD campaigns of all time.
Add in the multiplayer and the extraction-based DMZ mode, and you have a well-rounded Call of Duty package that will please fans. It probably won’t convince people who already don’t like COD, but lapsed fans and hardcore players will find plenty to keep them coming back again and again.