DaRmaZat Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, the latest installment in Activision’s long-running shooter franchise and the fourth and final entry in the modern Modern Warfare series that began in 2019, brings Captain John Price’s ongoing hunt for his longtime nemesis Makarov together with a full-scale North Korean invasion of South Korea. The result is a story mode packed with spectacular set pieces, a strong cast of characters, and plenty of good old-fashioned Call of Duty gameplay. It’s no wonder the campaign has been widely praised, with some even handing out perfect scores left and right. We just had to try it for ourselves!
A Campaign Packed With Spectacle
As a direct sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 offers you a handy recap of the previous games. You begin as Private Park of the Mayhem-1 Division, a young South Korean soldier experiencing the horrors of live combat for the first time. What starts as an ordinary day on patrol in a South Korean city quickly turns into a full-scale invasion by North Korean forces, and things only get worse when a mysterious superweapon enters the picture. Before long, the streets are filled with enemy soldiers, paratroopers descend from the sky, and your squad is fighting to hold the line.
Rather than simply moving forward chronologically, the story jumps back a few days before the invasion, then gradually moves forward again toward the present day. You soon also step into the boots of Captain John Price, who is hunting down the mysterious individual known as Archer, the one pulling the strings behind his longtime nemesis Makarov. With help from Valeria’s criminal cartel, Price operates outside the system he once served, turning his mission into a personal war that pushes him past the point of no return.
This is a particularly impressive campaign, with tense encounters, spectacular special effects, excellent cutscenes, and a cast of compelling characters. The locations are varied, taking you from the streets of Seoul and the trenches of Korea to New York’s nightclubs and skyscrapers, as well as escape sequences through the streets of Paris and across the rooftops of Mumbai. Each setting brings its own flavor to the experience, while the rapid succession of missions ensures that there is rarely much time to catch your breath.
Meanwhile, the gameplay itself is classic Call of Duty, and that is very much a compliment. You get intense firefights, large-scale assaults, close-quarters combat, and the occasional stealth sequence in which you have little more than a knife or your fists to rely on. One moment, you are following a key henchman through a crowded nightclub; the next, you are sneaking through a presidential palace or trying to recapture a hotel because of its strategic importance. The campaign keeps changing things up, and the sheer variety of missions makes it difficult to get bored.
Not every mission is about shooting everything that moves, either. One of the more substantial sections gives you a large open map, a base camp, and several objectives to complete before you can extract. You need to sabotage air defenses and jamming equipment behind enemy lines, while optional assignments offer additional activities and rewards. You can even explore the surroundings in vehicles or take on enemy elite troops. The freedom to decide which objectives to tackle and when to return to headquarters adds a welcome change of pace to the otherwise tightly scripted campaign.
At various points, your dialogue choices appear to influence how events unfold. Some decisions can have bloody consequences, and the game does not shy away from graphic scenes. However, while the narrative offers you these options, the overall storyline continues along its predetermined path. These decisions are therefore more about enhancing immersion than fundamentally changing the outcome.
One minor disappointment is how some of the major antagonists are dealt with toward the end. Instead of delivering proper boss fights, their eliminations mainly rely on cutscenes and quick-time events. Given the intensity of the preceding encounters, I felt these moments had the potential to offer a more satisfying gameplay payoff. Even so, the final stretch brings the different plot threads together in a thrilling finale.
A Few Familiar Frustrations
Despite this year’s campaign’s many strengths, some of the usual COD frustrations remain. Stray too far from the designated mission area, even for a few seconds or just a few in-game meters off the beaten path, and you may receive a warning that you have left the mission area. Accidental friendly fire also immediately triggers a scene reload. And while the game’s spectacular cutscenes are a highlight, some sequences, strangely enough, cannot be skipped, which becomes annoying when you have to replay them after a failed attempt.
These prerendered cutscenes are impressive, though, with detailed character models, cinematic camera work, and plenty of visual spectacle. However, the contrast between these sequences and the in-game graphics is quite noticeable. The latter still look good overall, but the transition can be jarring.
Performance is generally solid on the PC, although there are occasional minor stutters, particularly during cutscenes. On a few occasions, the mouse cursor also appeared unexpectedly during these sequences. The inclusion of shader preloading is a welcome step forward, as previous entries could require frequent restarts to get this out of the way. Unfortunately, I did encounter a bug that washed out the image, although switching between the campaign and multiplayer modes quickly resolved it.
These issues do little to undermine the overall experience, but they are worth mentioning in a game that otherwise feels polished and confident. The campaign’s pacing, solid and varied gameplay, and constant stream of excellent narrative cutscenes do most of the heavy lifting, and the result is one of the more enjoyable parts of this release.
DMZ: Fight, Loot, and Survive
Alongside the campaign, DMZ returns as the game’s extraction-based PvPvE mode, currently offering six missions for up to 60 online players. The mode takes place on the large Hajin map in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, which features forests, military bases, and… a nuclear power plant. Given its location, it feels like a natural extension of the campaign’s more open-ended missions, with a focus on completing objectives, gathering loot, and getting out alive.
Before each deployment, you select one of your three operators and prepare your backpack. Operators start with basic weapons, and scavenging allows you to collect upgrades and improve their capabilities through three skill trees: Warfighter, Scout, and Survivalist. You can team up with up to three players, tackle missions, and collect equipment before heading for extraction. The region is populated by both AI-controlled enemies and other human players, so you never know whether the next encounter will be a straightforward firefight or a confrontation with another squad.
Of course, exploring on foot or in a vehicle also means you may run into another squad, and that is where things can get particularly tense, since you can always be eliminated by another human squad that takes all your hard-earned loot. That risk is part of the appeal of an extraction shooter, but it can still sting when you lose everything just before getting out.
And What About Multiplayer?
Despite aiming for more realistic combat through fluid, grounded movement, Modern Warfare 4‘s multiplayer, which features 12 base maps for traditional 6v6 matches, still has its flaws, with other modes using separate maps and the iconic Shipment arriving shortly after launch as the first post-launch addition. The strict Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) still consistently forces you into exhausting, highly competitive lobbies that can ruin casual play. This frustration is made even worse by the abysmal spawn system, as you frequently respawn directly in the enemy’s line of sight, facing instant death upon returning to the map.
On a more positive note, the Kill Block arena, featuring modular slabs that dynamically shift between rounds to create over 500 configurations, is interesting, at least, as it helps keep the tactical pacing fresh and unpredictable. Furthermore, the introduction of the Ballistic Authority weapon system is also a plus, since it mitigates hipfire bloom to improve shot placement and consistency.
Final Thoughts
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 delivers a particularly impressive campaign that leads to a thrilling conclusion to the reboot series, combining spectacular set pieces, varied missions, compelling characters, and the kind of old-school Call of Duty gameplay that remains easy to enjoy. While DMZ provides a tense extraction experience with a huge map, varied objectives, and the constant threat of rival squads, the multiplayer mode feels the furthest from being fully polished. It still has a solid foundation, with its dynamic maps, yet its potential is undermined by frequently frustrating matchmaking algorithms and spawn logic.
Additional Information
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Reviewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: Infinity Ward, Beenox, Digital Legends, Activision Shanghai, Raven Software, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios
Publisher: Activision
Relevant links: Available via Steam and Battle.net.
