The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game’s campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
MW4 remembers what made Call of Duty campaigns special
Not even a single mission in MW4’s campaign feels like filler; every detail, every action ties together and fits perfectly in the bigger picture. Many moments in this game stayed with me because they challenged my sense of morality for the sake of the mission.
Then there is the environment design, which might be one of my favorite parts of the whole campaign. I have actually visited several of the places featured in the game, and Paris and Mumbai in particular brought back memories almost immediately. There were moments when I stopped playing just to look around because everything looked so close to the real thing. Some scenes are so convincing that a screenshot could easily pass for a photograph at first glance. When it comes to environmental realism, MW4 absolutely nailed it for me.
That same attention to the real world carries over to the themes too. MW4 deals with geopolitical tensions that feel uncomfortably close to what we see in the news today, and thankfully, it avoids the sci-fi gimmicks that have been creeping into some recent entries. The conflict is grounded enough that I could imagine a similar story popping up as a breaking news alert on my phone.
The familiar faces are as dependable as ever, but what really surprised me was how well the Korean characters were written. Ko Jin-Hyuk has spent most of his life having decisions made for him, and you can see that conflict in almost everything he does once he starts thinking for himself and choosing what he believes is right. Ri Ju-Young was even better for me. She gives you plenty of reasons to hate her, which is exactly what the character is supposed to do, and she plays that role brilliantly.
There is a ridiculous amount packed into eight hours
Of course, none of that would matter if the action itself fell flat, and thankfully, it doesn’t. The weapons feel responsive and accurate, recoil has a believable weight to it, and every bullet you take feels like a punch that rocks your character to their core.
The campaign also throws you into just about every kind of situation you could ask for. One mission has you surviving an ambush, another has you chasing enemies through New York before things turn into hand-to-hand combat. You tear through Paris in vehicle combat, clear houses in Mumbai, and fight through trenches in South Korea. For a campaign that only lasts around eight hours, there is a ridiculous amount of variety packed into it.
MW4 closes one chapter and starts testing the next
Coming to the story as a whole, MW4 really does feel like an ending. I won’t get into specifics, but it plays like the closing chapter of the Modern Warfare saga while also setting up something very different for whatever comes next. Given how the campaign wraps up, I won’t be surprised if Activision plans a reboot of Call of Duty: Ghost in the future.
That being said, one mission in particular that stood out for me in this campaign is called Stranded. It takes the Open Combat idea from MW3 and pushes it much further into a proper open-world sandbox. You get three main objectives, but how you complete them is totally up to you. There are side quests, crates, outposts, and plenty of reasons to wander off the main path. If you decide to clear everything, you can easily spend four or five hours on that mission alone. It also works like a semi-tutorial for DMZ, MW4’s extraction mode, since it shares some of the same gathering and crafting mechanics. But honestly, I won’t mind a completely offline or co-op mode like this. It could be a good stand-in for something like the Special Ops mode from the 2009 Modern Warfare game.
The one area where MW4 really let me down was optimization. My PC is considerably more powerful than the recommended specifications, but even then, the game did not run as smoothly as I expected at the highest settings. Turning a few things down helped, but not by much. What actually made the biggest difference was enabling DLSS and frame generation.
As I write this just hours after finishing the campaign, MW4 comes across to me as a love letter to the Call of Duty campaigns I grew up playing. The work Infinity Ward put into it shows at almost every turn, from the mission design and characters to the environments and sheer variety packed into those eight hours. More than anything, it has made me hopeful about where Call of Duty goes from here. If Infinity Ward and Activision as a whole can maintain this level of care in future installments, the franchise may finally be heading toward a much brighter future.
