Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 review: Infinity Ward finally returns to making a good CoD game

Being a Call of Duty fan in recent years has felt nothing short of being trapped in a toxic relationship. Most titles over the past few years have disappointed me, lacking creativity and authenticity. But truth be told, how creative can you honestly get with a Call of Duty title at this point? The player base is pretty much galvanized, and we have all seen that going futuristic is not the answer, so I was pretty pumped when Activision announced the reboot of the Modern Warfare games back in 2019.

The first two games were genuinely among the best the franchise has managed to put out in a long while, but along came the third game and all that newfound hope went out the window. Whatever residual hopium I had in my system was drained by the blunder that was Black Ops 7. Dreading the worst, I still paid $70 for the recently released Modern Warfare 4 just out of sheer curiosity. As it turns out, my questionable financial judgment finally paid off.

The campaign in this new game has been a breath of fresh air, with great visuals, a respectable storyline, and zero filler missions. Multiplayer, while not the experience that makes me sink the entire weekend glued to my PC, is still solid, especially with new modes like Collateral, Kill Block, and Inflation. The real standout for me in this game has been DMZ. Between the skill trees, bounty boards, and a solid variety of missions, it is the mode I have enjoyed the most in this new entry.

Campaign

Modern Warfare 4’s campaign plays out as two stories stitched together. Price seems to have followed in the footsteps of Jason Bourne and Frank Castle, going after whatever’s left of Makarov’s operation while partnering with some unsavory people. The other side involves the invasion of South Korea by the North, and you spend a good portion of the game playing as a Korean soldier who never wanted to be a conscript but is now somehow in the middle of this full-scale incursion.

Archer ties into both sides of the story and plays the puppet master, pushing his ultranationalist agenda to expand Russian influence and break Western dominance.

The invasion plays out in the present, while Price’s missions jump back to the days leading up to it, so you’re often piecing together how things got this bad while the war is already raging. I am not a big fan of this back-and-forth storytelling, but to the studio’s credit, they managed to do it in a way that didn’t feel forced or extremely confusing.

The two sides also play very differently. Price’s missions feel personal and grimy, with a lot of hand-to-hand combat, while the Korean ones are basically all-out war with tanks, explosions, and the takeover of entire cities. When the two stories finally crash into each other near the end, it really does feel like Infinity Ward wrapping up the MW saga.

We all remember the iconic moment during the mission “Going Dark” in Modern Warfare 2019 where Price tells Gaz, “You draw the line wherever you need it, Sergeant,” in the context of using extreme measures such as collateral damage to complete their mission. At the time, it played out as a hard-earned lesson from a veteran who had seen a lot and knew that sometimes hard decisions were needed to ensure success.

Soap’s death has clearly broken something in him, and you see it throughout the story.

Seven years later, Price seems to have wandered so far past that line that he has all but forgotten to draw it. Soap’s death has clearly broken something in him, and you see it throughout the story. It all starts to become clear pretty early on as he kills Makarov with his bare hands in an alley after chasing him through New York’s streets and rooftops. From that moment, it’s clear this isn’t the same man we’ve followed since 2019.

After that, he teams up with Valeria Garza and her cartel in a bid to hunt down Archer, the Russian defense minister. The partnership takes him through messy fights across the streets of Paris and close-quarters chases through Mumbai, where the cartel’s reckless disregard for civilian casualties constantly clashes with Price’s attempts to keep people out of harm’s way.

Price does his best to keep them clear of the chaos, but it feels like he is fighting a losing battle. The arguments between him and Valeria are some of the more interesting moments in this storyline. Underneath all the shouting, Price seems to be trying to convince himself that he’s still doing all this for the greater good. He has fully bought into the ends justify the means mindset.

On the other side, the invasion doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It begins with a purge of traitors within the North Korean camp before turning into a power grab by Ri Ju-Young, who isn’t content being the sister of the newly appointed Supreme Leader. She sees herself as the stronger leader, someone ruthless enough to maintain an empire built on fear and authoritarian control. Her brother’s comparatively softer side only makes him look weak in her eyes. In one of the darkest scenes of the campaign, she takes control of the country and comes up with a “simple plan” to overrun their southern counterpart.

Archer is at the center of this political coup. He offers Russian backing and frames the invasion as a war to reunite the Korean peninsula. He also provides North Korea with an experimental, single-use EMP designed to cripple South Korean infrastructure, electricity, and military communications. For Archer, the invasion doubles as a proving ground for a weapon he eventually wants to use against American influence across East Asia.

While the core cast is as reliable as ever, what pleasantly surprised me was how well the Korean characters were written.

Park Hyun Jun is serving his mandatory military service when the war lands on his doorstep. From that moment on, all he is trying to do is keep his squad alive, which makes him an easy character to root for. Ko Jin-Hyuk, a North Korean officer, has spent most of his life doing what he’s told. But after witnessing the brutality of Ri’s regime up close, he slowly starts making his own choices, and I found myself getting more invested in him with every mission.

Ri Ju-Young, meanwhile, makes herself the kind of villain that’s easy to hate, which is precisely her role. In one mission, you play as a North Korean infantry soldier, and she forces you into a decision that is demonic at its core and something you don’t agree with. It’s quite an uncomfortable stretch, and it makes it very easy to understand why someone like Ko might eventually want her out.

It really feels like a missed opportunity to have an actor of his caliber and give him so little to do.

Mads Mikkelsen’s Archer is the complete opposite. He plays his role brilliantly and brings a cold, menacing presence to every scene he’s part of. The issue comes when there aren’t more of those scenes. He is criminally underutilized. You never feel invested in Archer the same way you do with the others, and you don’t really learn what drives him until the end. He never gets a proper chance to establish his presence in the limelight, which reminded me of Mikkelsen’s role as Kaecilius in Doctor Strange. It really feels like a missed opportunity to have an actor of his caliber and give him so little to do.

There is a lot of action packed into the approximately eight-hour campaign, and I rarely felt like I was slogging through a boring mission just to get to the end. The environments across the world look strikingly similar to their real-life counterparts, and the graphics are definitely an underappreciated aspect of the game. The gunplay has a real weight to it, similar to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Every shot lands with a satisfying impact, helped by the aim punch effect and screen shake. All of it adds to the immersion and makes the firefights feel considerably more intense.

The boldest, and my clear favorite addition to the campaign is Stranded, a single open-world mission set behind enemy lines in snowy North Korea, where you scavenge, craft, and tackle three main objectives however you like. It honestly felt like its own game mode, so I have discussed it in detail separately.

The mission right after it goes in the opposite direction, and it’s just as memorable. With evac on its way, you have to hold your ground, switching between members of the squad to deal with ambushes, tanks, and snipers picking at you from a distance. Jumping between positions to plug whatever gap opens up makes you feel like you’re running the whole defense like a strategy game rather than playing one soldier. It’s a great payoff after the slower pace of Stranded, and one of my favorite sequences in the campaign.

The campaign is far from perfect, though. Price’s arc carries so much weight early on but loses focus as the Korean conflict takes over, and the ending doesn’t land with quite the emotional punch it’s reaching for. The one-on-one melee fights feel like a two-button simulator, where you block, hit back, and repeat until it’s over. The final showdown with Archer is over almost as soon as it begins, and it doesn’t come close to the iconic finale of the original Modern Warfare 3 back in 2011, where Price finally gets his hands on Makarov.

PC performance was the other sore spot. I was playing on max graphics with a rig well above the recommended specs, and the game still didn’t run as smoothly as it should have. Things only settled down once I turned on DLSS and frame generation.

Multiplayer

A good campaign mode is always appreciated, but what ultimately makes or breaks a Call of Duty title is the multiplayer mode. After all, most players finish the campaign within a week at most and then go on to sink hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into matchmaking for the rest of the year. It’s also the part of the franchise that has been in desperate need of some innovation.

The biggest noticeable change for me was the movement. Infinity Ward has dropped the omnimovement mechanics first introduced in Black Ops 6 for something a lot more realistic. You can no longer slide in any direction other than the one you’re facing, which gives the gameplay a more grounded feel. You’re not nearly as quick on your feet as in some of the recent titles, but slides and slide cancels still let you chain together movement that feels fast and responsive. I actually preferred this approach. The movement feels more deliberate, and positioning matters more than simply being able to throw yourself around the map.

The studio has nailed the gunplay in terms of mechanics, and recoil animations actually match how the guns behave.

Unfortunately, inconsistent shot registration has been a recurring source of frustration in many of my matches. Time to kill is also slower than in previous Modern Warfare titles but faster than in the Black Ops franchise, and it lands perfectly in the Goldilocks zone. You rarely feel like you got deleted without even having a chance, but you also never feel the need to empty an entire magazine into someone just to get a kill.

There has been a lot of discord around matchmaking in online forums and threads, but my experience was quite different. I found matchmaking to be extremely reliable, and most of my games came down to the wire. The final scores were usually close enough that either team could have won, with the result often coming down to a few clutch moments.

Anyone coming into the game expecting to farm clips by running circles around less experienced players might be in for a surprise. Matchmaking adjusts to your skill level pretty quickly, and games become considerably more competitive after that. I enjoyed the challenge, even if it meant I couldn’t always have a relaxing evening mowing down entire lobbies. The game has a total of 13 6v6 maps following the recent addition of Shipment, and most of them are solid, with a couple of glaring exceptions.

Transit is far too small to be enjoyable, which is odd considering none of the other maps are particularly big to begin with. Nautical also feels like a worse version of Hijacked. A few additional flanking paths could make it more viable for competitive gameplay. The rest will take some time to learn, but I enjoyed most of them.

Infinity Ward has also introduced several new multiplayer modes, and some of them are genuinely interesting.

Collateral is the most tactical of the bunch, a 5v5 take on Search and Destroy without respawns or custom loadouts. Every match begins with a pistol round, and you buy extra gear using money earned through kills and bomb plants. Anyone familiar with Counter-Strike or Valorant will feel right at home.

Hijack is a little simpler. Both teams fight over a single Data Spike that can be carried, thrown, or passed between players. The objective is to plant it at the enemy’s Comm Station and defend it until the upload finishes. Inflation is a fast-paced 6v6 respawn mode where every kill increases your cash level. The richer you get, the bigger a target you become, and once you cross a certain threshold, your location becomes visible to everyone on the radar.

All three are welcome additions, but Kill Block is where I think Infinity Ward has gotten a little more creative. It’s a modular, three-section mode set in a training facility. The outer sections are pulled from a broad pool of custom-built environments, while the central section often features iconic locations from classic Call of Duty maps such as Crash, Shoot House, Highrise, and Kill House.

The modular design allows for more than 500 combinations, which does a surprisingly good job of keeping matches fresh. Some sections even bring their own snow or rain, reducing visibility and making long sightlines a lot less reliable. You can’t always rely on knowing the map inside out, and I enjoyed having to adapt my approach from one match to the next.

Weapon progression has also received some much-needed attention. MW4 introduces cross-weapon attachment progression, which means you can gain weapon levels on guns you don’t use if they share an attachment with one you do. It cuts down on a lot of repetitive grinding and makes experimenting with different weapons considerably more rewarding. Maxing out a gun also unlocks its Apex attachment, which can completely change how the weapon plays without taking up one of the five attachment slots.

Custom loadouts still offer three built-in perks and a huge variety of killstreak rewards, ranging from the familiar UAV to a railgun sentry and a gunship. There is plenty to experiment with, although the fundamentals will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time with the series. I’ve already sunk around 40 hours into multiplayer, and unfortunately, it’s starting to feel a little repetitive.

Kill Block keeps things fresh, and the new modes have their moments, but I don’t find myself itching to jump back in the way I did with some of the older Modern Warfare games. The gunplay is excellent, movement feels good, and matchmaking has been reliable, but the novelty of the new modes can only carry the experience so far.

If Infinity Ward wants me to put in hundreds of hours as I did with its earlier titles, it will need to keep the new ideas coming throughout the year, not just at launch.

DMZ

Out of all the modes available, DMZ is the one that kept me hooked the longest. The map is bigger than ever before, with more progression options, a social hub, and interesting missions. It is set after the events of the campaign and drops up to 60 players in squads of three into an open-world sandbox where you fight other operators as well as AI forces standing in your way.

That sandbox is Hajin, a demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. It is the largest DMZ map yet, with 13 major points of interest and 60 smaller locations, each carrying different threat levels. Dynamic weather also plays a much bigger role than before, affecting visibility and sightlines during adverse conditions. Vehicles now need refueling and repairs, which makes gas stations important pit stops and, naturally, prime camping grounds for tryhards.

There are only six story missions at launch, which leaves a lot to be desired in terms of quantity, but the missions themselves offer plenty of variety. Operation Silent Ledger involves a heist at the Heavenly Luck Casino in search of master printing plates secured inside its vault. Operation Fallen Ember has you infiltrating the heavily irradiated Haneul Nuclear Reactor to release its lockdown. It involves pulling out spent fuel rods and securing a nuclear warhead before making your escape across the water.

Each mission pays out 25,000 cash plus keys, gear, and even vehicles. On top of that, Dynamic Ops are multi-stage missions you can pick up mid-match or select at your FOB before deploying. Rewards improve with every stage, and finishing the final one calls in a high-tier supply drop.

Killing other players raises your heat level, which works similarly to the wanted system in Grand Theft Auto. The higher your heat, the bigger the bounty on your head. Anyone willing to pay for the information can track you through bounty boards scattered across the map. You can also visit one yourself to pay off your own bounty or buy intel on other targets. It adds another layer of risk to engaging other players, since winning a fight can end up making the rest of your deployment considerably more dangerous.

Between deployments, you head back to your FOB, a safe haven where you prepare for the next run. New stations unlock as you level up, including vendors, a 3D printer, and a dog tag case. There is also a firing range to test your weapons. In a squad, everyone joins the leader’s FOB. You can no longer buy gear mid-match, so anything you want to craft has to be scavenged first. It puts a lot more weight on looting and exploring, and I found myself paying considerably more attention to what I picked up during each deployment. DMZ progression is also kept completely separate from multiplayer.

After reaching level 10, you unlock the Gunsmith station, which allows you to craft more customization options and weapons based on manuals gathered during your operations in Hajin. Every additional attachment slot has to be purchased, and each one costs more than the last. The stakes get considerably higher as you invest more into your weapon. A fully kitted gun will win you more head-to-head fights, but you also run the risk of getting blindsided early and losing everything you’ve invested in it.

Operators work the same way. Each has three trait trees, Warfighter, Scout, and Survivalist, that grow the longer you survive. Die, and that operator is lost unless you pay for a rescue team, which gets more expensive the higher their level.

I love how much weight this gives to every decision. You can spend hours building up an operator and putting together the perfect loadout, only for one badly judged fight to undo all that work. It can be frustrating, but the possibility of losing everything is also what makes a successful extraction so satisfying.

My biggest complaint is that DMZ doesn’t really cater to solo players.

You can turn off squad fill and go in alone, but you could still run into a three-stack of sweats coordinating over Discord. Leaving squad fill enabled pairs you with random players, but that rarely matches the coordination of a group that plays together every night. I don’t mind the challenge of going in alone, but a dedicated solo queue would make the mode considerably more approachable without taking away the tension.

DMZ is also no longer free to play. It’s part of the $70 game, and given how much work has gone into it, I think that’s fair. What bothers me is that the $100 Vault Edition includes single-use DMZ upgrades. They’re minor right now, but it feels like a slippery slope toward pay-to-win and sends the wrong message to players who have already paid full price.

Still, you can get a ton of value out of DMZ. The progression is incredibly rewarding, and there’s always the thrill of knowing one bad decision could cost you a lot of it. It’s the closest Call of Duty has come to RPG-style immersion, and I absolutely love it. I wouldn’t be surprised if DMZ ends up being the main reason many people buy the game, because it’s certainly the biggest reason I keep coming back.

Final thoughts

If this is indeed the last title in the rebooted Modern Warfare saga, it’s a great send-off by Infinity Ward. The campaign outshines its predecessor by a mile and feels like a return to the series’ roots, full of enthralling action and moments that remind you why this franchise defined a generation of shooter games.

It does miss the mark in a few places. Archer deserved considerably more screen time, Price’s character arc loses some of its momentum, and the final encounter is underwhelming. Even so, the stakes feel real, the two storylines come together convincingly, and I enjoyed almost every hour of it.

Multiplayer nails the fundamentals. Movement is grounded, guns feel responsive, and new modes like Kill Block, Collateral, and Inflation offer a welcome change of pace. The foundation is solid, but Infinity Ward will need to keep introducing fresh ideas through seasonal updates if it wants to keep players like me invested six months from now.

The real star of the show, though, is DMZ. It’s easily the mode that ate up most of my hours and the one I see myself sticking with the longest. The progression is rewarding, the environment is excellent, and the constant risk of losing everything makes even an ordinary deployment exciting. I just wish solo players had a fairer shot, and Activision would keep gameplay advantages out of its premium editions.

After years of disappointing releases, I genuinely wasn’t expecting to enjoy Modern Warfare 4 this much. I still have my complaints, and I’m not entirely convinced multiplayer will keep me coming back all year, but for once, my annual $70 contribution to Activision’s bottom line feels like money well spent.

Digital Trends reviewed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on PC using a copy purchased independently on Steam. Testing was conducted on a system with a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam, Battle.net, and Xbox on PC.

The following are the PC requirements for the game, as per Steam: