This year’s Call of Duty is, officially, Modern Warfare 4. It takes place primarily in South Korea, it’ll have a regular campaign, and they’re bringing back the DMZ extraction mode. But for many, Modern Warfare 4 is significant for one big reason: This is the first Infinity Ward game in four years.
That’s the longest that the original Call of Duty makers have gone without making their mark on the series, and a lot has happened in the years between: Activision became an organ of Microsoft, which has been hard at work destroying its reputation with full-breathed AI mania and cooperation with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. All the while, Call of Duty has fallen into another rut: Modern Warfare 3 was an unpopular, rushed sequel made by a different team. That was followed by Black Ops 6, which was well-liked, but its own quick followup Black Ops 7 immediately squandered that goodwill.
Those factors leave Infinity Ward in a similar situation as it was in 2019, when Call of Duty’s relevance was waning and its Modern Warfare reboot singlehandedly revitalized the series. Will Modern Warfare 4 do it again? After 90 minutes with its multiplayer, I’m not convinced it’s a major leap forward, but I am confident that Modern Warfare 4 will be the best-playing Call of Duty in years. A few quickfire topics from my demo:
Gunplay: Sublime
When it comes to the little things that are important to longtime fans, they’re nailing it. Modern Warfare 4’s audio, animations, and feedback are exceptional. I shot a revolver that was so loud that I flinched in my seat. Later, I test drove a bolt-action rifle so bassy and powerful that I temporarily became a sniper guy. Sometimes the yearly Call of Duty grind can get boring. I don’t care about camos or stickers or even prestige, so for me, it’s the fundamentals that elevate an FPS and keep things interesting for dozens of hours. I’m going to max out the revolver because it’s exciting to shoot, not because of a checklist.
In terms of raw FPS craft, this is immediately head and shoulders above the previous pair of Black Ops—games that look and sound fine. It really does matter who makes Call of Duty.
Apex attachments: Very cool
Modern Warfare is finally embracing attachments that actually change a gun’s identity. Similar to Black Ops 7’s prestige attachments, apex attachments are sidegrades unique to each gun that unlock when it’s fully leveled up. Each gun has at least one apex attachment, but some have two.
They’re kinda wild. Examples include:
- A shotgun with explosive rounds
- A revolver with a grip that lets you fan the hammer
- A sniper rifle with side-mounted throwing knives that you “flick” at players
- A prototype North Korean silenced SMG that’s quieter than anything else in the game
- An airburst launcher for the AK that can kill behind cover
- An SMG conversion mod for the M4 that brings back the P90-style magazine from MW2
- Ammo that spots enemies
Literally anything, that makes attachments more meaningful than moving sliders up and down is a positive change.
Anything, literally anything, that makes attachments more meaningful than moving sliders up and down is a positive change, though I’m bummed that unlocking even one of these requires using a gun for a long time. They were all unlocked in the demo build and it was a blast to goof around with the airburst AK and the cowboy-style revolver. I also love that these attachments are designed for the specific weapons they were made for—a choice that could give guns a role beyond their weapon class. Apex attachments use their own slot in Gunsmith, so you won’t have to sacrifice your favorite stock or sight unless there’s an unavoidable conflict (like the attachment is itself a sight).
Movement: Fluid but maybe too fast
Infinity Ward talked a lot about movement. It feels so long ago now that we were all arguing about sprint speeds and slide cancelling in Modern Warfare 2, and the studio has been reckoning with that feedback behind the scenes for years. The result is a faster and less restrictive movement system than its last game—something closer to Sledgehammer’s adjustments in Modern Warfare 3—but nothing as drastic or athletic as Treyarch’s omnimovement.
Mantling is now extremely fast and fluid, so toppling over cars or climbing low walls now barely slows you down. Sprinting out of slides is smoother, and Modern Warfare 4 should be kinder to those who’ve gotten used to jumping or sliding around corners. That all sounds like a step in the wrong direction, personally—Call of Duty’s map design and heavy aim assist make these techniques more annoying than expressive—but they weren’t on display in my room of mostly press.
Maps: Meh
Pretty, but otherwise exactly what you’d expect. We played a handful of the 6v6 maps launching with Modern Warfare 4 plus one special Gunfight map with sections that change from round to round (more on that below). The standard maps followed Call of Duty’s tired three-lane formula with only glimpses of verticality. Still, they at least feel closer to real places than Treyarch’s maps tend to.
10v10 Gunfight: 👍
You never know when the center of the battlefield will suddenly be Crash from Call of Duty 4, or Killhouse, or a bunch of World War 1 trenches.
Like it says on the tin, it’s Gunfight with bigger teams on bigger maps. Teams spawn with identical loadouts for single-life elimination rounds—clear the other team or capture a flag at the center to win. Gunfight might be the single best side mode Call of Duty has produced in a decade and it scales up well.
This is where we got to try Kill Block, a map broken up into one-third chunks that change between rounds. Many of these map chunks are based on classic Modern Warfare maps, so you never know when the center of the battlefield will suddenly be Crash from Call of Duty 4, or Killhouse, or a bunch of World War 1 trenches. It’s a neat idea, and it apparently supports over 500 combinations. Infinity Ward mentioned that Kill Block will be used for more than just Gunfight.
Details: FOV, depth of field, muzzle smoke, hipfire
A surprisingly large stretch of Infinity Ward’s presentation was focused on relatively small quality-of-life updates that were possible because of Modern Warfare 4’s extra dev time. If they hadn’t pointed this stuff out specifically, I’m not sure I would’ve noticed:
Enhanced FOV: This wasn’t in the demo, but apparently Modern Warfare 4 will pull some camera trickery so players will benefit from the spatial awareness of a high FOV without making targets smaller on screen as a result.
Depth of field: Infinity Ward admitted that most CoD players turn off depth of field because the blurring effect on iron sights can also obscure targets. No longer: They’ve adjusted the effect so it doesn’t do that, which sounds more like a bug fix to me.
Muzzle smoke/flash: Folks complained that Modern Warfare’s muzzle flashes and smoke are too big and get in the way of accuracy, so now muzzle flash and smoke will subtly disappear at the center of the view to keep sightlines clear.
Hipfire: This one was a bit confusing. Infinity Ward says Modern Warfare 4 won’t have recoil bloom. Bullets will always go where the gun is pointing. That made me think that maybe hipfire will be more accurate overall, but in practice, this seems to be largely a visual change: hipfire is as inaccurate as ever (subject to attachments), but your on-screen model will now always match where the bullets end up. Essentially, your gun shakes wildly to better communicate what’s happening with recoil, which does make underbarrel lasers more useful.
Loadouts: One change I love
In Modern Warfare fashion, loadouts have been simplified since last year. Guns take five attachments, all of which have positives and negatives. It’s a standard three perk system with no combo abilities or wildcards.
The only change worth calling out is one I’m surprised hasn’t happened until now: both killstreaks and operator skins are equipped per-class. That means you can design a loadout around stealth, support play, or whatever, and then pick skin that matches it. It’s a minor thing, but I can see the personalization making my classes feel more custom.