In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted Call of Duty's Modern Warfare series, delivering a gritty and polished campaign featuring Captain Price and the assembly of the iconic Task Force 141. Despite the strong start, the series' sequels stumbled a bit, with Modern Warfare 3 in particular standing out as having a weak story and open-world missions that missed the mark. But with Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward returns the series' campaign to strength with a satisfying narrative and well-crafted missions for an epic conclusion to the rebooted series.
Modern Warfare 4's single-player goes back to being a traditional and mostly linear experience that some recent entries have strayed from. There is only one open-world mission this year, and it is far more engaging than the previous attempts. Modern Warfare 4 doesn't introduce anything new or innovative, but it finds success with a consistently strong narrative and engaging gameplay built on nail-biting tension. Thankfully, you're never forced into any mission objectives that feel like silly chores or ill-timed distractions. Every mission in Modern Warfare 4 carries urgency and drives the plot forward.
That plot closes out the ongoing narrative surrounding Price and Task Force 141, but it also takes Call of Duty to Korea and introduces a fresh new cast of characters. The campaign intertwines two seemingly separate stories for an over-the-top, globetrotting affair across New York City, Paris, and Mumbai, in addition to several parts of Korea. This is the explosive Hollywood-style action you'd expect from a Call of Duty campaign at a quality level we haven't seen from the franchise in years--that includes the recent Black Ops entries.
One half of the game places you in the boots of Private Park, a young South Korean soldier, who has never experienced real combat before. Private Park and his squad are forced to fight back to save their country when North Korea launches an invasion.
The other half of the campaign follows the events of Modern Warfare 3 and the aftermath of John "Soap" MacTavish's death. In Modern Warfare 4, Captain Price is in a much darker place, going rogue to hunt down Makarov and also tie up any other loose ends with the villain's associates.
This new outlaw version of Price ties back to one of the most-telling quotes of Modern Warfare 2019, where he lays out his ethos on where the lines in war are."You draw the line wherever you need it, Sergeant," Price says. "End of the day, someone has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty and the world stays clean. That's the mission."
That line is seemingly in a place no one could have foreseen, as Price is furious and more willing than ever to get his hands dirty in pursuit of making everyone allied with Makarov scared of the dark. Being on the run leaves Price with very few allies, though. In a desperate attempt to reach the Archer (Mads Mikkelsen), who is another threat linked to Makarov, Price makes a deal with Valeria Garza and the cartel.
Price hasn't turned into a complete monster, but the cartel don't mind blasting through civilians in order to achieve their mission. This team-up makes for chaotic gunfights through Paris and engaging banter between the characters. Price is constantly trying to look out for civilians and wants to minimize the collateral damage, but Valeria just comically taunts him, calling him Papi and old man, as she operates with less strict rules. The extent to which Price is a contrast to Valeria becomes a key part of the story. After a chase scene where they commit a particularly brutal act of violence, Valeria tells Price that "he's still a good guy," but she is a notorious cartel leader trying to get paid for delivering a weapon to the bad guy, so how much weight can her words really carry?
Price's cartel team-up also leads him to realize this weapon delivery is dangerous enough to shift the balance of power, setting in motion a much greater conflict. To make matters worse, Price also has a target on his back as the remaining members of his Task Force 141 team, Simon "Ghost" Riley and Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, are sent to capture or kill him.
This manhunt for Price leads to a standout mission called Gone Dark, where your POV switches to Gaz as he hunts Price inside of a dark hotel. At the start of the series, Captain Price served as a mentor and moral compass for Gaz, so there's a lot of emotional weight to the mission as Gaz, and the player, see just how far Price has fallen from a clearer third-party perspective. There are shocking moments and intense exchanges between the now fractured members of Task Force 141 that leverage the squad's long history effectively. There's an emotional pull throughout the mission, as Price begs Ghost and Gaz to back off, and a bigger gut punch when Price says he doesn't want to kill them, but implies he will. These moments really nail down how Price's moral compass has broken. The events of Gone Dark also set up a powerful moment in a later mission to bring the series full circle in a way I appreciated.
The Korean invasion intertwines with Price's epic revenge tour, causing the new South Korean squad and US forces to team up. Although that may seem overwhelming, even with these shifting POVs and a non-chronological story, the narrative flows well from mission to mission, keeping things moving at a good clip through stealth missions, on-foot and vehicular chase sequences, slow-motion breach-and-clear segments, and even some satisfying action of manning a chopper gunner. There's also a Clean House-style mission with night-vision goggles, where you need to clear rooms with extreme trigger discipline to avoid shooting any civilians.
Although the missions are a mostly familiar affair, they remain effective Call of Duty staples and the campaign as a whole had me on the edge of my seat throughout. It doesn't necessarily do anything better than some of Call of Duty's most notable other campaigns, but it's proof that, for me, the series doesn't need to reinvent the wheel to produce a thrilling single-player experience. In this instance, having a strong narrative and compelling characters carried me through the missions. Whether I was playing as Park or Price, I always felt the weight of my actions.
The game's only open-world mission is called Stranded, and this is definitely one of Call of Duty's best attempts at a fully open-world mission. You play as Park, who is stranded behind enemy lines with his squad in a snowy and mountainous setting in Korea. Park needs to scavenge supplies to bring back to his squad, and there are three main objectives on the map. You can choose to complete these objectives in any order, but more notably, you can fast travel directly to each one and bypass the entire scavenging and exploration part of the mission. Doing this means you won't have the best guns and gear to complete your objectives, and it will mostly feel like you're navigating through a standard mission instead of going through a vast open-world experience you may not be interested in.
If you choose to explore in Stranded, there are bags of supplies to scavenge all around the map, and there are sealed shipping containers with combination lock puzzles you can solve to secure even more loot. The supplies you bring back to your squad can be used to repair suppressed weapons, craft lethal equipment, or utilize a mortar strike to help get the objectives done with more firepower or stealth, depending on your preferred playstyle. While I'm relieved the entire campaign isn't built on open exploration, there was an allure to the optional scavenging for weapon upgrades in Stranded. By undertaking a little of it, I looted enough supplies to secure Park a suppressed sniper rifle that proved its worth later. But for the sake of time, I fast traveled to my objectives with little consequence, calling into question the value of even having the option. At the very least, the open section introduces a replayability factor, for those that want it.
Modern Warfare 4 emphasizes boss-fight-style encounters where you only have your fists or a knife equipped and go toe-to-toe with an opponent. In these scenarios, of which there are a few, timing your blocks is critical, allowing you to parry and counter with hits of your own. Admittedly, these aren't overly complex fights, but they serve as a good way to mix things up and each one adds just the right amount of tension to the scenario and the campaign overall, especially when they tie into the competing ideologies that character dynamics are built on.
Modern Warfare 4 also keeps the optional dialogue prompts introduced in Modern Warfare 2, which allow you to ask your fellow soldiers questions or make small talk. You can choose to say nothing, but the banter usually adds a small layer of depth to the supporting characters and sometimes lightens the mood after an intense mission. It's a small amount of agency in what is essentially a rollercoaster that is appreciated, even if it doesn't really amount to anything deeper.
One mission places you in the boots of a high-ranked North Korean soldier who doesn't always agree with the orders he's given. This part of the story is a harrowing mission filled with public executions, but it does make use of the dialogue prompts as you walk around interrogating civilians, providing the opportunity to define the demeanour of the character a little more. The conversation prompts let you choose how to approach many situations. You can intimidate or try to calm people with the dialogue prompts you're given, but you can also just pull out your gun and threaten them with action instead of words. These small interactions don't impact the overall story and oftentimes your actions are fruitless, but it's good to have the option to choose empathy when dealing with civilians. Ultimately, this mission also does a good job of showing the ruthless nature of this North Korean threat, and how many soldiers will still blindly follow their orders.
While I'm more emotionally invested in the Task Force 141 storyline, I still enjoyed all of the missions focused on the South Korean squad. Park is forced into the military through conscription, so being a soldier wasn't a choice or an act of valor. Initially, it seems like he doesn't want to be a soldier at all, but when war hits his doorstep, he still tries to push back his fear and make the best decisions he can to protect his people. Park also provides a nice moral balance to Price's side of the campaign, where nothing matters except his thirst for revenge.
Despite the campaign otherwise being a blast, the final "boss fights" of the game are a major disappointment. Neither fight feels particularly challenging, and they feel too brief for the climactic moments, but the way the story concludes is satisfying all the same.
Overall, Modern Warfare 4 wraps up the series with several shocking moments and ends on a high note. The pacing never falters despite the two interwoven storylines and alternating POVs, and the wide variety of missions and locations ensure that the story remains engaging. Modern Warfare 4 is another edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. What distinguishes its campaign from others is a feeling that the devs had more time to think through the experience to create something that can serve as a worthy conclusion for the Modern Warfare series. Because of that, Modern Warfare 4's campaign ranks as the best we've seen since Modern Warfare 2019.