Whenever I think of Call of Duty, the idea of a playable military movie comes to mind. The drama, the tension, and definitely the action are what stick out. And for all the memorable multiplayer games COD has produced, the campaigns have been equally as memorable. But for the last few years, the recent games have fallen short on delivering on the legacy of their predecessor.
So when Activision strongly implied Modern Warfare 4 would close out the rebooted saga that started in 2019, I jumped in when campaign early access opened on 16 October, and I came out the other side a lot happier than I expected to be. It isn't perfect, but it is the first time in a while that the campaign felt like it is on par with the older entries.
The story is split in two. One half has you playing as Private Park, a young South Korean soldier who has never seen real combat, as his squad is forced to defend the country when North Korea invades. The other half picks up after the death of Soap in Modern Warfare 3, with Captain Price going rogue to hunt Makarov and his associates.
The two threads travel through New York, Paris, Mumbai, and several parts of Korea before they finally collide. The campaign is 16 story missions and lands somewhere between six and eight hours depending on how much you hunt for secrets. It is short, but I never felt like a minute was wasted.
The characters are where the campaign really earns its place. Price is darker than I have ever seen him, and a lot of that grows out of his old line from 2019 about drawing the line wherever you need it, which the game quietly turns into a warning. His forced partnership with cartel boss Valeria Garza was a highlight for me because she mocks both his age and his morals while he keeps trying to shield civilians from the damage.
Then there is Gone Dark, where you play as Gaz hunting Price through a dark hotel. Ghost and Gaz have been sent to capture or kill him, and watching a mentor fall apart from the outside is a big part of why the mission works.
The team has done an amazing job at making Park and his squad feel like regular people, teasing each other in a convenience store right before the world blows up. Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain, which the developers have said they were shocked stayed a secret for as long as it did.
Mechanically, this is classic Call of Duty, and it doesn't pretend otherwise. You get stealth missions, vehicle chases, slow-motion breach-and-clear sections, a chopper gunner mission, and a Clean House-style room-clearing mission with night vision where you can't shoot civilians.
There are also a few knife-and-fist duels where timing your blocks matters, and the optional dialogue prompts from Modern Warfare 2 return, even if they rarely change anything. The one open mission, Stranded, leaves Park behind enemy lines in the snow, scavenging supplies for better gear.
I explored a good chunk of it, because the loot genuinely pays off later in the mission. You can also fast travel to the objectives and skip the scavenging entirely, which makes you wonder why the exploration is there at all. It comes with a separate save file, so you can go back and keep exploring whenever you like. To me that is a fair trade, since nobody is forced into the open-world part.
What stuck with me afterward was hearing how the team talked about it. Alex Norris, the associate design director, said the open mission was inspired by the Black Ops 6 desert mission and that the designers basically dropped it on the narrative team, which spent many months wrestling with it.
Lead narrative designer Justin Harris explained that the convenience store opening came from a real South Korean marine, who described how conscripts get hazed after months of nothing but military rations. That is exactly why the opening scene felt so real to me. The team also brought in infantry consultants, which is why a squad here might ram a vehicle through a door instead of stacking up quietly.
Harris described their approach to a real-world conflict as "inspiration, not exploitation." They were also honest that the shift in pace when the game moves behind enemy lines is jarring, and I felt this whiplash myself. Harris added that they wanted some character arcs to end for good this time, with no doubt about who comes back.
The graphics are where Infinity Ward has previously left me with no complaints, and this time was no different. The lighting does so much of the work in carrying the tone of a scene, and the level of detail is the kind of thing that pulls you in.
The sound design had me hooked just as quickly. The gunplay sounds intense, though the biggest moments could occasionally use a little more punch. The audio team also put out a behind-the-scenes episode about turning real explosions into the game's soundscape, and it shows. There are whole sequences that remind me of the original Modern Warfare 2 from 2009, which is clearly a major inspiration here, and as a longtime fan, I found that comforting.
The final boss fights were the biggest disappointment, as neither is challenging and both feel too brief for the climax. I walked away from them wanting more, especially after how well the rest of the story built up to that point. The campaign also doesn't introduce anything new, and many of its missions are familiar territory.
I also have noticed repeated death animations, flimsy new climbing mechanics, and characters who look different between cutscenes and gameplay. The Paris driving section also suffers from rubber banding and a throttle that doesn't really let you
speed up.
It felt as though the story rushed toward its resolution a little too quickly, with half a dozen major deaths and a new villain arriving in about six hours. Sometimes it also seemed that one of the two story halves wasn't quite as strong as the other, which is probably the cost of juggling two campaigns.
Call of Duty is the sort of game that diverts its focus more on the multiplayer side over the years as a cash-grabbing mechanism. But with this new campaign I have regained some of that old hope and aspirations I had for the older COD releases. A story with enough depth where every decision leaves a heavy weight on my heart and action that makes it race with excitement: reminding me of those games that have transformed entire generations of people.