Well, Dunn.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign is currently available in early access, and if you're among the many who pre-ordered a copy in order to play it before launch, you've likely noticed a locked difficulty setting that's harder, even, than Realism.
YOLO, which is short for you only live once, is a new difficulty tier introduced in Modern Warfare 4. It does exactly what you expect: gives you a single life to complete the entirety of the campaign. Die once and you're sent back to the start.
A few players have already cleared the Modern Warfare 4 campaign on YOLO, but one in particular took the time to answer a few questions and reveal some of their toughest moments in the campaign.
Reddit user Lost-Equivalent2352 shared a screenshot showing a completed campaign at YOLO difficulty, which they said took them 20 hours. Key to their strategy was, well, a lot of hiding and leaving AI teammates to kill as many enemies as possible, before emerging to finish the rest. They relied on flashbangs to momentarily stun enemies and make it easier to shoot them, but they also used a lot of grenades to clear clusters of enemies.
But that grenade strategy was difficult in one mission - a mission that depicts the chaos of a North Korean invasion of South Korea, and takes place at nighttime. The problem here is that civilians and other allies are spread across the battlefield, so throwing flashbangs and grenades risks damaging either group, ending the YOLO run. Lost-Equivalent2352 only managed to beat it by "pure luck", they said.
Incidentally, Lost-Equivalent2352 played the game using mouse and keyboard, saying: "I think that [it's] impossible to complete it with a controller, you need [good] recoil control in long distances but that's only my opinion."
According to Lost-Equivalent2352, the sections of hand-to-hand combat were among the most difficult, as miss-countering even a single attack can mean the end of the fight, which in turn means the end of the entire run. In those sections, you're unable to use anything but your fists, so there's really no getting around learning the fight.
In order to unlock YOLO, you must first finish the entire campaign on Realism difficulty, which is no easy feat. A YOLO run could end for any reason that shows a game over screen, including accidentally shooting a civilian, failing a jump, losing a chase and so on. Do any of that - or die normally - and you're back to the opening cutscene.
Given the single-life nature of the mode, you can't select missions individually and finish each on YOLO as you can with other difficulty levels, so you really have to do it the way it was intended.
Unfortunately, though, the reward for finishing the campaign on YOLO is underwhelming. It's a Calling Card you can use with your multiplayer profile. Calling Cards are amongst the lowest tier of cosmetic rewards in Call of Duty, so unless someone actually knows how it was acquired, most players probably won't notice.
Modern Warfare 4's DMZ early access begins later today, before the full game - including traditional multiplayer - launches Friday, 23rd October for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2.
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