Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Is Exactly What You Think It Is (Review)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4‘s campaign kicks off with a thoughtful observation about the legendary hip hop group, Wu-Tang Clan. It attempts to draw a line between how being a disciplined brotherhood is a useful teaching tool for a squad of Marines, and while an effective bit of foreshadowing, the comparison works better when looked at from a different angle and applied to the series as a whole. Wu-Tang Clan became a totemic musical powerhouse by innovating and having its own distinct style, and that seems to be lost on Modern Warfare 4, a predictable sequel that can’t seem to escape the shadow of its forebears.
This is keenly felt in all of its modes, particularly its muddled campaign. Being the fourth entry in this rebooted subseries, Modern Warfare 4 has inherited a tangled storyline featuring a Mexican cartel, rogue agents, Russian nationalists, and, now, an aggressive North Korean Army. It’s a lot of factions to tie together, and this game is not equipped to handle such a heavy load.
Rating: 3 out of 5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| As always, the gunplay is smooth, punchy, and punctuated by excellent sound design and detailed reload animations | The story is sporadic and tries to do too much |
| The multiplayer, while overly familiar, has a few welcome tweaks | It’s riddled with hideous, AI-generated art |
| DMZ is boring and uneventful | |
| The game as a whole is too safe |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4‘s Campaign Is Often Dull
With such a wide roster and only so much time, the motivations of many characters are left by the wayside. Ri Seung-Ho, the newly crowned Supreme Leader, speaks of wanting to move North Korea in a more noble direction, but the game never interrogates why he wants to be different or why he now views his iron-fisted father in a more negative light. His bloodthirsty sister also never gets any backstory and has zero nuance or depth. Given their importance, it would have been worthwhile to investigate how they formed such vastly different worldviews, something the 2019 reboot handled comparatively well with its pair of morally split siblings. Without proper context, their pivotal roles feel hollow and have rippling effects on the story as a whole.
Mads Mikkelsen’s nefarious villain, the Archer, also falls victim to Modern Warfare 4‘s inability to flesh out its characters to the point where his abrupt introduction almost feels as though he was actually introduced as an antagonist in a previous multiplayer season. Given how the scumbag Philip Graves was resurrected in a post-launch multiplayer cutscene — a massive retcon after Modern Warfare 2 — it wouldn’t be out of the question for this team to pull that same stunt again. Instead, the Archer’s nearly nonexistent backstory and the eventual, out-of-nowhere late-game twist related to him are just byproducts of Modern Warfare 4‘s poor storytelling.
It does, however, at least have a consistent thematic thread about how a person deals with crossing moral lines or standing firmly behind them. Such an idea works well for a war-heavy game like this that puts pressure on everyone involved and forces them to make decisions. But that’s also part of the problem. Modern Warfare 4‘s jingoistic qualities keep it from asking too many questions or examining why certain leaders want to seek destruction. These complexities are swept under the rug in favor of oversimplified, “oorah”-powered bloodshed. Just move forward and shoot; that will solve everything. It’s often been a crux of these games, but it is more pronounced here, given the widespread, multifactional nature of its warpath.
Modern Warfare 4‘s missions aren’t even interesting enough to make these narrative shortcomings worth the disconnect. Most of them offer little variation aside from the most basic running and gunning and don’t serve up new hooks that move the needle. Playing as the aforementioned fresh Supreme Leader as he dodges assassins sounds captivating in theory, yet, despite his inexperience and penchant for peace, he is still quite adept at shooting and stabbing people to death; the narrative is noticeably not reflected in the mechanics here.
The nonlinear section also seems like it would offer something different enough, but it comes right after a big narrative climax and screeches the pacing to a halt. It’s also not enticing to search around the large map for new weapon parts and upgrades when almost literally nothing carries over to future missions. Snatching optional gear is only worth it for the related trophies or achievements. The level where players interrogate North Korean peasants is relatively effective because it’s so brutal and different from the rest of the game, but it shouldn’t be one of the only standout sequences in a game that should be full of them.
Modern Warfare 4‘s Multiplayer Is Slightly Better, Yet Still Incredibly Iterative
The smoothness of the gunplay in the campaign that carries even the lowliest of missions is further magnified in the online multiplayer arena where snappy aiming, intricate weapon reloading animations, and booming sound effects take center stage. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s still worth highlighting.
It’s worth highlighting partially because there’s not much else that’s noteworthy about Modern Warfare 4‘s competitive multiplayer modes, as it pulls from the same stone Activision has squeezing since 2007. Unlocks and hyperactive, dopamine-fueled level-up screens power much of the experience to the point where it feels like earning gear is the actual game here; the shooting is seemingly just the means to that end. Unlocking the same scopes and suppressors year in and year out just isn’t as enticing anymore, even though the game tries to fool players into thinking it is with the aforementioned overdesigned effects that blare every time an XP bar fills. Having to restart what feels like the same treadmill every year is tiring, especially since so much of it isn’t cosmetic and is instead directly tied to the gameplay.
Still, Call of Duty and its laser tag multiplayer can have its thrills, even if matches, once again, drag on for too long. Gunning down four players in a row, calling in a killstreak, and then exploding out of nowhere is a cheap shot of adrenaline that has sustained the franchise even in the off years. The (mostly) new diagram that quickly shows players how much damage they took from and did to their killer and where each party got shot is a fantastic addition, though, as it more clearly spells out vital details that were previously obfuscated. It’s a small enhancement but one that feels bigger in lieu of how iterative this multiplayer mode is overall.
DMZ hasn’t been with the series for as many years, but it’s the least remarkable of the trio of modes. It’s an extraction shooter where players have to drop in, clear missions, grab gear, and exfiltrate successfully in order to not lose valuable items or leveled-up soldiers, yet the tension that loop should bring is betrayed by how scarce interactions with other players are. The potential for memorable moments here are undercut by the large, uninteresting map and standard enemy units that don’t do much to create emergent moments. Unless the meta evolves over time and the launch-era players prove skittish in hindsight, DMZ seems too bland to stick out over the other two modes.
Modern Warfare 4 Should Be More Bold
Cash has ruled everything around Call of Duty for years, as annualization and $20 cosmetics have infected it like a nasty plague. Yearly releases have often stifled innovation, while endless overpriced skin packs have opened the door for a barrage of ugly, AI-generated assets. The campaign is full of framed pictures that look as if they were drawn with smeared sh-t, and plenty of posters and multiplayer calling cards have that generic AI look that has only gotten more repugnant with time. With all the money this series rakes in, it’s upsetting to take such miserable shortcuts once again that only devalue the overall experience.
As such, Modern Warfare 4 feels like a game partially corrupted by the circumstances behind it. The repulsive generative AI use and annual churn powering it all make it an unappealing game that only gets more unappealing when factoring in its boycotted publisher that’s wrecking shop on the industry and its parent company that’s making the world a worse place. This isn’t to take pressure off its uneven campaign, overly familiar multiplayer, and banal DMZ mode for underwhelming on their own merits, but their middling quality demonstrates the drawbacks of squeezing a franchise so hard and so often. Mindlessly shooting can be rewarding at times — especially in multiplayer — yet it should be more than that.
Modern Warfare 4 wraps up with a remix of Wu-Tang Clan’s classic “C.R.E.A.M.” featuring Korean vocals. It’s a novel take on such a pivotal song that keeps what worked in the original but puts a new spin on it. It’s an ironic ender, though, as this 2026 iteration of the first-person shooter franchise feels like a mere retread without any of the necessary flourishes that it would need to stand out.
A PS5 copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
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