These are our impressions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign. Reviews of DMZ and multiplayer will follow.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign has been set an unenviable task: tie the bow on a seven-year-long series of stories I’d politely describe as “uneven.” To its credit, it handles this challenge well, delivering a genuinely exciting string of missions that are great when they focus on what is new, rather than getting bogged down in the past. It’s the best Modern Warfare has been since its 2019 reboot by quite some distance, and a reminder of how good Call of Duty can be when the people making it are given time to cook.
This collection of blockbuster sequences that has clearly been built from the ground up as a single-player experience is in stark contrast when compared to 2023’s woeful Modern Warfare 3 campaign, arguably the low point of the entire series. A mishmash of multiplayer maps mixed with slivers of near-incomprehensible story, I don’t envy Infinity Ward having to pick up from where it left off. The studio has done about as good a job as it could, though, thanks to a smart structure which splits the two halves of this story until they inevitably collide, providing both variety in mission design and tone.
Captain Price has been at the centre of the Modern Warfare plot, and that doesn’t change too much here. Following the disastrous finale of MW3, he’s now on the run, acting as a lone wolf, wanted by the very people he used to work for. His half of the story is initially tied up in knots so twisted even Alfred Borden would have trouble with them. Infinity Ward’s answer? Take a machete to much of it and kill off any characters introduced in the past two games that it deems superfluous. It’s almost an admission of guilt over how poorly these people were handled in the past, but it does give a sense of finality to this seemingly saga-ending chapter.
A tale of string-pullers and warmongers, Price’s story takes place over the course of five days in the run-up to the North Korean invasion of South Korea (plenty more on that in a moment). The former SAS captain has the blinkers on for his nemesis Makarov and whoever his boss may be. It’s fair to say that the Russian terrorist is not close to being the well-developed threat from the original Modern Warfare 2, which feels like a wasted opportunity to revive a famous villain. In his place steps Mads Mikkelsen’s The Archer.
For the most part, Price’s chapters of the story play like a Bond movie, packed full of parkour escapes, car chases, and stealthy infiltrations. Mikkelsen’s casting only reinforces this feeling, and while he’s classically unsettling in his performance, his character was never given quite enough screen time for me to grow a connection with him. As such, while the missions that make up Price’s side of the story are fun, it comes across as the weaker half. Infinity Ward clearly wants Price to be the strongest emotional bond to the player and for his personal vendettas to feel like our own, but, in truth, many more of the missions are dedicated to the Korean conflict. Incidentally, this is also where I found a lot more of the engaging storytelling to be found.
The gunplay is refined, packing the sort of punch we’ve come to expect from Infinity Ward, but still shouldn’t be taken for granted. Movement is slick, being able to transition from a sprint into a slide, before mounting onto a pillar and peeking around the corner to pop a head peeking out of cover. No, enemy AI may not be the smartest, but that doesn’t mean you should play them for fools. Even on regular difficulty, get a little cocky and opt for the run-and-gun approach and your health bar won’t last too long. Managing your ammo, armour plates, and cover is needed, especially towards the campaign’s latter missions. Enemy variety may be limited, but a few heavily armoured brutes caused me quite a bit of trouble when trying to stay out of the blast of their shotguns in some tight underground tunnels. Nothing a few stolen explosive shells of my own couldn’t eventually sort out, though.
Campaign Verdict
Modern Warfare 4 made me feel something for the series again. A consistently strong set of missions manages to juggle a bloated cast successfully, saying goodbye to familiar faces while building impressive bonds with new ones. Its expansive behind-enemy-lines mission that borrows most of its ideas from the DMZ mode is a real highlight, as is whenever its blockbuster ambitions are fulfilled and full-throttle battles break out. It may not have quite enough to be considered amongst the very best Call of Duty campaigns, but if it’s to be the end of this particular saga, then at least Modern Warfare is going out on a high note.
