I figured Modern Warfare 4 would be pretty easy to judge.
The campaign would be fun for a weekend, DMZ would be there for people who missed DMZ, and multiplayer would decide whether anyone was still talking about the game six months after launch. That’s usually how COD goes.
Except the campaign turned out to be one of the most well-received in years. DMZ is much closer to a full extraction game than a bonus mode. And multiplayer, rather than being the part that has to rescue the whole thing, has ended up being completely solid in its own right.
With the campaign, DMZ and multiplayer all pulling their weight, MW4 might finally be a Call of Duty you can recommend even if traditional multiplayer isn’t the reason you’re here.
The campaign is actually that good
Call of Duty campaigns are usually pretty easy to recommend with an asterisk. They’re fun, they look expensive, and then five or six hours later you move on to the thing you actually bought the game for.
MW4 definitely feels different. It still has the enormous set pieces and ridiculous military spectacle you’d expect, but there’s more variety between them, better character work and enough freedom in certain missions to make it much more than one long corridor of explosions.
It actually feels like Infinity Ward wanted the campaign to be part of the main attraction this time around, rather than something nice to play before multiplayer finishes installing.
DMZ gives you a completely different way to play
DMZ is probably the biggest reason MW4 works for people who aren’t interested in spending all their time in traditional multiplayer.
If you haven’t played it before, it’s Call of Duty’s take on an extraction shooter. You drop into the huge Hajin Exclusion Zone alone or with a squad, complete missions, fight AI and other players, collect gear and resources, then try to extract with what you’ve found.
And there’s much more structure around that loop this time too. Infinity Ward has clearly learned from its competitors in this field. Story Missions and Dynamic Operations give you clear objectives, while your Forward Operating Base grows as you level up and unlock new gear, crafting options and upgrades. DMZ even has its own 70-level progression track, so it can genuinely become your main way of playing MW4.
Yeah, it still won’t suit everyone. You can play DMZ solo, but other human players are still out there, so running into a full squad while you’re trying to finish a mission can be brutal. Hopefully we get a fully PvE version soon.
Still, if endlessly replaying 6v6 matches has never been enough to keep you interested in Call of Duty, DMZ gives you much more of a reason to stick with it.
Multiplayer is good, with the usual COD baggage
MW4’s multiplayer gets the most important thing right: shooting people feels excellent.
Infinity Ward has pulled the movement back from the more acrobatic recent games without making matches feel slow, and weapons have enough weight and feedback that firefights feel satisfying even before you start min-maxing builds. Gunfight is still great, the larger modes give you something beyond 6v6, and Kill Block is one of the more interesting new ideas this year.
The problems are there, and yes, they’re mostly familiar ones. Spawn behaviour can be frustrating, the map pool is divisive, Gunsmith can still feel overloaded, and matchmaking can make things very sweaty, very fast.
Even so, multiplayer feels like a strong part of the entire package rather than the thing holding everything else together.
TL;DR: Multiplayer doesn’t have to be the reason you’re here
If multiplayer is the reason you usually buy Call of Duty, MW4 won’t let you down.
But for once, it doesn’t feel like a requirement.
The campaign is strong enough to stand on its own, DMZ has enough depth to keep people around for months, and multiplayer is solid. MW4 doesn’t rely on any one mode to make the whole thing work, and that’s the biggest reason to give it a try this year.