Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 review – a thrilling airport novel of a game

And so we return perhaps one final time to Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare strand, with stories, “ripped from the newspaper headlines”, featuring shady terror organisations, nefarious rogue states and the brutally capable, monosyllabic war fighters who stand between us and Armageddon. Last year’s Black Ops 7 instalment was a sales disappointment for Activision, and that has no doubt put extra pressure on Infinity Ward, the studio leading Modern Warfare 4 development. Fortunately, this developer – like series heroes Price, Gaz and Ghost – seems to thrive on pressure.

As you may have read, this year’s campaign is based around a fictitious North Korean ruling family that has seized an opportunity to invade its southern neighbour. Amid the chaos, a small group of Korean and American marines must help lead the fightback, while in the shadows, SAS hard man John Price makes an unlikely new comrade in his own morally ambiguous quest to put the world to rights. Mads Mikkelsen pops up as evil mastermind The Archer, but like Kiernan Shipka in Black Ops 7 he’s rather wasted, with very little screen time.

Stories ‘ripped from the newspaper headlines’ … Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer screenshot Photograph: Activision

Nevertheless, it’s a bombastic, thrilling airport novel of a game, crammed with classic CoD set pieces, including but not limited to parkour over Manhattan rooftops, a car chase in Paris and a shootout in a train yard that somehow feels like a cross between Frogger and Time Crisis. A climactic battle at a North Korean airbase throws absolutely everything at you from sniper firefights to helicopter gunship attacks.

There are also moments where you’re forced into stark unethical actions, faintly recalling the notorious “No Russian” mission from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. Elsewhere, a whole open-world section lets you explore a snowy landscape, carrying out story missions and side quests to improve your armoury. It’s a nice break from corridor shooting, and somehow it doesn’t stall the game’s momentum. Throughout the six-hour campaign, bullets fly and buildings collapse, friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and a breathless story of geopolitical skullduggery emerges. It’s a shame, though, that the Capt Price arc gets a little overlooked toward the end and his denouement lacks the intended emotional clout, but it’s fun and at least a little bit emotional while it lasts.

Bullets fly and buildings collapse … Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 screenshot Photograph: Activision

The multiplayer mode is a refinement of the turbo-paced, ultra-lethal experience of Black Ops 7. Players are still extremely agile, able to vault over obstacles and skid around corners, blasting their guns like John Wick on a recently polished vinyl floor. But movement is a touch more naturalistic here, and weapons have a heft to them that makes you feel deadly, even if you’re getting shot in the face every five seconds.

Alongside all the classic modes there are decent newcomers, such as the epic, up-to-64-player, Combat Outpost, and Collateral, a round-based shootout where you buy new weapons and items at the start of each bout (the better you do, the more cash you get to spend on goodies). The highlight though is Kill Block, which takes place in a modular training centre where three landscape types are randomly selected from dozens of possibilities, then slotted in to a play space at the start of the round so you’re never sure how everything will fit together. You might have to move from a train yard to a storage depot to a trench network, and weapons are randomised too, so you could all be fighting with pistols or sniper rifles, adding to the unpredictable challenge.

The last part of the package is a reconstructed take on Call of Duty’s extraction shooter mode, DMZ. Taking place in and around Hajin City, abandoned during the events of the campaign, you parachute in with up to two teammates, then carry out various PvE missions to earn cash and gear, before calling in for air rescue – all while avoiding or attacking other players on the same map. New to this version is the Forward Operating Base, a safe house you return to after each expedition where you can upgrade your weapons, 3D print new gear and get info on the current roster of boss characters. There’s also a three-branch skill tree for your character, which you populate by earning in-game XP. This gives you a range of new abilities and improvements including taking more loot from downed enemies, faster revives and reducing damage from explosives.

DMZ, then, is a huge mode with lots to do, set in a dynamic world with a real-time weather system. So far, we’ve only been able to play an early access version, but exploring the world and gambling on just one final side quest before extraction promises to offer the sort of tension and excitement this genre thrives on. However, its success will depend on how many players Activision can attract and retain, and to survive it’ll surely have to tempt people over from established rivals such as Arc Raiders and Escape from Tarkov. That could be the toughest mission of all.

Infinity Ward and its co-developers have thrown everything they have at this game, and it shows. The campaign is short but polished, the multiplayer still grabs you by the neck and DMZ is richly detailed and exhaustive. It’s all rendered in incredible audiovisual detail, delivering the spectacle we expect from the series. I’m not sure it’ll bring in a vast new audience, especially with GTA 6 on the way – Call of Duty remains a gung-ho Hollywood fantasy of armed conflict that glorifies the military-industrial complex. But if it’s a glossy, bombastic thrill ride you’re after, there is plenty here to keep you locked and loaded for months to come.