Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Review: A Bittersweet Finale That Earns Its Place Among the Series' Best

The review opens with a confession of long loyalty. The Windows Central reviewer came to Call of Duty in 2009, nudged by friends to leave Halo 3 behind for Modern Warfare 2. They struggled at first with weapon types beyond the simple AR and BR of Halo, found their footing after a couple of months, and still quote lines from that game. Only 2016's Infinite Warfare threatened the attachment. Now, 17 years on, the reviewer says Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has reshuffled a list of all-time favorites that once held the 2019 reboot near the top.

The game arrived in pieces. Players who preordered got the campaign a week early, followed by a few days of early access to DMZ, and then multiplayer, which the team released a few hours ahead of its planned time. The reviewer had already written a separate campaign review and a first-impressions piece on DMZ, and this verdict looks at all three modes together.

The campaign is the centerpiece, and the reviewer calls it a cinematic masterpiece. It introduces Sierra-1, a young squad of South Korean conscripts and American Marines. The opening has the Americans playing Wu-Tang's C.R.E.A.M. for their ROK squadmates, then detouring into a convenience store for junk food and stomach medicine as a prank on the squad's newcomer. The reviewer says the scene plays less like a game's cold open than an expertly shot film, down to the neon and the packed shelves, and the corporal's face when you tell him a snack is fish soaked in urine.

Then the war arrives. North Korea invades Seoul under cover of night, and the green squad is thrown into urban combat downtown. As they retreat, the story jumps back to five days before the attack, and the campaign keeps shifting in time. Through those jumps, Infinity Ward's writers build a story of brotherhood, the weight of losing a squadmate, and the consequences of how grief is handled. Sierra-1 intertwines with Task Force 141, still reeling from the death of Johnny "Soap" MacTavish at the end of Modern Warfare 3 (2023). Where the young squad grieves one way, Captain John Price chooses revenge. Now rogue after killing American General Shepherd, he ends up at the mercy of a former enemy, El Sin Nombre, played by Valeria Garza.

The reviewer sees deliberate parallels between the inexperienced squad and the battle-hardened 141, each affecting the other without knowing it. A further subplot covers the North Korean regime's brutality and its hunt for defectors, offering a third look at blind loyalty and the choice to leave what you know because it is right. Several familiar characters reach an ending, though some are left without neat resolutions.

Gameplay in the campaign mostly follows classic linear set pieces, but Price's sequences add fistfights using LT and RT to block, counter and attack, fitting the series mantra, "We get dirty, and the world stays clean." Other stretches have you rappelling down a skyscraper with night vision and clearing dark stairwells. One mission, "Stranded," opens into a semi-open space with three objectives playable in any order, plus hidden yellow storage crates and keypad puzzles that unlock bonus gear.

DMZ returns from Modern Warfare 2 (2022) as an extraction shooter set in Hajin, a demilitarized zone on the border of the Korean peninsula and Russia. Players take a story character as an operator, complete story missions and dynamic ops, and loot better gear. Because the campaign closes out most characters, the roster is wide, with many past multiplayer operators. The map is largely server-side, which allows dynamic weather that every player on a server sees together. Operators level through XP and Trait Perks, and one that dies without extracting becomes MIA, costing in-game currency to recover. The reviewer credits that system, and NPCs that drive recklessly, flank squads and try to run players over, with adding tension. They say the 2022 beta's flaws seem addressed, though the community is split over whether PvP or PvE should dominate.

Multiplayer launches with 12 maps, which Infinity Ward's team described as happening a block or two from the campaign's events. Settings range from a tight bus yard to a ruined coal mine, with destructible details, flanking routes and room for non-meta weapons. The new dynamic map, Kill Block, rotates set pieces and stitches three together into one match, and the reviewer finds it cohesive and addictive. The PvP versus PvE argument in DMZ is the open question to watch.