Modern Warfare 4's Campaign Crowned the Series' Best, Driven by Mads Mikkelsen's Archer

The review opens with a confession of low expectations. AltChar's reviewer says he sat down with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 expecting another tired chapter of a rebooted saga he believed had been in decline since 2019, and that the campaign hit him so hard it took two full days to recover after the credits. His verdict is blunt: it is the best story and best campaign the series has produced.

The context he builds is a ranking of the franchise's history. In his telling, fans prize the original Modern Warfare trilogy, the first two Black Ops games, and Black Ops 6, and the 2019 reboot sits close behind. Modern Warfare 2 and 3, he argues, were predictable and blunt because they leaned too heavily on the old storyline. Modern Warfare 3 ended on a major cliffhanger, which made a return to the reboot's story likely, though he did not expect it this year.

The story moves to the Korean Peninsula. North Korea invades South Korea after its president dies and his young son takes power. Captain Price is a wanted man for killing General Shepherd, yet he remains in contact with Kate Laswell, the CIA officer who feeds him intelligence and uses him to tie up old loose ends. Across 16 chapters, players control South Korean soldier Private Park, Price, protagonists from North Korea, and others the reviewer declines to name to avoid spoilers. He praises the cutscenes, with mocap and voice work he says deserves Oscar nominations, and notes that the in-engine sequences fall only a couple of notches below them.

He singles out the villain, the Archer, mocapped and voiced by Mads Mikkelsen. The reviewer compares him to Kevin Spacey in Advanced Warfare, then says Mikkelsen goes beyond that. He describes the character as a cold-hearted Russian ultranationalist whose every move is calculated toward a single goal, and says the performance left him speechless. Price, Gaz, Ghost and the new Korean characters are strong, he adds, but Mikkelsen stands apart.

On gameplay, Infinity Ward plays it safe, which he considers the right call. It is still a shooting-focused campaign with no RPG elements or needless upgrades. Players carry two guns, swappable for any weapon on the ground, along with lethal and tactical grenades and the established armour plate system. Allies and nearby BMPs often carry ammo caches, so players are not forced to drop a favoured weapon for lack of ammunition. The one new combat element is hand-to-hand sections, and they are his only real complaint. The parry windows are very tight, and he replayed one knife fight countless times before realising he should block and strike at an opening rather than parry. He calls it a minor complaint.

Level design earns the most praise. Areas are somewhat larger, with less hand-holding. In one level, players must dive underwater to start a generator they can see behind a fence, and in the same level they must find explosive crates in a flooded warehouse with no objective marker. One large open-world level offers a map, three objectives that can be tackled in any order, resources for repairing weapons, puzzle clues, coded doors and hidden caches. After the three objectives are done, the game asks whether to proceed to the final mission or keep exploring, and leftover content stays reachable through chapter select. Elsewhere the campaign visits a New York club with a chase sequence, Paris, Mumbai, Hajin City and the snowbound North Korean wilderness. In Paris, moving trains in a rail yard create cover and obstacles. Collectibles are confined to the open-world level, which he welcomes.

He is equally enthusiastic about visuals and sound. Weapon and face models have long been the series' strength, he says, while environments lagged, but here the environments are also strong. He highlights Hajin City during a blackout, the Paris streets, the New York club and the North Korean palace. The open-world level looks somewhat less detailed. Facial animation holds up even on background civilians in a North Korean village mission. Audio is loud enough that he recommends a headset, and the soundtrack includes many Korean songs.

On PC, with an RTX 3080 Ti, Ryzen 9 5900X and 32 GB of RAM, he ran maxed settings with DLSS on Quality and ray tracing off, getting roughly 60 to 80 FPS. Turning ray tracing on dropped performance to around 40 FPS, so he left it off. This is a single reviewer's opinion, and the excerpt ends before his full conclusion.