Call of Duty. I know you well after 20 years of this franchise, but you can still surprise me.
My career as a journalist began with CoD all the way back in college. My senior thesis in journalism school was a 10,000-word magazine piece about the franchise in the early 2010s, because it was my obsession at the time. Since then, I’ve played and experienced all there is to offer with varying levels of enjoyment and satisfaction, so it’s been hard not to feel a general level of fatigue with the yearly releases.
But still, every once in a while, the franchise is capable of greatness despite the wear and tear. Modern Warfare 4 is the latest and best example of this, offering three distinct modes of play that are all deep and well-made, and worth the price of admission this year.
The biggest takeaway from this year’s CoD is that, given the time needed to create a full-fledged game with multiple dedicated modes without having to rush another game out the door, Infinity Ward (and its multiple partnered CoD studios under Activision) is still more than capable of using three-plus years of dev time to create a good and varied experience.
Lines crossed, lines held
While CoD may have built its empire on multiplayer greatness, MW4 shows that a good campaign goes a long way. And this is far and away the franchise’s best in recent years, and one of the greatest in franchise history.
MW4 closes out the story of the MW reboot trilogy in epic, dramatic, and emotional fashion. Mission variety and high stakes are complemented by excellent visuals and sound design, and a narrative that feels worthy of the characters and story that people have come to love.
Captain Price is out for revenge. North Korea attacks South Korea and throws a squad of new and interesting soldiers into the mix. Ghost and Gaz are tasked with a difficult mission, leading to some epic fan-service. It’s really well-done throughout, especially when it comes to the standards of CoD campaigns in recent years, carried further by excellent performances from its cast.
I wrote at length about MW4’s campaign last week, but to put it succinctly, it’s a great experience, albeit a short one. And it’s been awesome to see most players agree, experiencing the campaign in early access before full launch and enjoying all it has to offer.
One controversial mission in the game opens it up to an open-world scenario, similar to previous campaigns, but I felt it was done very well this time. Playing as a South Korean soldier behind enemy lines in North Korea, you’re forced to scavenge, survive, and complete objectives to save your squad that’s out of commission. I found it as a nice change of pace from the rest of the campaign’s standard corridor set pieces, and given that most of it can be skipped/sped through if you wish to do so, I don’t mind it at all.
Risky rewards
On the heels of the popularity of games like ARC Raiders and Escape From Tarkov, CoD returns with its own variant on the extraction shooter with DMZ, and it basically functions as a fully fleshed-out extraction shooter within MW4 on top of its other offerings.
DMZ’s Beta in Modern Warfare II four years ago was more of a sandbox and proof of concept. This time around, it’s got its own dedicated progression, multiple methods of play, story missions, an explorable home base, and it feels designed to keep players invested in the long haul.
Visiting Infinity Ward HQ and playing DMZ within the studio brought a lot of insight into the mode, and it’s very positive. I mentioned in my impressions of DMZ earlier this week that I think it has massive potential, but in the end I think it will come down to how PvE, PvP, and PvEvP are balanced. This feels especially important as MW4 is the first CoD in many years without a third mode dedicated entirely to PvE (like Zombies or Spec Ops), and some players are already calling for PvE-exclusive experiences in DMZ.
At launch, DMZ feels like a mostly PvE-centric experience as players learn the ropes, with PvP encounters taking a backseat thus far. Some players may love it, while the sweaty Warzone gamers who want to treat it like battle royale may be scared off if they can’t actively find other squads to wipe throughout each 30-minute match. Trying to keep many subsets of players happy is one of the biggest struggles of a CoD dev, and now it’s set to take place in an extraction shooter where losing a gunfight might mean losing dozens of hours of progress or more. I wish them luck with that.
DMZ will continue to take shape over the course of the next few months, with Infinity Ward (along with its partners Beenox, Digital Legends, Activision Shanghai, Raven Software, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, and High Moon Studios who all worked on different aspects of MW4) keeping a close eye on how things are going down within the exclusion zone in the fictional location of Hajin. Season one adds a new endgame-style map, and season two unlocks the northern part of the map that includes Russia. Couple that with new weapons and gear every month or so, and there should be plenty to keep players busy if the mode scratches an extraction itch.
Mainstay, madness
And then we have the multiplayer component. Love it or hate it (I’ve experienced both feelings throughout the series), CoD’s multiplayer is often what keeps people coming back throughout seasonal releases for new maps, new modes, new weapons, unlockable camos, and more. And keeping with tradition, MW4’s multiplayer experience is already set to be polarizing.
Bucking the trend of the past two games, MW4’s multiplayer brings it back to a more boots-on-the-ground realism style of movement, ditching the omnimovement and wall-jumping found in Black Ops 6 and 7. It’s a welcome change, and should even the playing field a bit for players who dislike the wildness of “movement demons,” as they are not-so-lovingly called online.
The base experience of MW4’s multiplayer is solid. The gunplay feels fun, and the movement is still CoD-like but with less ridiculousness than the futuristic games offer, as players can still do things like mantle quickly over obstacles, slide and dive, and jump-shot their way to victory in gunfights.
Traditionally, map design defines the CoD multiplayer experience, and those available at launch are hit-or-miss so far (plus there’s only 12 of them), so I’m hoping to see some variety among seasonal releases, with some new additions likely joining remade classics such as Shipment and more.
There’s also a metric ton of challenges and unlocks to keep players busy for months, and several new modes are quite fun. While playing at Infinity Ward, I especially enjoyed the new Counter-Strike/VALORANT-like mode Collateral, and Gunfight on the evolving map called Kill Block. But the main question with CoD multiplayer over the past decade or so is if you can retain your sanity long enough to keep up the joy.
Once again, the CoD multiplayer discussion is set to be dominated by skill-based matchmaking. This is unfortunate, because the gameplay itself is pretty strong, so I’m mainly plagued with worries and questions about how everything will shake out over seasonal content drops and balancing updates.
Treyarch opened Pandora’s box last year by changing up the formula and testing matchmaking playlists of different varieties where skill is less of a consideration, such as the Open matchmaking style. It felt great for a while, but it’s still an evolving situation, as ever. And now Infinity Ward has been a bit mum on the subject thus far, which is a potential cause for concern, but at launch, Open matchmaking is nowhere to be found. A big disappointment.
According to Activision, skill has to be something of a factor in multiplayer matchmaking, for a variety of reasons that the company says it determined by studying player behavior has gone into in the past. But it feels like you’re actively being punished for being halfway decent at the game by getting matched up against a god-squad after a match where you put up some good numbers, it can really kill the vibe. Worries and my own personal frustrations as an aging gamer aside, the base multiplayer experience feels fun, but could easily be an issue for those who feel filtered out or punished by SBMM.
Over the next year, updates could make or break how MW4 is remembered as a CoD game by its most fervent players. But as a day one experience, all three of its modes feel representative of the time and care that went into them, marking this as one of the better entries in the franchise in recent memory.
