Modern Warfare 4's campaign goes back to basics, and CMoney says it's exactly what Call of Duty needed. One pre-release mission, Entrenched, was enough to get him all the way in.
Verdict Play It Now
After everything Black Ops 7 threw at us, I wanted one thing from Modern Warfare 4’s campaign. Get back to basics. Put me in the dirt with a rifle and a squad and let the war do the talking.
Back in August, before the game launched, I went hands-on with a full campaign mission on a pre-release beta build. I’m happy to report that Call of Duty is back in its bag.
Watch the RAW IMPRESSIONS
Modern Warfare 4 Campaign RAW IMPRESSIONS: Gritty, Gorgeous and Call of Duty Back in Its BagModern Warfare 4 brings Call of Duty back to simple, raw military combat.
CMoney, OnPoint 4 Gamers
Back on the front line
Modern Warfare 4 comes from Infinity Ward and Activision, and it takes the series somewhere it has never been. North Korea launches a full-scale invasion of South Korea, and the war is fought from two sides: a young squad of South Korean soldiers trying to survive a collapsing front line, and a vengeful Captain Price running his own off-the-books war half a world away.
The mission I played is called Entrenched, and it lives on the front line. US and ROK Marines launch an all-out assault on a power plant held by North Korean forces in Hajin City. You’re rolling with Sergeant Jae, Corporal Dunn and the rest of your squad, and the job is simple on paper. Clear the trenches. Take the relay station. Take the plant.
And right away, this game is gorgeous. The environments, the lighting, the detail in the characters and the world. It all feels so gritty and real. There’s a weight and texture to everything here: the mud in the trenches, the snow on the ground, the smoke hanging over a battlefield that’s been torn apart. You feel like you’re actually in a war, not a theme park.
I love that it starts you boots on the ground. No crazy gimmicks out of the gate. Just you, your weapon and the mission. That’s the classic Call of Duty feeling, the one that made so many of us fall in love with this series in the first place.
The gunplay knocks it out of the park
Here’s the thing I didn’t expect. Infinity Ward scaled the movement way back from what we had in Black Ops 6 and 7, and it actually feels better. It strips everything down to simple, raw military combat, and honestly, that’s exactly what I wanted.
The gunplay is the star. It’s responsive, it’s impactful and it’s satisfying in a way that makes you want to keep pushing forward. The feedback when you land shots is right there in your hands. And the sound design hits hard. The weapons, the environments, the ambient noise of a battle raging around you, all of it.
It’s also not messing around. In a courtyard packed with enemies, a machine gun tore me apart before I even knew where it was. That’s the lesson Modern Warfare 4 teaches fast: the second you feel like you can do whatever you want, you can’t. Respect the fight or the fight ends you.
The squad banter is really good, too. Your squad sounds like a real unit, and that back and forth makes the chaos around you feel lived in.
Take the wheel
Then the mission hands you the keys. You jump into an armored vehicle and roll through the frozen streets toward the plant, smashing past wrecked cars while enemy vehicles and a tank come at you. The explosions are insane. Stuff is blowing up everywhere, and you’re steering, firing and fighting for your life all at once.
Quick tip if you don’t speak fluent military: when the squad starts yelling about the BMP, that’s the enemy armored vehicle guarding the plant. Thermite and a rocket get the job done, and the way in opens up.
Inside the power plant
The back half of Entrenched is where Modern Warfare 4 shows what it can do with tension. The reactors are unstable, the emergency cooling is offline, and the enemy has sabotaged the whole grid. Your squad pushes inside, flashlights up, and the enemy is cutting down the civilians still inside to make sure nobody is left to stop the meltdown. You find the control room hanging over the water, stack up on the door and clear the room.
Then comes the moment I loved. You’re told to find the emergency shutdown, a button labeled SCRAM, in a room that is basically one giant control panel. You find it. You hit it. Nothing happens. Now the only way to buy everyone time is to flood the reactor cores by hand, and the plant starts coming down around you. Fire everywhere, water rising, and you’re racing through it with your squad yelling in your ear.
This whole stretch looks really impressive. It’s dark, it’s loud and it’s frantic, and it’s the kind of set piece Modern Warfare does better than anybody.
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One moment I’m still chewing on
Without spoiling too much, the flooding sequence builds to a moment where it really looks like the cost of finishing the job is everything. It turned out to be a close call instead. I get why they did it, but I’m torn. If that sacrifice had stuck, it would have hit me hard. As it played out, it was a great scare, but I wanted it to land a little heavier.
After that, it’s a climb out of the wreckage to the roof for extraction. Climbing is clean and quick, and the game shows you the line to follow so you’re never standing there guessing. Then the mission closes out with one last burst of chaos on the way out, and it ends on a really strong note.
Verdict: Play It Now
Modern Warfare 4 brings Call of Duty back to simple, raw military combat, and that’s exactly what this series needed. After Black Ops 7, this felt like a reminder of how great Call of Duty can be when it’s in its bag. It’s gorgeous, it’s gritty, the sound hits hard and the gunplay knocks it out of the park. One mission in, I was all the way in.
Just to be clear, I played Entrenched on a pre-release beta build back in August. The full game is out now on Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2 for $69.99, so you can jump into the whole campaign today.
What’s working
- Gorgeous, gritty environments with real weight and texture
- Scaled back movement that brings back classic Call of Duty combat
- Gunplay that’s responsive, impactful and satisfying
- Sound design that hits hard everywhere
- A power plant set piece packed with tension, from the trenches to the flooding
What needs work
- One big emotional moment pulls its punch
- Objective callouts assume you know your military hardware
Platform played: Xbox Series X|S (build string on the mission screen ends xbsx; Xbox prompts). Series X vs S not stated.
Screenshots captured by OnPoint 4 Gamers from gameplay. Featured image cropped from the same session (shot 1). Facecam, MUTED tag and BETA badge are not in the frame. Not a generic RAW stock image.
