Infinity Ward delivered. Multiplayer is fire, DMZ is dope, and the scored campaign review is on the way.
Call of Duty provided the game code.
Verdict Play It Now
Some years Call of Duty feels like more of the same. This isn’t one of them. Modern Warfare 4 is the complete package. The multiplayer is fire, the campaign is absolute fire, and DMZ is dope. This piece covers multiplayer and DMZ. The campaign gets its own full review.
Modern Warfare 4 is the complete package. Infinity Ward crushed it.
CMoney, OnPoint 4 Gamers
The big picture
Modern Warfare 4 is led by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, with a long list of partner studios behind it, including Beenox on PC. It launched October 23, 2026, on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2, and it leaves last gen behind completely. No PS4, no Xbox One. It’s built for current hardware, and you can feel it.
The story goes somewhere the series has never been. North Korea launches a full-scale invasion of South Korea. You fight as Private Park, a young South Korean soldier, while a vengeful Captain Price wages his own war off the books. I’ve spent time in the campaign already, and playing as Price, they basically made John Wick the game. More on that in the review.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer was the first thing I jumped into, because I’d been itching for it since the beta. The beta was so good, and I missed it. Infinity Ward rebuilt the gunplay around a system it calls Ballistic Authority. Bloom is gone, recoil and handling respond directly to your input, and visibility is tuned so you can actually see who’s shooting at you. Movement is deeper too, with more ways to mantle, climb, hang and jump. You get 12 core maps at launch, plus Kill Block, a training facility that rebuilds itself between rounds into more than 500 layouts. That’s a lot of game, and it’s built to keep you coming back.
Team deathmatch put me right back in the rhythm. I didn’t know every map yet, but I still pulled off some nasty plays. It feels great.
A quick note on how I played: my PC didn’t have Secure Boot enabled, and MW4 multiplayer won’t run without it, so I played through GeForce Now in the cloud. It looked really good and I played fine. Still, I’m always sharper in multiplayer on Xbox.
DMZ
Then I dropped into DMZ, the extraction mode, set in the Hajin Exclusion Zone. You deploy solo or with a squad as an off-the-books asset behind enemy lines. You hunt down military tech, complete missions, grab loot, then get out alive. Activision says no two deployments are the same, with shifting weather, dynamic objectives and hostile forces roaming the zone. You even get to pick your operator. Price is a beast, and Ghost is sick.
I’d never touched DMZ before, so it was all new to me, and it got intense fast. Enemy threat levels hit extreme, my squadmate went down, and suddenly I was the last one standing, waiting on extraction with the clock ticking. That’s a cool feeling. They cooked with this mode.
I’m not a huge extraction shooter fan, but I did like Arc Raiders a lot, so DMZ might be the one that catches me. I need to give it more time, and I’ll be on Xbox for that.
Verdict: Play It Now
What a game. Modern Warfare 4 is the complete package. Infinity Ward crushed it. Multiplayer is fire, DMZ is dope, and the campaign is absolute fire. If you’ve been waiting on a Call of Duty that feels like a full package again, this is it. Play It Now.
One thing to know: MW4 is Xbox Play Anywhere, so buy it once and play it on Xbox console and PC.
This is an Impressions piece, so there’s no score here. The scored Review is coming.
Want to see it in action? Check out our impressions on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF-AkfmA5bI