Modern Warfare 4 Is Legitimately a Top-5 Call of Duty Campaign
Captain Price is well and truly back
Infinity Ward has long been the Call of Duty studio to rely on for single-player campaigns. The original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 are still the best in the whole series, and the reboot got off to a strong start with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2019. Despite a slightly underwhelming runtime, Modern Warfare 4, the latest, is up there with the very best of them.
There are two stories happening simultaneously in Modern Warfare 4. One follows the trials and tribulations endured by Sierra-1, a unit made up of both South Korean and United States soldiers, as they fight back against an invasion by the North Korean military. Over the course of several missions, you'll battle through the streets of the fictional Hajin City, explore a snow-covered wasteland in North Korea, and fight through trenches to prevent a nuclear reactor from exploding.
Then there's the more traditional Modern Warfare storyline, which puts you in the shoes of the legendary Captain John Price, who is on the run after assassinating the traitorous General Shepherd at the end of Modern Warfare 3. His hunt for the Russian defense minister, known only as the Archer (Mads Mikkelsen), takes Price and his unlikely allies in the form of the cartel to New York, Paris, Mumbai, and, eventually, North Korea.
As you can tell from that brief rundown, Modern Warfare 4 is plucked straight from the headlines. It doesn't feel out of the realm of possibility that one day, North Korea, with the help of Russia, decides to invade its southern neighbor. This realism is where the game thrives, and it's even more impactful when you're part of a squad where everyone is just fighting for survival and taking the war at face value. Park Hyun-Jun, the soldier you'll mostly be in the shoes of, and the rest of Sierra-1 have an entirely different experience than Price and Ghost, for example, who are embroiled in the politics and manipulation behind the war itself.
MW4 is one of the good types of COD campaigns
Call of Duty campaigns can be split into two categories: those that have memorable moments and stick with you long after the credits have rolled, and those that are so forgettable you wonder why you bothered playing. Last year's entry, Black Ops 7, was strictly the latter, with its nonsensical hallucinatory sections and ridiculous, over-the-top boss fights. It hardly felt like a Call of Duty game.
Modern Warfare 4, on the other hand, is the former. From the moment the EMP hits Hajin City in the very first mission, leading you to battle in darkness before plucking paratroopers out of the sky from inside a sports stadium, you know you're in for one hell of a ride. Almost every single mission has notable peaks that will have you going, "holy shit, now that was cool."
It's a game that isn't afraid to wear its inspiration on its sleeve, and to excellent effect. There are a few standout missions of this ilk: Captain Price becomes John Wick while hunting down Vladimir Makarov, the longstanding antagonist of Modern Warfare, inside a New York nightclub. When Sierra-1 fights to retake Hajin City, it's reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan's D-Day scene, as allied troops disembark naval vehicles and withstand a suppressive onslaught while pushing towards the sand.
Infinity Ward has honed both hand-to-hand combat and stealth this time around too, with multiple missions taking place where you're severely outnumbered and outgunned. You can choose to sneak around, avoiding the gaze of the heavily armed guards searching for you, or you can take them out from behind. The atmosphere and tension in these levels run high, almost like a horror game; I got major Outlast vibes when skulking through prison corridors.
MW4 dabbles in open-world frameworks
Then there's the "Stranded" mission, which is where Modern Warfare 4 goes from this finely crafted, linear rollercoaster to an open-world shooter that resembles a mini Far Cry game. There are outposts full of enemies to clear, crates full of supplies littered around the map, vehicles to steal, and patrols to avoid. You also have a base to bring said supplies back to, where you can craft additional weapons and equipment. (This is the continuation of a trend that began with Modern Warfare 3's "open combat missions," which saw improvement in Black Ops 6’s stellar "Hunting Season" mission, before Black Ops 7 undid all of that progress with those dreadful Avalon-set levels.)
In isolation, "Stranded" isn't a bad time. There are secrets to find, various ways to tackle each point of interest, and three main objectives to complete. But when the campaign is nonstop with its hard-hitting moments, going from one jaw-dropping set piece to the next, being given a much slower-paced sandbox to explore takes the wind out of your sails.
It's worth noting that you can choose to skip the open-world section entirely and fast-travel to each of the three main objectives, but in doing so, you're much more limited in your loadout because you haven't spent time collecting supplies, which makes each of the mandatory tasks tougher. For example, you won't have night vision goggles for a journey into an old underground bunker, or a suppressed weapon for a stealth mission atop a snowy mountain. Skipping the open-world exploration also shortens an already fairly swift runtime by quite a few hours.
Modern Warfare 4 isn't without its share of bugs, however. Some were hilarious; when taking down a SAM site as one of the three main objectives in "Stranded," I had a recon drone that I could use to scout enemies. However, in doing so, my two squadmates who were following me considered the drone to be "me," and started running around the island in pursuit of it, instead of staying in cover where my soldier was.
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Others can be considered general jankiness, such as grenades not affecting enemies when they're mid-animation, deployable bomb drones spinning at high velocity through the air as soon as they're used, and falling through part of a rooftop that, at least visually, was definitely still there and should have been solid. Then there was one time I saved and quit, only to be unable to interact with anything except the pause menu upon my return. The only solution was to restart the entire mission.
Despite all of the above praise — and let me be clear, Modern Warfare 4 is an excellent Call of Duty campaign, without a shadow of a doubt in the top five of all time — the credits sneak up on you. Perhaps it's because I was expecting more than just eight hours to sink my teeth into, or maybe it was because I was having such a good time, I wasn't ready for it to end, but when I realized the game was done, I wasn't quite satisfied.
While the story of Sierra-1 is very much wrapped up, it's clear that Captain Price et al. still have more business to settle, presumably in Modern Warfare 5. It also felt like the two storylines never truly intersected, likely due to the fact that Price's missions all took place a few days prior to the South Korean storyline, like flashbacks. Narratively, I'm left with questions, but in terms of everything else Modern Warfare 4's campaign offers, this is one for the history books.