Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Review: The Best CoD in 15 Years, With Caveats

Modern Warfare 4 Review: The Comeback Is Real

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launched on October 23, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and, for the first time in 13 years, Nintendo Switch 2. It is the best-reviewed Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 3 in 2011: an 85 on Metacritic from 42 reviews (95 percent positive, none negative), an 85 on OpenCritic with 95 percent of critics recommending it, and a Steam user rating that peaked at 94 percent positive before settling around 80 percent, still Very Positive. GameSpot scored it 8 out of 10. IGN gave the campaign an 8. GamesRadar+ went to 90. Game Informer gave it 8.5, and The Outerhaven handed out a rare 100.

Our verdict is an 8.5. The campaign earns the praise, the rebuilt DMZ earns the surprise, and the multiplayer earns the caveats. This is the first Call of Duty in years that feels like a return to form rather than a holding pattern, and it is also a game that still has real problems in the mode most people will play the most.

The Campaign Steals the Show

The campaign is the reason to buy Modern Warfare 4 at full price if you play alone. Sixteen missions, roughly six to nine hours depending on your pace, set against a North Korean invasion of South Korea and told through dual perspectives. It closes Captain Price's arc in the rebooted saga with dignity, and it introduces ordinary soldiers alongside the familiar faces, which gives the story a ground-level weight the series has often skipped.

Critics were near-unanimous on this point. GameSpot called it the best campaign since 2019. IGN said it made them feel something for the series again. The set pieces are strong, the pacing holds, and the Korean backdrop gives the game a visual identity that stands apart from the desert towns and European cities of recent entries. The ending lands, which is more than most Call of Duty campaigns manage.

It is not flawless. GameSpot flagged weak final boss fights, and a few missions are short and uneven. The campaign is also, at six hours, on the shorter side for a game that costs $69.99. But as a single-player experience, it is the best the series has produced in years, and it sets a standard the rest of the package has to live up to.

Multiplayer: Solid, Familiar, Occasionally Dull

Multiplayer is the hardest part of Modern Warfare 4 to recommend without qualification. The gunplay is good: movement is heavier and more deliberate than Black Ops 7, the removal of hipfire bloom makes close-range fights more readable, and the launch package is large, with 20 maps, 33 weapons, more than 12 modes, 17 killstreaks and 33 operators. Ground War returns at 32 versus 32 in the spirit of Battlefield, and the maps include inventive ideas like Kill Block.

Kill Block is the launch's genuinely new multiplayer idea: a modular battleground built from three slabs that reconfigure between matches, so the same map plays differently from one round to the next. It is the kind of experiment Call of Duty needs more of, and it works. The problem is that the rest of multiplayer plays it safe. IGN's review-in-progress called the multiplayer duller than expected, with new maps and modes that do not always justify their gimmicks, and that judgment has held up since launch.

The recurring complaints are familiar ones: strict skill-based matchmaking, awkward spawns, and a Gunsmith system that has grown bloated with attachments. These are fixable problems, and seasonal patches usually address them, but they are real right now. If you mainly play multiplayer, the campaign's excellence does not excuse a spawn that kills you three seconds after you load in. Our launch-week loadouts guide and best settings guide will help you get the most out of it while Infinity Ward tunes the rest.

DMZ Is the Surprise of the Package

The rebuilt DMZ extraction mode may end up being the reason people stay. It is the mode reviewers kept coming back to: GamesRadar+ called it their favorite multiplayer game of the year, and GameSpot praised the DMZ changes alongside the campaign. The loop is more robust than the original DMZ, with proper progression, clearer objectives, and a reason to extract carefully instead of rushing the nearest exfil.

There are catches. DMZ is no longer free, which locks out the players who tried the original without buying the game. It has only six story missions at launch, and the Vault Edition gives buyers an advantage inside the mode, which is a bad look for a competitive extraction game. Those are legitimate complaints, and they keep DMZ from being an unqualified success. But as a mode, it is the most interesting thing in the package after the campaign, and it gives Modern Warfare 4 a second reason to keep playing after the credits roll. Our DMZ guide for the Hajin FOB covers the first steps.

The Verdict

Modern Warfare 4 is the best Call of Duty in 15 years, and the scoreboard says so: 85 on Metacritic against 65 for last year's Black Ops 7, a 19-point jump, and the highest for the franchise since 2011. The campaign is superb, DMZ is a genuine surprise, and the multiplayer is solid rather than spectacular. The caveats are real: matchmaking, spawns, a bloated Gunsmith, a paid DMZ with a Vault Edition edge, and no Game Pass at launch.

Buy it if you want the best Call of Duty campaign in years and a DMZ mode worth your evenings. Wait for a sale if you only play multiplayer and the launch issues bother you. Either way, this is the entry that makes the series feel alive again, and that is worth something after years of diminishing returns. Season 1 started on November 6, so the tuning and new content are already arriving, and the multiplayer complaints are the kind that patches usually fix. For the rest of our Modern Warfare 4 coverage, see our launch guide and our Warhammer Survivors review.

Sources: scores from Metacritic and OpenCritic, with individual verdicts from IGN, GameSpot, GamesRadar+ and Game Informer as reported in launch coverage.