Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (2026) Review

There are only three sure things in life: death, taxes, and the annual release of Call of Duty. There's been a new entry in the franchise every single year since 2005, following a one-year gap after the original game's 2003 release. Some have been excellent, others awful, but taken as a whole, the series has remained remarkably consistent over 23 years and 23 games. The newest entry, Modern Warfare 4, doesn’t buck that trend. It’s the best Call of Duty since 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot, even if it falls short of the original Modern Warfare and Black Ops trilogies. As first-person shooters go, it’s comfortably above average.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Modern Warfare 4 doesn’t do much differently than previous entries. There’s a bombastic campaign, a PvPvE mode called DMZ, and the series’ trademark multiplayer. Taking place at the outset of a Korean War gone hot, or at least hotter, it more or less ditches the confusing timeline from the three most recent Modern Warfare games. The 10-hour-long single-player campaign focuses on Captain Price, the moustachioed bloke with a funny hat, and wraps up Task Force 141’s story. It also spends a lot of time establishing a new squad of Korean and American Marines. And it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.

No, you didn’t read that wrong. Modern Warfare 4’s campaign does in fact last around ten hours. There are 16 missions that alternate between the series’ familiar special operations and the slightly less familiar conventional infantry combat. The former doesn’t offer anything particularly new, although playing as Captain Price is enjoyable and narratively satisfying. Within the first couple of hours, a huge chunk of the characters you’ve probably forgotten from previous games are killed off. The remaining Price-focused missions bring his story to a satisfying close, while the new squad offers a welcome change of perspective.

The parts of the game that focus on new characters are more interesting. Not since 2017's WWII has Call of Duty featured such a strong cast of workaday grunts, with missions that actually make sense for ordinary soldiers to undertake. The members of Sierra-1, the squad you fight alongside when you aren't playing as Price, aren't superhuman protagonists. They're ordinary soldiers just trying to survive a war. They make jokes, get hurt, and occasionally die during anticlimactic cutscenes. Save for one exceptionally well-designed mission that plays out like a toned-down version of Far Cry, Sierra-1's campaign is a bog-standard, if well-made, linear shooter.

Compared to the crap that passed for a campaign in 2023’s Modern Warfare III, or whatever the hell happened in Black Ops 7, Modern Warfare 4 is refreshing. There are no terrible “open combat” bot matches, no nonsensical dream sequences, and no idiotic boss fights. Just a stream of well-designed linear missions that are fun to play through while watching cutscenes that tell an interesting story. That’s what the series has traditionally done well, and it’s nice to see the developers remember it this year.

The campaign isn't the only part of Modern Warfare 4 that sticks to a familiar formula. This year's obligatory third mode is DMZ, an extraction shooter that plays exactly how you’d expect. If you’ve played any entry in the series, and have at least dabbled in something like Escape from Tarkov, you know what you’re getting. At the start of each match, you drop onto a sprawling map, either alone or with a couple of buddies. Then, over the course of 45-odd minutes, you try to loot anything that’s not nailed down while trying to avoid running into other players.

DMZ isn’t bad. It’s also not great. It exists in a weird spot inside of Call of Duty, and within the extraction shooter genre as a whole. The mode is too casual to warrant a serious comparison to titles where picking the wrong type of foregrip will make your weapon combat ineffective. There’s no nuanced ballistics or health mechanics, and you’re seldom at risk of losing an irreplaceable piece of gear. But you also have to constantly worry about other players sniping you from across the map, so it’s too punishing to play while zoning out. DMZ has no glaring flaws and plenty of story missions, but that only makes the obvious question harder to ignore: why bother with it in the first place?

If you want to play a version of Warzone that lets you gun down AI and other players, you can just play Warzone during one of its seasonal events. Fans of actual extraction shooters have dozens of dedicated games to play. And if you want to get your dopamine fix by unlocking new weapons, well…

That’s where Modern Warfare 4’s multiplayer comes in. This year's iteration doesn't even pretend to reinvent the wheel. Instead, the mode is the straightforward experience you already know if you like. Gone is the convoluted weapon-unlocking system from Modern Warfare II and III. There aren’t Black Ops 6’s omnimovement mechanics here. Vanguard’s comical arsenal doesn’t make an appearance. There are 50 player levels for you to work through, the option to prestige your character for bragging rights, and a sizable number of guns to use while you enjoy the hitmarker and headshot sound effects.

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‍Modern Warfare 4 doesn’t present the best multiplayer experience of all time. It’s the most reliably enjoyable Call of Duty multiplayer in years, though. Nothing feels fundamentally broken, and everything works well. Matchmaking is reliable, and the guns are satisfying to use. There are twelve excellent maps at launch for the standard 6v6 modes, alongside a colossal amount of content to unlock. Whenever you decide to boot up the game, there’s always something you’ll want to do, and you get to do it without worrying about the problems that have plagued the series for years.

Which is, ultimately, what Modern Warfare 4 is about. Which is, ultimately, what Modern Warfare 4 is about. It isn't the best Call of Duty of all time, but it's the one you'll resent playing the least until you probably buy next year's instalment. The campaign delivers what the series is known for, DMZ gives you something to do when you aren't in the mood for Warzone, and multiplayer is a dopamine-inducing time sink. It's the game you'll boot up when you want to play something without thinking too much. Or, if you've decided long ago that you don't like quasi-modern, quasi-mindless warfare, you'll skip it entirely.