The early access beta test for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4, which ran over the penultimate August weekend, delivers exactly what players expect from a Modern Warfare title: quasi-authentic boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. The game is set for release on PC, PS5, Switch 2 and Xbox on 23 October.
Weapons and gadgets
The weapons and general gunplay are highly effective, from the default assault rifle, the Han 86 – a classic CoD beginner’s gun with decent fire rate and handling – to the bullet-spraying Nightshade SMG and the lethal KG-7 Vulcan sniper rifle. They all feel good to hold and fire, and there is enough balance to let you experiment with more offbeat options like the burst-fire Hyeon AR and the possibly overpowered Mar-9 marksman rifle.
Joining the refreshed armoury are an interesting array of field upgrades. The smoke wall creates a wall of smoke, hiding your movements in theory, and the razor-wire trap slows enemies down while sapping their health. New kill streaks include Artillery Beacon, which lets you throw a beacon at a specific point that is then bombarded with missiles, and Wheelson, a remote control mini tank that fires a grenade launcher.
Maps and modes
A modest selection of small-ish maps was available for the weekend. Silkworm is a slab of South Korean cityscape with minimarts and alleyways, while Transit 213 is a public transport depot with two parked buses at its centre and generous sightlines for snipers. Cachette, a labyrinth of farm buildings, workshops and courtyards, felt a little over-familiar, but Lotus, a larger harbourside map, brought in interesting long-range combat. The favourite was Rooftops, which takes place on the connected summits of two ageing New York high rises, with multi-levelled maintenance rooms, industrial laundries, and open areas where water towers, exhaust fans and service ramps provide cover.
New modes accompany classics such as Team Deathmatch, Domination and Kill Confirmed. The key example is Kill Block, a ten v 10 gun fight in a training camp that is reconfigured between rounds, providing hundreds of different layouts. Like Search and Destroy, there are no respawns, so it is a fight to the death. The result is absolute carnage.
Feel and campaign
After the first day of the early access beta, gaming content creator Farzam referred to MW4 as the TikTok of gaming. Everything happens fast; time-to-engagement is counted in microseconds, and if you blink, you are dead. On every stretch of every map there is something to catch your attention, from exploding oxygen tanks to flickering video screens. You are not playing so much as doomscrolling an inescapable cognitive cacophony.
The omni-movement system introduced in Black Ops 6 has been removed in favour of an ostensibly more naturalistic and controlled alternative. In practice, there is no friction at all in the landscape, so you can skid round corners and scale walls with superhero abandon. It is fun and fluid, but open to abuse: some players leap and twirl about the place as though performing in a particularly harrowing production of Swan Lake.
For the first time in a CoD beta test, there is a Campaign mission to try. Named Entrenched, it starts with a trench you must battle through against North Korean troops until you reach a power station. Then it is a battle against time as you look to flood the reactor to prevent a catastrophic meltdown, before indulging in some parkour to escape the collapsing infrastructure.
Ultimately, the game feels like what it is – a very modern Modern Warfare where your most effective weapons are lightning reflexes and superhuman concentration. Diving round a corner and taking out two enemies in one burst remains as thrilling now as it was when the original Modern Warfare came out in 2007. There is a lot more competition out there now, though, and Call of Duty itself is starting to creak at the joints. The beta is yelling “I’ve still got it!” – but have the players? Money will be tight this autumn, and GTA 6 is standing at the bar, winking suggestively, beckoning us over.
