Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Review - Somehow, The Glory Days Returned

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Published Oct 19, 2026, 10:28 AM EDT

Modern Warfare 4 had a tough time on its hands bringing the story into line, but it does an amazing job of just that in a relatively limited runtime.

It's no secret that Call of Duty campaigns haven't hit the heights players expect in recent releases, regardless of which branch of the franchise it comes from. Both Black Ops and Modern Warfare have understandably prioritized other modes, but that really didn't need to happen at the expense of the campaign as a whole.

It wasn't always this way either. We all remember how spectacular the storytelling was in the earlier entries, peaking between the debut of Soap McTavish in the original Modern Warfare, through the sequel and into the first Black Ops title. That essence has been lost along the way, and many saw little hope of recapturing it.

Modern Warfare 4 steps into that unfortunate landscape as a seemingly unlikely candidate to right the single-player ship and bring back to the fore a long-underappreciated element of the series. Almost unbelievably, it pulls off a remarkable job of doing just that, and it shows that there's more than a little life left in the old dog yet.

A Change In Locale

Coming into Modern Warfare 4, the story of the rebooted series is actually at a crucial juncture, though you could be forgiven for not being too familiar with that concept, given the delivery of the narrative to date. The events at the end of Modern Warfare 3 have seen Captain Price head out on the run, where his efforts take on a more covert and clandestine approach from here on out.

That's all simple enough, but the wider landscape around Price's story and his role within it has been muddied for a long time, and so many elements of it felt superfluous that something quite drastic was needed to get it back on track. Happily, that's what the developer has decided to do here, killing off a bunch of people and putting the kibosh on additional elements that felt like nothing more than filler in the preceding games.

From there, we step into Price's shoes for around half of the campaign, where most of his missions take place in the week or so leading up to a North Korean invasion of their neighbors to the South. This serves as the main point of continuation for those invested in the previous games, and it's a compelling enough premise to get us through from start to finish.

The other half of the campaign sees players step into the steel-toecap boots of Private Park and his squad, as they defend their homeland from invasion in the story's "present day" element. You'll be switching back and forth between Price and Park, as the former works to stop the plans that are being carried out in Park's portion of the narrative.

It's in South Korea, though, where the game really starts to come to life, and the role of Park and his unit is to really drive home the stakes of the game as a whole. The fact is that, for once in the Call of Duty series, we are playing as ordinary soldiers, rather than elite special forces who have spent their whole lives on battlefields of one kind or another.

Many of those fighting on the frontlines in the game's conflagration are doing their mandatory military service, thrust into battle thanks to nothing more than a curse of bad timing. As the story wears on, we learn about each member of Park's team, and the game does a great job of humanizing them and adding humor, in a series that has too often refused to take risks on straying from the classic soldier archetype.

In turn, that drives up the stakes significantly, and it quickly became clear to me that I cared about what happens to these people, all of whom are trapped in a situation that they could scarcely have imagined a few weeks previously.

Missions Have Meaning

One thing the developers have done an excellent job of around the main conflict is adding depth of character on all sides. Where previous games may have made the North Korean forces carbon-copy soldiers with no identity, the breadth of the campaign actually explores their perspective on the whole thing as well, boiling it all down to the fundamental fact that everyone, on both sides, is a human being.

Flowery as that sounds, it isn't. In fact, the game feels considerably grittier because of it, a real reflection on the consequences of war for the ordinary citizens who are caught up in it. It's a theme that the older games in the series did considerably better than the more recent ones, and it's nice to see it return in earnest here.

Arguably, the opening mission, Mayhem, is the one that drives all of that home most effectively. The invasion comes in a flash, and it's clear that we're on the losing side from the outset, outmatched and outgunned, not to mention being entirely unprepared for a fight on that scale in any sense. All around the player, everything is collapsing, and there's very little we can do about it as an individual, instead focusing on small actions to save as many people as we can, all while under heavy fire.

It's oppressive and realistic in its approach, thrusting the dirt and grime of urban warfare into the player's face from the off. Variety is added by missions that bring you out of that scenario, however briefly. Stranded is the one that pops to mind immediately, as the player is caught behind enemy lines north of the border.

This basically serves as the developer's attempt to lean more towards sandbox gameplay, rather than the entirely linear approach you'll find elsewhere in the campaign. It's also a bit of a preview of the DMZ extraction mode you'll find elsewhere in the game, as you search for supplies and resources and craft items to facilitate your escape.

It's Very Good To Be Back

All in all, the campaign is the most successful Call of Duty campaign those in charge have produced in along time. The overall story has been trimmed down, and elements that simply didn't need to be there have been removed. At the same time, the stakes have been raised, and the way the story has been told does a great job of creating emotional investment in the player, something which games in the series have struggled with for years.

That said, it's something of a game of two halves, and returning to Price's activities once you have been at the forefront of the war in Korea can be a little jarring. That's not to say that side of the campaign is poor by any stretch, it just isn't quite as immensely strong as the other side of the coin.

Equally, playing as Price does add some much-needed variety, and the sillier side of the equation where you go all John Wick and take out hundreds of enemies on your own is very satisfying. It doesn't quite manage to wrestle the crown away from the very best campaigns in the over two decades since the series started, but it's easily the best since the reboot and it's not even close.

Modern Warfare 4 should do a great job of restoring the faith many have lost in the series' single-player portions, and it's a lesson to the developer that Call of Duty is at its best when it's a multi-faceted beast that offers something for those who prefer single-player experiences. Overall, it's a thrilling, worthwhile journey that's well worth playing through in its own right, and a welcome return to form for a series that had seemingly lost its way in recent years.