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When I hopped a flight to LA to get mitts-on with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, I expected the usual press briefing song and dance. Big explosions. Bigger promises. Maybe a bloke in a branded polo telling me this is “the most ambitious campaign yet” while a helicopter crashes through a building behind him on cue.
Instead, what I got from Infinity Ward was something far more specific: reassurance.
Because, let’s be blunt here, Modern Warfare III was a low-point in terms of campaigns. Not “internet outrage bad”. Not “fans are unimpressed a tad”. Properly disappointing. It felt rushed, strangely hollow, and weirdly stitched together with some Offline Warzone Lite. That yarn barely had time to breathe before it was over. Worse, it completely fumbled Vladimir Makarov. This was supposed to be the triumphant return of one of the franchise’s most iconic villains, yet the story never really gave him the menace, charisma, or sheer bastard energy fans were expecting.
The reboot trilogy had spent years building emotional investment around Captain Price, Soap MacTavish, and Task Force 141, only for MW3 to rush through its biggest moments with almost no payoff. There were no instantly legendary missions. No “All Ghillied Up”. No “Clean House”. Nothing that felt destined to sit alongside the series’ all-time greats.
And honestly, sitting in that demo room in LA, I got the distinct impression Infinity Ward knew it.
Everything they showed me, every mechanic they discussed, every story beat they enthusiastically unpacked felt specifically designed to address those criticisms. Structured pacing. Multiple perspectives. Huge cinematic warfare sequences. Character-driven tension. Proper globe-trotting espionage nonsense. Less “wander around an open area looting armour plates” and more classic Modern Warfare blockbuster energy.
And weirdly enough, one of the clearest signs Infinity Ward is trying to restore confidence came from something much smaller than collapsing skyscrapers or missile barrages.
It came from rolling a grenade under a truck like a sneaky little rat.
This is weirdly, specifically Australian of me, but the feature I’m most excited about in Modern Warfare 4 is the new underarm grenade roll. I love how inherently dirty it feels. There’s something wonderfully underhanded about it that immediately sends my brain to 1981 and arguably Australian cricket’s most shameful bowling incident.
Dropping somebody with one of these feels less tactical and more mischievous. Petty, even. My kind of murder.
But that’s not all. When designing MW4, Infinity Ward says they came up with a mantra on how it should look and feel.
“Slick and sophisticated, but still gritty and grounded with current military technology.”
This is the filter that every new thing they’ve built gets pushed through, be it drone assisted munitions or various other doodads that exist at the cutting edge of killin’ folks today.
I’m also told that they’ve taken a cue from the movie industry by bringing back some cinematic flair to firefights. You can see that best with incidental items loaded into levels which react to your wayward gunfire and grenades. Objects fly off shelves, potted plants dirt-burst into debris clouds, and, of course, fire hydrants go full H2-woah when you tag them.
Physics-wise, explosions which would ordinarily outright liquefy you or bathe your screen in angry red will physically hurl you via MW4’s new Shockwave mechanic. I was on the unfortunate receiving end of all of this and can confirm that it makes gun battles feel more organic and authentic.
Movement has undergone a player-frustration audit as well, but without tipping current era combat into exo-suit wall-running bollocks. You should know that MW4 does inch its traditional boots-on-the-ground shtick closer to Mirror’s Edge levels of player agency without feeling unfamiliar to MW tradition. My eagle eye noticed that IW has dug into its animations and movement sets to massage out some hitches and unoptimised transitions. You should be able to spot it in the trailers as well – an overall increase to fluidity.
Later I’m told that this is precisely what the team asked themselves.
“How do we make a sequel where the tactical player and fast-moving player types both feel like they’ve found the perfect shooter?”
After the first pass of oiling up anything existing that felt cumbersome or sluggish, the team added new ways to move, stuff like improved sliding, better mantling, and climbing that’s been (excuse the pun) rebuilt from the ground up.
Monkeying about in mantles isn’t something I thought I’d love to do in COD MP, but I bagged many a headshot with it while protecting my centre mass with a ledge. Chalk a lot of those kills up to the ability to dynamically lean from a ledge hang.
Quick note: cancelling out of a bad mantle position or scooting up and over in a pinch was nice and zippy too. In fact, IW has gone to great lengths to ensure that sliding out of a mantle with next to no momentum loss is a thing. I spammed this to great effect by slipping and sliding over multiple cars in a traffic jam like I was mogul skiing.
Rapid shimmying while in a mantle grip is chimpanzee-degrees of viable, too, should you feel the need to blast people like Nathan Drake. I was also taken by double-tapping to sprint-slide farther than usual and transition directly into a supine firing position via one uninterrupted movement chain. I’m going to abuse this so much that the constant skidding may render my camo pants into arseless chaps. A lower profile position to target groins with ruthless precision just says yes to me.
Now I’m going to take this conversation away from mechanical improvements and steer us into what the plot of MW4’s campaign entails. And I should probably issue a fair warning before we tread any further.
In their eagerness to convince me they are absolutely, positively not half-arsing MW4’s campaign, Infinity Ward may have gone a little too hard on the spoiler front. Seriously. These people were casually dropping plot points like they were reading ingredients off a cereal box.
So proceed at your own risk from here on out.
Me? I will always take too much information over another campaign that feels like it was assembled during a particularly stressful public holiday weekend. By pissed off interns.
Beyond the obvious continuation of John Price’s revenge quest, Infinity Ward is apparently handing roughly half the spotlight to a joint squad made up largely of South Korean conscripts.
That stage gets set when these greener-than-seaweed-soup rookies head out on a routine evening patrol through a South Korean city and suddenly find themselves inside a full-blown North Korean invasion. One moment it’s quiet streets and nervous banter. The next, missiles are dropping and artillery fire is turning the skyline into Michael Bay’s wettest dreams.
Nobody knows what’s happening. The FUBAR is all-you-can-eat. It’s basically trial by literal fire for three inexperienced soldiers and the embedded US officer assigned to guide them. Honestly, it sounds like fertile ground for some genuinely compelling grunt-level drama, especially as a counterbalance to the globe-trotting super-spy antics of Captain Price’s half of the story.
And speaking of Price, Infinity Ward says we’ll catch up with him quickly, already deep into his manhunt for Makarov while simultaneously being pursued by government forces himself.
Weirdly, this is where my demo handlers suddenly shifted from “careful tease” mode into full “spoilers be damned” territory.
So maybe skip the next couple paragraphs if you’re precious about surprises.
In just the second mission of the campaign, Price corners Makarov inside a nightclub and beats him to death. Not in a cutscene either. Infinity Ward says the confrontation unfolds in real-time using a new melee combat system.
You’re not getting off easy with a non-interactive cinematic, Vik. I’ll be taking my sweet time with you. For Soap.
Of course, killing Makarov that early apparently isn’t the ending. It’s the catalyst. Price quickly discovers much larger forces moving behind the scenes, specifically involving a WMD shipment destined for some extremely unpleasant people. The apparent plan becomes intercepting that delivery and creatively redirecting it back toward those awaiting it.
To pull off that spectacular little switcheroo, Price ends up forming an uneasy alliance with Valeria Garza, Mexican drug baroness and leader of the Las Almas Cartel. Which sounds like exactly the sort of relationship destined to produce constant betrayal, passive aggressive tension, and several enormously expensive explosions.
As with most Call of Duty campaigns, perspective shifts seem central to the pacing. One particularly intriguing sequence takes us inside North Korea itself, following a young regime loyalist referred to only as “The Daughter”. During our introduction to her, she’s leading a death squad tasked with hunting down a defector hiding inside an impoverished village.
And look, maybe I’m reading too much into Infinity Ward’s tone here, but every fibre of my being says they’re building toward another “No Russian” style atrocity moment. That’s purely gut instinct on my part, but the vibes are absolutely rancid in the best possible way.
Meanwhile, Price’s journey continues across Europe, eventually landing him and Valeria inside the French countryside where they board a train before being intercepted by hostile forces insisting they lack valid tickets. Which feels like the most aggressively French setup imaginable.
Naturally, this escalates into a sprawling escape sequence through a labyrinthine train yard packed with moving platform gameplay and what looked suspiciously like Infinity Ward attempting to recreate a playable action movie chase scene.
Then we’re thrown back into South Korea, where our rookie squad is desperately trying to hold the line amid the charred remains of their enemy-occupied city. Their objective is less “win the war” and more “keep civilians alive long enough to retreat in one piece”. Friendly forces are disorganised, panic is everywhere, and I imagine the main goal is to keep your squad brothers out of body bags (and thus away from some sort of awkward “Press F to pay respects” vignette).
Visually, the invasion scenes looked far more brutal than the average COD spectacle mission. Less triumphant heroism. More survival under catastrophic pressure. Me likey.
Later, we’ll apparently rejoin Price in Paris for a full-blown car chase sequence through the streets of the City of Love. Think peak Jason Bourne nonsense, possibly with a dash of Team America over-the-top monument abuse. Hanging from moving vehicles. Shooting out windows. Pistols being fired one-handed while someone screams around corners at irresponsible speeds. Proper blockbuster stupidity. I mean that affectionately.
There’s also a brief stop in Mumbai for reasons I suspect are way too spoilery to unpack fully, before the campaign pivots back toward North Korea again. This time, another member of the ruling family becomes the target of a coup attempt, with players controlling them during a frantic escape through an absurdly decadent palace.
And somehow Infinity Ward still wasn’t done spilling secrets to me.
The next time we regroup with our South Korean squad, the gameplay structure reportedly opens up significantly into a much larger combat space. Interestingly, this was one of the few sections the developers actively refused to show too much of, partly because it apparently isn’t fully finished yet, but also because they claimed things were finally entering actual spoiler territory.
Which is funny, because everything prior to that already sounded like somebody reading me the campaign wiki six weeks early.
Still, I can already guess where this is probably heading. The South Korean squad’s journey feels primed for a full-circle transformation from terrified conscripts into battle-hardened heroes, likely culminating in some gigantic counteroffensive to retake the city they were once forced to abandon. Infinity Ward mentioned a nearby nuclear facility, trench warfare against drones, and I also caught footage of what looked like a controllable tank section.
In other words: spectacle. Big, expensive, unapologetically cinematic spectacle.
And honestly? That’s exactly what Modern Warfare campaigns should be.
More than anything else, Infinity Ward seems desperate to reassure players that after the absolute shamozzle of MW3’s campaign, the series is returning to structured, globe-trotting blockbuster storytelling. The kind where you bounce between frontline warfare, spy-thriller nonsense, morally dubious alliances, and enough military hardware to bankrupt several smaller nations.
Whether they actually pull it off remains to be seen.
But for the first time in a while, Call of Duty’s campaign has my full and undivided attention again.
The author of this article was flown to LA as a guest of Activision to preview Modern Warfare 4.