Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Beta Impressions

I’ve always been a Black Ops player over Modern Warfare. I love moving fast, I love jumping high, and I love killing zombies. I’ve given a few Modern Warfare games a good shot, but the only one I’ve really been able to get into is Modern Warfare III (the first one), so I went into both weeks of this Modern Warfare 4 Beta needing to be convinced.  

My biggest issue with Modern Warfare games has always been the movement, and unfortunately Modern Warfare 4 is no exception. The removal of Black Ops 7’s “omnimovement” is a major disappointment, it should have become a Call of Duty standard, and Modern Warfare 4 feels so slow in comparison. Even the sliding that’s still in the game feels stunted at times and fails to trigger occasionally. Modern Warfare thrives on the gunplay though, there’s a weight to shooting in Modern Warfare games that other studios always lack. Some guns need rebalancing, especially shotguns which felt very underwhelming when compared to the underbarrel shotgun on the assault rifles, which made up many of my best plays. The new climbing is a great new twist I haven’t seen advertised much, climbing pipes is a lot of fun.

The Beta also included a campaign mission. With only one story mission it’s a little hard to judge the campaign so far, but it was a fun mission with a range of different environments and gameplay styles.  The opening trench set piece was particularly great, and a familiar twist on a classic Call of Duty mission. It’s a great tutorial to the new parkour system, although maybe a little too “underwater level” towards the end. While we don’t get too much of an introduction to the cast, it’s always great to see more of Luke Tennie (Shrinking, The Pitt).

Across the Multiplayer section of the Beta there were around 6 or so maps by the end, all new. Your first impression of each of them comes from the really cool map logo that appears on a wall in front of your initial spawn for a few seconds. It’s a small touch but it’s a really cool intro to the maps. The maps themselves were overall pretty good, ranging from mid to small size, the mid sized ones having 3 lanes and the smaller ones being a bit too small for that and being extra chaotic.  Transit 213, an overgrown parking lot in India and the smallest of the maps, probably ended up being my favourite by the end despite not enjoying it at first. The wide open center makes for some real chaos, but once you learn the smaller paths and alleyways around the map it was a lot of fun and started to fit that classic chaotic small map mood like Shipment or Stakeout, even if it’s a little larger. Lithium, a South Korean lithium mine, was my least favourite as the urban camouflage tended to be a little too successful at times and enemies would be difficult to spot, which when combined with some very open objective points can be frustrating.

The Modern Warfare 4 Beta had a fairly basic array of gamemodes, with two new, or at least non-familiar additions: Inflation and Hijack.  Inflation is a twist on Team Deathmatch/ Kill Confirmed that involves players dropping cash when killed with the goal being to have the most cash. It’s pretty fun, especially towards the end once you realise who has the most money and you start having to protect them while hunting the other team’s high value target. Hijack is a little like Capture the Flag, except the flag is a “spike” that you can throw to players like a football, then you have to defend it for a while to gain points. Once you get past the silly technical jargon surrounding the gamemode, it’s pretty fun, although not quite as good as the similar Override mode from Black Ops 6.

Ground War is a fairly recent gamemode that feels a lot more like Battlefield than Call of Duty with larger maps and vehicles. Ironically, its biggest weakness is how it wasn’t Battlefield, as Ground War involves the control of 3 points around a larger map vs Battlefield’s 5. This led those 3 points to be either filled with players at all times or absolutely empty, it felt like having more points would keep the game flowing a lot more. The spawn points on any contested point were also absolutely terrible, the amount of times I spawned in just to die within a second was ridiculous. Smaller maps at a fast pace are typically the draw for Call of Duty Multiplayer, so Ground War just doesn’t work for me and Modern Warfare 4’s version is no different. It’s also only 4-player squads despite being a massive team, which is such a pain when you have a 5-player squad.

Modern Warfare 4’s big new thing, Kill Block, was a lot of fun despite being the type of slower gamemode that doesn’t normally appeal to me. With maps made up of 3 randomised segments, every game is at least a little unique, especially with the randomised classes as well. Once the game expands it’s gun selection a little I can see this mode being even better, it’s nice to have a gamemode that brings you out of your comfort zone a little with the varied weapons and never being able to fully learn a map. With both 3v3 and 10v10 modes, this one was a lot of fun.

With a new Resurgence Warzone map, it was a great way to get a feel of how Warzone will play with Modern Warfare 4. Having only really gotten into Warzone during the Black Ops 7 lifecycle, I don’t have too much to compare it to but it definitely doesn’t feel that different. The map itself is a pretty standard Warzone map with a nice range of environments. Aside from movement, there weren’t too many notable changes, although I did find myself accidentally shooting my teammates a lot. The new range of killstreaks were fun but the lack of a grappling hook made the slower mobility even slower. They definitely seem to have increased the other player volume, which was quite fun at times and even led to a clutch victory or two.

While it may have taken facing the less experienced players of the open beta for the game to fully click for me, I had an absolute blast with the two open beta weekends and the additional draw of DMZ leaves me pretty excited for Modern Warfare 4. The menu system may need a lot of work, but I’m hoping that’s just a beta issue that’ll be fixed for the main game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23rd on PS5, XBOX Series X/S, PC and Switch 2. Pre-order below and we’ll get a small kickback!