The Guardian
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 review – a thrilling airport novel of a game 23 October 2026 at 07:00

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 review – a thrilling airport novel of a game

23 October 2026 at 07:00

Activision; PC, PS5, Switch 2, Xbox
From parkour over Manhattan rooftops and car chases in Paris to the climactic battle at a North Korean air base, the developers have thrown absolutely everything at the game

And so we return perhaps one final time to Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare strand, with stories, “ripped from the newspaper headlines”, featuring shady terror organisations, nefarious rogue states and the brutally capable, monosyllabic war fighters who stand between us and Armageddon. Last year’s Black Ops 7 instalment was a sales disappointment for Activision, and that has no doubt put extra pressure on Infinity Ward, the studio leading Modern Warfare 4 development. Fortunately, this developer – like series heroes Price, Gaz and Ghost – seems to thrive on pressure.

As you may have read, this year’s campaign is based around a fictitious North Korean ruling family that has seized an opportunity to invade its southern neighbour. Amid the chaos, a small group of Korean and American marines must help lead the fightback, while in the shadows, SAS hard man John Price makes an unlikely new comrade in his own morally ambiguous quest to put the world to rights. Mads Mikkelsen pops up as evil mastermind The Archer, but like Kiernan Shipka in Black Ops 7 he’s rather wasted, with very little screen time.

The Guardian
‘The audience gets to be in on it’: How narrative-led gameplay is Call of Duty’s greatest weapon 21 October 2026 at 17:00

‘The audience gets to be in on it’: How narrative-led gameplay is Call of Duty’s greatest weapon

The Guardian

By: Keith Stuart

21 October 2026 at 17:00

As video games chase spectacle, Modern Warfare 4 makes a case for putting character and consequence at the heart of its biggest battles

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In these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise’s bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to … the picturesque Scottish coast. Even more shocking to games writers, though, is the fact that the forthcoming Modern Warfare 4 has one of the best Call of Duty campaign modes for at least six years – and might even be up there with the original Modern Warfare trilogy.

The setting is an invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour – a setup that could have fuelled a hundred instantly forgettable Netflix films, but has proved controversial in a video game. The authoritarian regime has a new (fictitious) ruler and a powerful experimental weapon, which it’s not afraid to use as the opening gambit in an explosive attack. You take on the role of Park Hyun Jun, a conscripted South Korean soldier who, along with his small unit of similarly inexperienced grunts, gets caught in the firestorm as cities burn and enemy paratroopers fill the skies.