What parents need to know
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is the newest installment in the military-flavored shooter mega-franchise Call of Duty (not to be confused with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and yes, we’d forgive you for the confusion).
This time, the story focuses on the conflict between the two Koreas. For part of the game (more details in the next few lines), you play as Park Hyun-Jun, a young Korean who completes his military service without much enthusiasm, but who finds himself immersed in the heart of the action while during a routine patrol in downtown Hajin (a fictional city similar to Seoul), he witnesses the invasion by North Korea, before being recruited by special forces who lead the counterattack.
Park is not the only protagonist in the campaign mode. You also play as John Price, an ex-British soldier who joins forces with the Mexican cartel to find “The Archer”, a mysterious figure who seems to be doing everything behind the scenes to accelerate the outbreak of the conflict.
That being said, the single-player campaign is not the only attraction of this title. In fact, most fans of the Call of Duty series play it mostly for its multiplayer mode. The online multiplayer mode offer is once again robust; there are 16 game modes at launch, ranging from the classic Team Deathmatch , in which you simply have to kill your opponents more often than the other way around, to the Hijack mode which asks you to hack into the other team’s computer systems without getting killed.
And as usual, the more you play, the more you level up, unlocking new weapons, cosmetic upgrades, and a host of other perks.
The big new feature of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is the return of the DMZ mode. It’s an Extraction mode (think Escape from Tarkov, if you’re familiar with this title); you’re sent to a disused area, teaming up with 2 other online players. You’re given a mission, which will require you to face enemies controlled by the computer or by other players (or both). You have to complete this mission and find your way to the helicopter that will get you out of this danger zone. For example, one of the missions asks you to find a general who is injured and being held hostage in a hospital and bring him back to the helicopter.
During our escapades, we find weapons and resources that we can bring back in our backpack whose space is limited in order to make upgrades or buy new equipment at the base camp. If we die during a mission, the equipment we brought is lost.
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
It’s a war game that is realistic in terms of violence. We see blood and organs. The title also shows us defenseless civilians murdered in cold blood.
There is no nudity strictly speaking.
It’s not a game that requires us to read a lot. On the other hand, the characters can use vulgar language.
Violence often seems to be the solution to all problems. The game seems to try to propose a moral according to which certain ethical lines must be respected, but again, this is more or less clear or consistent with the actions of the protagonists.
There are a lot of keys to remember if you want to use all your weapons and equipment. Online players have experience, and even though the game tries, as much as possible, to put you in competition with players of a similar level, you have to be patient if you’re a beginner.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is already an expensive game at its core, and the franchise is known for aggressive monetization that often offers us to dig deep into our pockets. Fortunately, the amount of content offered, and the great replayability, partly justifies the asking price.
Local game modes
Story Mode. It is not possible to play locally in multiplayer on Switch 2.
Online Game Modes
16 online game modes are available in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, in addition to the DMZ mode.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
Yes. The Vault Edition ($40 more than the base version) offers cosmetic bonuses, in-game currency to unlock bonuses faster, a battle pass and new characters for the online mode, among other things.
Our opinion
Before I give my opinion, I want to clarify something; I’ve played a few games in the Call of Duty franchise over the years (the last one being Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War), but I’m far from an expert on the franchise. I play online shooters occasionally, but I won’t impress anyone with my skills (that’s a polite way of saying I’m bad). So keep that in mind when reading this review: it’s a review from a Sunday shooter player, not a fan who knows all the intricacies of each of the 23 games (!!) in the series).
I had a great time with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. I started by completing the campaign, which I recommend to neophytes like me. In addition to enjoying completely insane means of production (the antagonist of the game is played by none other than Mads Mikkelsen) with absurd action scenes worthy of the biggest blockbusters, the campaign also serves in a way as a tutorial, presenting us with several of the weapons available and possible actions in Call of Duty.
I also needed practice, considering that I was regularly killed by regular enemies in the single-player mode, even though I was playing on normal difficulty.
I probably would have enjoyed the story even more if I was more familiar with the characters of the franchise (I had no idea who John Price is, who is an important figure in the title), but I still embarked on the proposed plot. The mission in which we witness the invasion of North Korea, very early in the game, is particularly successful. The developers have cleverly juxtaposed the banality of everyday life (when war breaks out, we are buying snacks in a convenience store) and the horror and destruction of war.
Well, don’t set the bar too high; the story of Call of Duty remains above all a pastiche of an American war movie; there are the good guys, the bad guys, and even if we lament the consequences of violence, it still settles everything.
But if you accept that you are offered an action movie with big explosions and pow pow, it’s easy to get caught up in the game and have fun.
The multiplayer mode continues to be a model for games of this genre. I only scratched the surface of the possibilities offered by the many modes offered, but it is still as satisfying (and stressful) as ever to play manhunt, even if I was more often the victim than the winner. The online structure is also robust; even when playing in wireless mode with my Switch 2, moving around my apartment, I only experienced a slight slowdown that did not affect my game in any significant way.
By the way, let’s take the time to make a little parenthesis here to talk about the Switch 2. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, the series is back on Nintendo’s consoles after 13 years (Call of Duty: Ghosts on Wii U was the last one). This is the version we tested, and it comes with its pros and cons.
Let’s get rid of the negative for starters. Visually, the Switch 2 does well despite being less powerful than the Playstation 5 or an Xbox Series X (and we’re not talking about cutting-edge gaming PCs), but the game doesn’t stand out for its beauty either. The textures are often a bit muddled, and the difference between the pre-rendered cutscenes and the cutscenes produced by the game engine is very easy to notice.
The other negative point of this Switch 2 version is that it is really a MASSIVE game for the Switch 2. When playing in handheld mode, the battery drains at a staggering rate. You will hardly be able to play for more than 2 hours without starting to look for your charger. And with its 91 GB, the title alone will take up more than a third of all the space available on the Switch 2’s internal memory. Buying the physical version won’t help you, since it’s simply a download code in a box.
The positive, now. Well, obviously, it’s always a plus to be able to play on a portable basis. I had to ride 8 hours of bus in a row last week, and CoD: MW4 helped make the journey go by quickly. The Switch’s controls are also particularly adapted to this shooter. You can use the mouse/joycon combo if you have a table in front of you, which allows you to have the best of both worlds between moving with a joystick and aiming with a mouse.
But I particularly liked the inclusion of gyroscopy in the aim. So, you can aim with the right stick like in any shooter, but refine your aim by tilting the controller slightly. Perfect for helping us aim at the head.
To close this parenthesis, let’s talk about the DMZ mode. The basic idea is robust and interesting, but the mode is imperfect. The fact that you are always in a team is less favorable to exploration and resource gathering, which is an essential aspect of this type of game. The mechanics are also quite little and poorly explained, which makes a player with little experience with the extraction shooter genre (I am one of them) will struggle to find his way around in the early days.
It’s a mode that could be refined, but adds a huge lifespan to this title.
In short, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the franchise: testosterone, explosions, people killing us online like small game, and a story that glorifies the military, enough to send shivers down Pete Hegseth’s spine.
But if you’re looking for action and adrenaline, you’ve come to the right place… even on Switch 2!
Note: a code has been given to us by the publisher for review purposes. This does not influence our opinion.
