Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta review – the slow road to redemption

Activision is on the backfoot heading into Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and there’s only so much they can change in just a year.

Call Of Duty is in a weird place in 2026. Last year’s instalment, Black Ops 7, represented a low for the franchise in several ways – between its weak sales against Battlefield 6, the terrible campaign, and the fact that its failures prompted a semi-apology from Activision. The series is still a juggernaut, but it’s now at a point where there’s more enthusiasm around ports of old games from over a decade ago, rather than the latest entry, Modern Warfare 4. 

With all that context, the decision to include, for the first time, a campaign mission in a Call Of Duty beta doesn’t feel like an act of confidence – but an attention-grabbing plea to get fans back onside. In the upcoming open beta, which starts from Friday, August 28, it’s also throwing in access to Warzone’s new map called Zodiac, so there’s a sense it’s trying to hit every shade of Call Of Duty player in one swoop. 

However, for all its touted changes to gunplay, and its new Korean setting, there’s little in this beta to distinguish Modern Warfare 4 from what’s come before. There are some neat additions, but if you’re hoping for some kind of meaningful evolution, this beta presents an unconvincing case for why you should invest in the next entry. 

Bizarrely, considering it was a headline attraction, the included campaign mission is vigorously unimpressive. The mission, entitled Entrenched, is set in South Korea and sees you control Park Hyun Jun, who, alongside his South Korean squadmates and a cluster of US marines, is trying to stop a nuclear power station from falling into North Korean hands. 

It kicks off with claustrophobic trench warfare, segues into a clumsy vehicle section where you blast enemy clusters with rockets, before you lead a push to take out a tank by lambasting it with thermite grenades. It’s tired, by-the-numbers Call Of Duty, which climaxes with an escape from the burning station to show off Modern Warfare 4’s new, smoother traversal system.

When placed next to the best missions from Black Ops 6, like the casino breakout High Rollers, it’s incredibly forgettable. The biggest crime is, despite being set in South Korea, the location feels interchangeable from any other battlefield. In fact, if it wasn’t for the names of the South Korean squadmates (who all speak English here, to accommodate the US soldiers presumably), we’d forget it was set in Korea at all. 

The reworked traversal mechanics are better showcased in the Mobility Course. There have been training courses in past Call Of Duty games, but here it’s been fleshed out with a more elaborate design across three different difficulties. For newbies trying to keep up with the best online, it’s a neat tool to learn the movement’s subtleties, as you vault, slide, and dive between lasers – while shooting targets – to rack up the fastest time. 

While omnimovement has been removed, as a way to distinguish Black Ops from Modern Warfare titles, developer Infinity Ward has made traversal transitions more fluid, so hopping between ladders, ledges and combat slides feels satisfying to execute. However, some of the new abilities, like shooting while hanging off ledges, feel somewhat pointless when you’re rarely ever in a situation to take advantage of them. 

If anything, based on the five 6v6 maps available in the beta, Modern Warfare 4 feels like a throwback to tighter, more condensed design. Sometimes it yields great results like the standout Rooftops, which feels like a classic in the making – with plenty of routes through doorways, windows, and elevated walkways to gain the upper hand. 

Others, however, like Transit 213, set in an Indian bus depot, are too chaotic and simplistic to generate any tactical advantages. Some of the best Call Of Duty maps are designed to be hectic, like Nuketown from Black Ops, but even they have some flexibility to how you can approach situations – something which is missing in some of the smaller maps here, including the Korean shopping district Silkworm. 

It’s a mixed bag across the other two maps too. Lotus, set in Korea, is another highlight because it’s larger and has some breathing space, with opportunities to execute surprise attacks through its verticality. The other, Cachette, is a suffocating mess and – like other maps here without much cover – its problems are only exacerbated when you have killstreak gunships and drones flying overhead.

The most promising map addition is Kill Block, a modular arena which changes its layout across three interchangeable slabs every two rounds. In the beta, you can play on this map in 3v3 or 10v10 Gunfights, where every player is handed the same randomised loadout in each round. 

Gunfight is as tense as ever, with no respawns in each round, but the shape-shifting map adds an extra layer of spontaneity so matches rarely ever repeat in quite the same way. The intricacies of each slab might be figured out pretty quickly by hardcore players, even as they shift around, but it’s an interesting shake-up regardless. 

A couple of promising maps and a neat assault course, however, aren’t strong reasons to stay invested in Modern Warfare 4’s promise. This beta might be an ill-judged first glimpse, but if this represents the best of what’s on offer in the next entry, Call Of Duty’s wobbly era won’t be ending anytime soon. 

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