Over the weekend the Gamer Social club team managed to get several hours in Modern Warfare 4’s first beta to get a feel for 2026’s entry to the world’s biggest shooter franchise. The beta takes place over two weekends with the second taking place this coming weekend (including on Switch 2), that is a stacked offering with many modes, maps and even a campaign mission for players to get a feel of the full package which launches this October.

Following a lacklustre reception to Black Ops 7, Activision has a lot at stake with Modern Warfare 4 which will need to secure a passionate, dedicated player base ahead of the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19. Team GSC were delighted to see the Modern Warfare sub franchise look away from the settings and story of the recent Modern Warfare titles. Modern Warfare 4’s locations which focuses heavily on a fictional war in the Korean Peninsula peaked our interest from the get go.

The returning DMZ mode, which we haven’t had hands on with yet, even features a fictional map, Hajin which spans the highly frictional border territories (in real life) of Russian, North Korea (or, DPRK) and South Korea. And as big fans of Call of Duty’s short but often very sweet campaigns, we have been hotly anticipating a campaign which leans heavily into the location. MW4 has taken the bold decision to include a campaign mission in this Call of Duty beta for the very first time, and you can read our thoughts ahead.

Based on this very early taste we’ve had of MW4, there is a solid COD foundation with some welcome additions, but this is a title lacking soul. Below you can read our thoughts on multiplayer including the new Kill Block mode and the campaign mission.

Gameplay and Quality of Life Upgrades

Modern Warfare 4’s gameplay and gunplay feels like a concoction of the three prior Modern Warfare titles, perhaps more MW2019 if we were to liken it to one over the others. The game is more vertical than other franchise entries and we were surprised to be able to reach rooftops that in older titles would have been invisibly barriered away.

Though there is more verticality with mantling and general climbing, Modern Warfare 4’s movement feels more methodical. Gone is the wall jumping – though there are indeed still players who are almost playing Halo jumping corners, but there wasn’t a skill gap where it felt like that was necessary – and we were able to hold our own just running and gunning.

MW4’s gunplay is clean and shooting feels great. We spent much of our time with high mobility LMGs – with Mark’s beloved OG Warzone Finn LMG making a comeback – and SMGs. The introduction of Apex Attachments, a unique weapon attachment unlocked at the highest level of each gun, made the progression rewards feel valuable. An underbarrel shotgun on a pistol was an excellent emergency use accessory and we can’t wait to have a go with all of them once unlocked at launch, which should be more accessible with a much-requested streamlined weapon progression system.

The TTK is very quick for a Call of Duty game, and you can feel yourself getting killed quicker than Black Ops titles. With a faster TTK, I found that sniping has become a little more challenging, at least with the limited sample size of the Signal-50 sniper. The reduced time to be gunned down means those extra few milliseconds to line up a perfect chest shot under fire is tougher, which we think will be welcomed by the COD community.

There’s a 6v6 new mode in Modern Warfare 4 that we rather enjoyed, Inflation. Inflation plays like a blend of Kill Confirmed and Warzone’s Plunder. By killing enemy players, they will drop cash that you must run over to collect and stockpile. But by killing too many, or by holding too much cash, you’ll be marked for all enemies to target you so they can come and take your bounty. It feels like you have constantly have an Advanced UAV hanging over you as players throw grenades and charge your way. If you were to play this as a team of 6 with microphones, you could make a concerted defence of your cash, but in a cross-platform beta it was just mindless, chaotic fun.

There are some additive quality of life additions too. If you are getting decimated by the same person you can copy their loadout straight from the Kill Cam. So, if you have the attachments unlocked you can try out other people’s gun builds without waiting for the post-game. There is also the Gunny NPC who can help you build for a certain playstyle.

Kill Block

Kill Block is Modern Warfare 4’s new marquee addition, and from what I’ve played it is going to be loved by the community. The Kill Block is an ever-changing small map that rotates itself several times during a match, jigsawing three different ‘blocks’ of play space for players to take out the enemy team on.

Kill Block is a 10v10 or 3v3 Gunfight – if you’ve not played Gunfight it is a one life, no respawn game mode requiring the team to take out the other that had become popular during Modern Warfare 2019 but was played 2v2. This time the play space has grown, the stakes are raised and there’s a lot more fun to be had. Forever a franchise steeped in map nostalgia, Kill Block incorporates small sections of Call of Duty classics – such as Shoot House, Crash and others – and attaches them to new fresh terrain. We found that both 10v10 and 3v3 are great ways to play, offering different tactics and approaches scalable to the player size.

The feeling of Kill Block being an expanded Search and Destroy will quickly disappear as every few rounds space changes, as does the loadout provided to players. Restrictive weapons and equipment push players to avoid using meta guns available to them in standard 6v6 game modes. If you’re getting hammered by a sniping pro for a couple of rounds, fear not as in little time the rotation will be an SMG, or shotgun allowing you to get up close and personal. Kill Block can appear in over 500 combinations and because the map changes so frequently, there isn’t enough time for you or enemy teams to continually use the same effective strategies. It’s a smart way to shake up the versus multiplayer alongside traditional 6v6 and Ground War modes.

Kill Block is great for a palette cleanser too. There were several times over the weekend when we had tired of getting destroyed by early meta builds, but jumping into Kill Block allowed me to have loadout parity with my enemies. This could be a very popular mode for casual players with little time to play, and little time to level guns for core 6v6 or Ground War modes. The developers are planning new content for Kill Block post-launch and I’m very much looking forward to playing more.

Maps

Between 6v6 multiplayer and Kill Block there’s a solid sample size of maps in this beta. Overall, the maps were solid in design with plenty of tight choke points, sniper lanes and ways to outflank enemies. We particularly liked Rooftops and Lotus.

Rooftops is similar to maps seen in the franchise previously. A map with lower ground spawn points and an ascended three lane centre creates space for grenade (or throwing knife) spam from spawn to the expected routes of foes that you’ve no possible way to see. Controlling the centre of the map can enable you to get the high ground on the enemy team rather easily, however there’s enough corners and routes to escape if you’re trapped. Rapidly rotating spawns give you the opportunity to come back to life on the other side in quick time for a reprieve. It’s a good-looking map too with street art sprayed across the walls, at least until the bullet holes replace provide a deathly overlay.

Then there’s Transit 213, Modern Warfare 4’s answer to Shipment or Shoot House – the former will almost certainly will arrive post launch. A small map with tight lanes, generous sight lines and perfect channels to launch explosives, Transit 213 is a bombastic kill box where players are going to be able to level guns and camo grind efficiently. With two buses in the centre as cover and a wider player motorway of death, there is nowhere to hide in this map. There are a few spots where you can climb up to catch respawning enemies as they try to get back in the fight but your life expectancy in Transit 213 isn’t going to very high. We were torn on this one at GSC with Mark thoroughly enjoying it, but Brett finding himself respawning to a rather instant death all too frequently.

Campaign

As mentioned earlier, we are very excited by the Modern Warfare 4 campaign. Admittedly, recent Call of Duty campaigns have been lacklustre and Modern Warfare 3’s is regarded as one of the worst in the series 20+ year history, but a fresh story, new characters and locations gave us hope.

There is one campaign mission in the beta, ‘Entrenched’ takes place in the front line trenches and a nuclear facility in Korea. Largely boots on the ground with a short section controlling an armoured, weaponised vehicle. After playing through the ~20-minute mission on Veteran difficulty, I walked away rather disappointed. Aside from quite an exciting exfil to the chopper at the end of the mission, there is very little here that we haven’t seen before.

The mission has you clearing out a series of North Korean soldiers from the trenches before entering the facility, in a very linear assault. En route you’ll take out an enemy armoured vehicle with some thermite grenades but it’s all something you’ve done many times before. I’m really hoping the Korean setting is leaned more into for the full campaign come October, with more entertaining action sequences the series is known for.

Recent COD campaigns have tried to shoehorn in elements of multiplayer and they are entirely unnecessary. Most frustratingly is armour, which if you don’t have playing on Veteran difficulty, you’re less than a reaction time away from death. Veteran has always been firm but fair but the lack of health without armour provides for immense frustration and being spawn killed at the checkpoints by NPCs.

The campaign will be coming one week early for players who purchase the game digitally.

Performance

Call of Duty is often a polished release and the game performed well during the beta. Crisp graphics that have the look of Modern Warfare (2019) and Modern Warfare 2 (2022). However, considering this is the first Call of Duty to skip XBOX One and PlayStation 4 consoles, we would have expected there to be a notable visual upgrade, particularly to character models. On this, I do acknowledge that MW4 will be coming to Switch 2 this year, the first COD on a Nintendo platform since Black Ops 2 on Wii U, so there will need to be some brakes applied on fidelity enhancements to ensure some level of parity to XBOX Series, PS5 and PC platforms.

Typically Call of Duty servers launch in a stable state, however we did experience several server crashes in the opening weekend. I would expect that these will be eradicated by launch – this is a cross-platform beta after all – but there are red flags raised.

Final Thoughts

The very promising Kill Block aside, the early takeaway we have from the game is that Modern Warfare 4 should be a polished, generous Call of Duty package. With DMZ still to be playable publicly, there is much more to come than what’s in the beta. We especially look forward to seeing what more is to come for the incredibly fun Kill Block.

More critically however is the feeling of sub franchise fatigue. The outdated love for Modern Warfare and Black Ops has been tiring for some time now and we definitely need to see a third, or fourth sub franchise. It would allow them to try new characters, story arcs and Call of Duty lore, which more people than you realise actually like. The Call of Duty community loves nostalgia – in guns, maps and modes – but a ripped off band aid feels a requirement. The gameplay, notably the gunplay, in Call of Duty is industry leading for a reason, yet the canvas on which it is played is long overdue a fresh start.

Activision and their studios have too long relied on the name of MW and BO, having been burned by the failure of boots-off-the-ground titles like Infinite Warfare. But, for next year I hope they’re cooking something different, something out there, something bold. We do plan on coming back for more over next weekend’s Open Beta and indeed for the full release, but for now Modern Warfare 4 feels like it lacks a soul and a product of annualization.

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