Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta review: I loved it, even if everyone else is much better than me

I have two possible explanations for my experience playing the *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4* beta over the weekend.

The first is that everybody playing Call of Duty in 2026 is approximately a thousand times better at it than I am.

The second is that I haven't quite got used to the movement mechanics yet.

For the sake of my remaining dignity, I'm going with the second one. Although, having watched people slide around corners, leap through windows and somehow shoot me in the face before I had fully processed their existence, I suspect the truth lies somewhere uncomfortably close to the first.

The important bit, though, is that I loved it.

And Activision probably needs people to love this one.

Call of Duty has become such a permanent part of the gaming calendar that it is easy to forget just how extraordinary its longevity is. There has essentially been a new one arriving every autumn for more than two decades, usually accompanied by enormous sales, enormous marketing and an enormous number of people on the internet explaining why this year's version has ruined Call of Duty forever.

But Modern Warfare 4 arrives with slightly more pressure on it than usual.

Black Ops 7 didn't land as well as Activision would have wanted, while the competition for people's time and money is becoming increasingly serious. There are shooters coming for Call of Duty's crown and, beyond them, one rather large problem called Grand Theft Auto 6.

So this can't merely be another Call of Duty because it happens to be time for another Call of Duty.

But, I can reassure you that the early signs are very good.

For the first time in a Call of Duty beta, Activision has included a campaign mission, and this might actually have been the thing that surprised me most.

"Entrenched" begins with you fighting through, unsurprisingly, a trench against North Korean forces before moving into a power station where the situation rapidly deteriorates into the sort of catastrophe that follows Call of Duty protagonists around with remarkable consistency.

There is a reactor heading towards meltdown, a race to stop it and then a frantic escape through collapsing infrastructure.

It is completely ridiculous, and I mean that as a compliment.

This is exactly what I want from a Call of Duty campaign. Give me guns, shouting, explosions, an increasingly implausible international crisis and a mission which starts badly and somehow gets considerably worse every five minutes.

I had a great time playing it, but more importantly, it felt like the Call of Duty I remember from years ago.

That sounds like a stupidly simple thing to say about a Call of Duty game, but after more than 20 years of annual releases the series has occasionally appeared unsure whether it should reinvent itself or simply become an even more concentrated version of what it already is.

Modern Warfare 4 seems, at least from what I played, comfortable with the latter.

This brings us to multiplayer. Christ, it is fast.

There are moments when playing Modern Warfare 4 feels less like taking part in a carefully planned military engagement and more like being repeatedly fired out of a cannon into an armed branch of Cirque du Soleil.

Spawn. Run. Gunfire. Slide. Explosion. Dead.

Respawn.

Repeat.

Sometimes you get the enormous satisfaction of turning a corner and wiping out two opponents before they know you're there.

Sometimes you run for four seconds before somebody apparently shoots you through a gap measuring approximately three millimetres from a building on the other side of the map.

I experienced rather more of the latter.

The movement is probably going to be one of the most debated parts of the game.

Black Ops 6's omni-movement system has gone, but anybody hoping that means everyone will now be calmly walking around corners with their rifle sensibly raised is going to be disappointed.

Players still move incredibly quickly.

You can slide around corners, mantle obstacles and clamber around the scenery at a pace which occasionally makes the heavily armed soldiers on screen appear to have been bitten by radioactive spiders.

And some people are already frighteningly good at it.

I repeatedly encountered players who seemed capable of sliding past me, changing direction, jumping and putting several rounds into my head during the time it took me to think: "Oh, there's somebody there."

Whether that is because the movement needs tweaking or because I'm getting older and my reactions have gone remains a matter for further scientific investigation.

Probably best not to investigate it too closely...

The maps help keep everything moving.

There is plenty of variety without abandoning the tight, relatively compact design that makes Call of Duty multiplayer work. Silkworm drops you into a South Korean urban environment of shops and alleyways, while Transit 213 offers much longer lines of sight around its transport depot – which is excellent news if you are holding a sniper rifle and considerably less welcome if you are me attempting to cross an open area.

Rooftops is particularly good Call of Duty map design: two ageing New York high-rises connected into one battlefield, with maintenance areas, laundries, rooftops, machinery and enough different levels to make you permanently suspicious that somebody is either above or below you, and they usually are.

The new equipment provides some entertaining toys too. The Smoke Wall does exactly what its name suggests, throwing up a screen that can cover movement, while razor wire can be deployed to slow down anyone trying to push through an area.

Then there are the killstreaks.

Artillery Beacon allows you to mark an area for a missile-based intervention, while Wheelson gives you control of a small armed vehicle carrying a grenade launcher.

I would like to tell you considerably more about the killstreaks, but this generally requires getting enough kills without dying to earn them, which brings us back to the problem outlined at the beginning of this review.

There are also the familiar modes, Team Deathmatch, Domination and Kill Confirmed among them, alongside new ideas such as Kill Block, a 10v10 fight inside a training area that changes its layout between rounds.

It is chaotic. Actually, chaotic doesn't really cover it.

Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer is relentlessly demanding of your attention. There is almost no dead time. You spawn and you're immediately looking for the next engagement. Die and you're thrown straight back into it.

After an hour, I realised I'd barely looked away from the screen.

There is a wider question about whether Call of Duty can keep doing this forever.

Twenty-three years is a very long time for any gaming franchise, particularly one that has spent much of that period releasing at least one enormous new game every year.

There are only so many ways you can reinvent shooting another bloke before he shoots you.

But perhaps Modern Warfare 4 doesn't need to reinvent it.

Based on the first beta weekend, the devlopers seem to have concentrated instead on making the fundamental bits of Call of Duty feel good again.

The weapons are satisfying. The campaign mission made me want to play the rest of the campaign. The maps encourage you to keep moving. And multiplayer still has that slightly embarrassing ability to make "just one more game" turn into several more games.

Yes, it is ludicrously fast.

Yes, some of the movement occasionally makes highly trained soldiers look as though they're competing in an armed version of Swan Lake.

And yes, there is every possibility that by the time you read this I will have been killed another 400 times by a 14-year-old who has mastered movement mechanics I didn't even know existed.

I don't particularly care. I had great fun.

And after a couple of Call of Duty games where I've increasingly wondered whether my enthusiasm for the series was finally disappearing, Modern Warfare 4 managed something rather important over one weekend.

It made me want to play Call of Duty again.

The free Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Open Beta runs from August 28 to September 1. The full game is released on October 23 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.