A weekend with COD Modern Warfare 4 on PS5 Pro has confirmed most of my suspicions about the game
A very interesting Open Beta
Depending on who you are, Call of Duty has either spent the last few years ruthlessly specialising in exactly the quick-paced twitchy action you love, or has become so rapid and relentlesss as to alienate you a little bit. With the arrival of Battlefield 6, I'm in the latter camp – wall-running and omnimovement made the last couple of COD games feel too challenging for my little soul.
That's meant I've been quietly quite excited for Modern Warfare 4, which sees developer Infinity Ward return to centre stage. I want a return to the smooth but methodical action of Modern Warfare 2019, but a weekend of open beta action with MW4 has confirmed I won't be getting that, quite.
A few matches of multiplayer confirmed that the game is, at least, slower than the frenetic Black Ops games from the last couple of years, and that's a huge step. Once again, footstep audio feels key, and far more limited starting ammo also meant I had to manage my shots more carefully and pick up other people's guns more often.
The movement tech here is a middle ground between older, slower styles and newer crazes. Mantling and jumping over obstacles is super quick, and the same goes for sprinting and sliding; you can also now climb pipes and jump to edges more freely, which actually feels quite cool to control.
Gunplay, meanwhile, does feel great, albeit I only sampled a handful of weapons. Rattling through killstreaks remains compelling, and as the first game to abandon the PS4 and Xbox One generation, MW4 looked pretty excellent in motion on my PS5 Pro.
Most intriguingly, though, this is the first time the open beta for a COD game has included a single-player mission. This might be Activision's way of trying to convince people that the dire campaign of Black Ops 7 was just an aberration, and to be fair, it might achieve just that.
The mission, called Entrenched, is a fairly classic slice of COD, seeing you start with trench-to-trench warfare before moving into a vehicle for some tank action, then back on foot for more close-quarters interior fighting and a final run through climbing sections to escape a burning reactor.
It's a great little demo, and it makes the open beta feel more like just that – an old-school demo disk that gives you the chance to really sample the final game, rather than purely its multiplayer component. A good COD campaign is a real thrill, after all, and we haven't had a properly consistent one in a surprisingly long time.
I think MW4 will still have a hard time pulling me away from Battlefield as it stands, though, and most shooter fans will know what I mean when I say there's only really room for one of them in my life. Since these games are where I play socially with my friends, it's a proper tussle for supremacy.
With my mates largely scarred by BO6 and BO7's outrageously fast pace of play in multiplayer, COD has its work cut out for it in convincing them to come back for another try. This beta is a good start, to be fair, but the fact that I'm most captured by the single-player element is probably a sign for caution, still.
