Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is reimagined for a new generation in the latest FPS from Infinity Ward. Is the game worth the Price of entry? Here’s our review round-up.
Following last year’s multiplayer-focused instalment, the Call of Duty franchise returns with a new game from Infinity Ward and a single-player campaign that is the subject of much debate.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare aims to balance the thrills of combat with a rumination on the nature and effect of modern armed conflict. The game’s critical response suggests mixed results, but a memorable experience nonetheless.
Here is our pick of the best Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reviews, with a particular focus on the single-player campaign.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Review round-up
Games Radar
“When its good intentions coalesce, Modern Warfare feels as if it is offering a tantalising glimpse into the future of the industry’s biggest shooter. You’ll feel this in your fingers as the game breathlessly propels you between its checkpoints under a hail of deafening gunfire until you’re left gasping for air. When they clash, it’s a stark reminder of just how easy it is for an action game to turn tasteless – that’s a direct result of Infinity Ward attempting to tactlessly gamify a variety of war crimes in the service of fashioning a bombastic entertainment experience.”
4/5 – Review by Josh West
Game Spot
“That tension builds up over the course of the campaign, and because the characters are likable, it’s easy to at least consider each one’s view of what’s right. But in the end, all you get is a vague “we all did what we had to do” sentiment rather than anything more substantial or interesting. Quite a bit of what you had to do–as Garrick, as Alex, and as Farah–was unpleasant or distressing, but the questions raised by your actions aren’t interrogated further, especially the questionable side of Price’s approach. Modern Warfare‘s ending isn’t bad, but it is a safe one, leaving you to think on the harder questions yourself.”
7/10 – Review by Kallie Plagge
IGN
“It is one of the best linear first-person shooter campaigns I’ve played in a good while, thanks to an exciting pace across its five-ish-hour story that, notably, is always mixing up the gameplay. Sure, we’ve done the run-of-the-mill street battles a million times before in this series, but here you’re never doing them for very long without something unexpected happening. Modern Warfare delights most when it surprises, like when you have to engage in tense close-quarters combat to clean out the enemy from small, multi-story houses – often when it’s pitch-black outside of your night-vision goggles.”
8.2/10 – Review by Ryan McCaffrey
Game Informer
The character performances are fantastic – especially for Captain Price, Farah, and Hadir – who get plenty of screen time and are legitimately interesting, especially how they are woven into the conflict at hand. The story is nicely paced, establishes villains you can’t help but hate, and is engaging from start to finish. I also appreciate how the story and gameplay flow seamlessly from moment to moment without loading screens, much like a Naughty Dog production. I completed the campaign in roughly five hours, yet found I enjoyed watching it more for the twists than actually having a hand in some of the battles.
8.75/10 – Review by Andrew Reiner
PC Gamer
“The campaign shoots for the variety of distinctive missions that Call of Duty 4 set trends with. It swaps out on-rails murder fests for missions about cautious infiltration where walking is the default move speed. An early mission called “Clean House” is a favorite. Led by Price, your squad raids a London home occupied by a terrorist cell in search of stolen chemical weapons. The raid plays out like an eerily interactive Zero Dark Thirty as the squad slowly breaches bedrooms and stacks up in cramped stairwells.”
80/100 – Review by Morgan Park
Attack of the Fanboy
“There are many moments of genuine heart mixed in among the chaos and violence. With the story jumping from one point of view to another, the player always has a fresh perspective on the events that are unfolding. Each character receives their own moments of significance, though more could have been done to develop some of them beyond the default Soldier personality. However, when the game does focus in on specifics it does so with care and what feels like a true feeling of how important these events can be in the real world.”
4.5/5 – Review by Kyle Hanson
VentureBeat
“This game is so thoughtful that it would be a shame if players skipped the single-player campaign and headed straight for multiplayer, which is a great experience as usual. Ultimately, I think it is a good game because it might very well be the only way a new generation of players learns about modern warfare.”
89/100 – Review by Dean Takahashi
Title: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Release date: October 25, 2019
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Visit our new releases section for more on this week’s new video games.
