UPDATE (Oct. 18, 2026, 10:52 p.m. CT): This story now includes the campaign’s Steam store rating of about 91.9% positive user reviews.
The campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is out now in early access, and the first reviews are mostly warm. Activision’s Call of Duty blog says the full story is playable now for anyone who digitally pre-ordered or pre-purchased the Standard Digital Edition or Vault Edition. That covers Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, PlayStation 5, Battle.net, Steam and Nintendo Switch 2. Access runs until the full game launches on October 23.
The blog says there are sixteen missions set across the Korean Peninsula, Paris, New York and Mumbai. Players fight as Private Park Hyun Jun during a full-scale invasion of the Korean Peninsula, while John Price hunts the person pulling the strings. Finishing missions unlocks rewards that carry over to Multiplayer and DMZ, including Base Operators, Double XP Tokens and a calling card. DMZ early access starts October 20.
The first scores
IGN gave the campaign an 8 out of 10. Its reviewer, Simon Cardy, wrote that “Modern Warfare 4 made me feel something for the series again.” He picked out the open, DMZ-style mission behind enemy lines as “a real highlight.” He also wrote that the campaign “may not have quite enough to be considered amongst the very best Call of Duty campaigns, but if it’s to be the end of this particular saga, then at least Modern Warfare is going out on a high note.”
GameSpot gave it a 7 out of 10 and went further on the series comparison. “Modern Warfare 4’s campaign ranks as the best we’ve seen since Modern Warfare 2019,” wrote reviewer S.E. Doster. GameSpot praised the visuals and how the two storylines tie together. Its main complaints were that the final boss fights felt “too brief and weak” and that the game “doesn’t do much new.”
Unscored verdicts
Several outlets judged the campaign without giving a score. PC Gamer wrote that “this is the first time in too long that Call of Duty’s campaign does not feel like the afterthought.” GamesRadar called it “a confident cinematic shooter” but said “rigid mission design and frustrating restrictions threaten to spoil the fun.” Nintendo Life, which played on Switch 2, described a “popcorn game” campaign that “doesn’t so much integrate open-world and on-rails design as surgically separate them.”
GamesBeat held off on a formal score but said it would rate the campaign “4.5 out of 5.” It added that it didn’t think “the team succeeded in fitting the open-world gameplay into the compelling narrative.”
Players on Steam
PC players are even warmer. On the game’s Steam store page, 2,963 of 3,223 user reviews across all languages were positive, about 91.9%, for a “Very Positive” rating. That figure is the plain share of positive Steam user reviews shown on the store page, not a weighted score like the one SteamDB calculates. Counting English-language reviews alone, the store page shows 93% of 1,204 as positive. Several of the most-upvoted reviews praise it as the best campaign in years, while one of the most-upvoted negative reviews complains about having to launch the game through the shared Call of Duty app.
Neither Metacritic nor OpenCritic has posted an aggregate score yet. Metacritic still lists the Metascore as to be determined, and OpenCritic shows a single review. Nintendo Life notes that many of the reviews are still in progress, with final scores for the whole game expected once Multiplayer and DMZ go live. For now, the individual reviews are the clearest read. They mostly agree on the same points: plenty of mission variety and a strong send-off for this Modern Warfare storyline, with some frustration over rigid design and the final fights. For the story setup and launch plan, see RCG’s earlier coverage of the campaign trailer.
