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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4: What Early Access Tells You Before the October 23 Launch

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Call of Duty’s story mode may finally be worth playing again. Campaign early access for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opened on October 16 for digital pre-order customers, and the Steam response is the warmest the series has seen in a decade — outlets checking the store page on October 17-18 reported roughly 82% to 90% positive reviews, with a “Very Positive” label. Major review outlets are cautiously enthusiastic too: GamesRadar calls it “one of The Good Ones,” IGN says it’s going out on a high note, and PC Gamer describes a “fractured, fun campaign that benefits from looking backward.”

In brief

  • Early access: campaign early access for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opened October 16 for digital pre-order customers; the full game launches October 23 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 ($70 standard edition).
  • The numbers: Steam reviews ran roughly 82–90% positive (“Very Positive”) — the warmest Call of Duty reception in a decade; the last comparable score was 2015’s Black Ops III at about 84%.
  • Critics so far: GamesRadar calls it “one of The Good Ones,” IGN says the series is “going out on a high note,” PC Gamer describes a “fractured, fun campaign.”
  • The caveat: everyone rating it right now chose to pre-order — a self-selected fan sample, not a neutral audience; early enthusiasm typically softens at full launch.
  • Still unknown: multiplayer and the extraction mode are untested in this window — the early verdict covers the campaign only.

The full game — multiplayer, DMZ extraction mode, and everything else — launches October 23 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Here is what the early-access verdict actually tells a buyer, what it cannot tell you yet, and the platform caveats (Game Pass, last-gen, PC requirements) worth knowing before you spend the $70 on the standard edition.

The numbers: best Steam reception for Call of Duty in a decade

SteamDB data cited by unboxholics showed Modern Warfare 4 at 81.15% positive from roughly 900 reviews shortly after early access opened. As more pre-order players finished the campaign, the number climbed: pixeltwelve captured 87.9% (1,122 of 1,276 reviews) at 12:07 p.m. Central on October 17, and gurugamer reported roughly 90% of more than 1,800 reviews recommending it by October 18, with pixelherald putting it near 90% the same day. Steam percentages move with review volume, so treat any single figure as a snapshot — but the direction is unambiguous.

The context is what makes this remarkable. Per the comparisons outlets compiled from Steam data, Black Ops 7 sits around 39% positive, Black Ops 6 near 46%, Modern Warfare III around 48%, and Modern Warfare II near 47%. The last Call of Duty to post a Steam score anywhere near this was 2015’s Black Ops III, at roughly 84%. A campaign that pre-order players rate better than anything in ten years is a genuine anomaly for this franchise — and it is driving the GB/US search spike ahead of launch.

One caution the pixelherald piece states well: everyone rating the game right now chose to pre-order it. They are fans who bought early, not a neutral sample of the whole audience. Early-access enthusiasm typically softens once the full game and its multiplayer crowd arrive on October 23.

What the critics are saying (so far)

The major outlets have verdicts-in-progress rather than final scores, and they converge on “entertaining, not revolutionary”:

  • GamesRadar (review-in-progress): “spectacular set pieces make this campaign hard to put down,” calling it “one of The Good Ones.”
  • IGN (campaign review): more cautious — Modern Warfare 4 “may not have quite enough to be considered amongst the very best Call of Duty campaigns,” but “at least it’s going out on a high note” if this marks the end of the saga.
  • PC Gamer (review-in-progress): “a fractured, fun campaign that benefits from looking backward” — “a campaign you shouldn’t miss,” with final assessment still to come.
  • Nintendo Life (Switch 2 impressions): the console “does its best” with “one hell of a ‘popcorn game'” — big, loud, and completable in a sitting or two.

The player-side criticisms are consistent across reports: a heavily scripted campaign where stepping outside the intended path fails the mission, and a plot that entertains without breaking new ground. GamesRadar’s final score and PC Gamer’s final assessment were still pending at the time of writing — worth checking before October 23 if reviews drive your purchase.

The campaign: 16 missions, two storylines, one saga ending

Activision is presenting Modern Warfare 4 as the “epic conclusion” of the Modern Warfare storyline that began with the 2019 reboot — and company marketing chief Tyler Bahl has said the publisher is already laying groundwork for a new Call of Duty sub-franchise after 2026, aimed at countering franchise fatigue. (Bahl also acknowledged what players have said for years: Black Ops 7 “wasn’t what players wanted,” and MW4 was adjusted to return to a grounded military tone.)

The campaign runs about 7-9 hours across 16 missions, per Game Rant’s guide, following two parallel threads. In South Korea, young Private Park — a soldier facing live combat for the first time alongside his squad of South Korean and American Marines — fights through a full-scale North Korean invasion triggered by an EMP strike on Seoul. Half a world away, Captain John Price operates outside official military systems as an outlaw, pursuing revenge tied to a weapon capable of destabilizing global power balances. Missions span trench warfare on the Korean Peninsula, close-quarters firefights in New York, vehicle chases through Paris, and SAS raids in Mumbai. Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain, known as The Archer.

Infinity Ward’s big mechanical addition is “Ballistic Authority,” described as a weapon-first technology stack covering aiming, weapon handling, audio propagation, and visibility — bullets follow recoil, and the much-maligned hipfire bloom is gone. Multiplayer launches with 12 core 6v6 maps, dedicated Gunfight arenas, large-scale Ground War maps, and a new mode called Kill Block set in a live-fire training facility whose layout changes between rounds. DMZ returns as an extraction mode set in Hajin, an exclusion zone created when a nuclear reactor melts down during the campaign.

The launch schedule: what unlocks when

Digital pre-orders unlock the game in stages, per Activision’s official launch roadmap:

Date What unlocks Who gets it
Oct 15 (9AM PT) PC pre-load Digital PC pre-orders
Oct 16 Campaign early access Standard and Vault digital pre-orders, all platforms
Oct 20 DMZ early access Standard and Vault digital pre-orders
Oct 23 Full launch (multiplayer + DMZ) Everyone, midnight local time on PC
Oct 27 Shipment map All players
Oct 29 Possession mode All players
Oct 30 Infected mode All players
Nov 6 Season 1 All players

Four platform caveats before you buy

1. Not on Xbox Game Pass at launch. Xbox now adds new Call of Duty games to Game Pass about a year after release, and Activision has confirmed MW4 follows that pattern. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will need to buy it outright if they want it on day one.

2. No last-gen versions. MW4 launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Switch 2 only — there is no PS4 or Xbox One version. Last-gen owners need new hardware.

3. Switch 2 is a native version, and it’s the first CoD on a Nintendo platform in nearly 13 years. Digital Legends developed the Switch 2 version natively alongside Infinity Ward (Beenox helped optimize PC). Nintendo Life’s impressions are positive but note compromises — expect detailed technical analysis after launch before judging handheld performance.

4. PC has a TPM 2.0 requirement. Previews flag TPM 2.0 among the PC requirements — if your machine is older or runs with TPM disabled, check the full 800-plus PC settings list against your rig before pre-ordering.

Should you buy now or wait?

Buy now if: you played the 2019 reboot trilogy and want the saga’s conclusion on day one; you value a strong single-player campaign above all; you want the October 16-22 campaign early access window and the October 20 DMZ head start.

Wait if: you mainly play multiplayer and DMZ — no campaign verdict predicts those modes, and they unlock for everyone on October 23 anyway; you’re on Game Pass and can wait roughly a year; you want GamesRadar’s and PC Gamer’s final scores and the inevitable Switch 2 technical analysis.

The honest read of the data: a campaign this well-received this early is the best pre-launch signal Call of Duty has posted in a decade, and the “one of The Good Ones” verdict from GamesRadar is not a phrase this franchise hears often. But every number above comes from campaign-only early access, rated by pre-order customers. October 23 brings the multiplayer masses, the DMZ crowds, and the servers — that is when the real verdict lands.

Sources

Related reading: PlayStation 6: Three Models — What It Means for the Next Console War · Cyberpunk 2077 Movie: A New Story, Not an Adaptation · PS5 Games on Xbox Series X: How the PS5X Emulator Actually Works

Update, October 21, 2026: the nostalgia funnel feeding this launch is bigger than anyone expected — Activisionu2019s $40 Black Ops 1 and 2 ports sold an estimated 11.2 million copies in July, earning ~$435M with zero new features, and Activision says it is applying the portsu2019 learnings to Modern Warfare 4. The original Treyarch devs, meanwhile, say they havenu2019t seen a dime of it.

Shoaib Hassan

Shoaib Hassan is the founder and editor of AuTechWire, an independent technology publication covering broadband, mobile networks, privacy, startups, and consumer tech.

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