Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4: the campaign is already playable, and the game ships in four days

There is a line in Modern Warfare 4's pre-order benefits that deserves more attention than it gets.

Campaign Early Access, starting October 16th.

The game releases on the 23rd. So if you pre-ordered, you could have finished the story a week before the game officially existed.

That is no longer a pre-order bonus, it is a release staggered in two parts.

Full release on 23 October, at 69.99 euros. No score today.

The story, and it is not neutral

War erupts on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea launches a full-scale invasion that threatens to destabilise the world.

You play, among others, Private Park, a young South Korean soldier facing live combat for the first time alongside his squad, on collapsing front lines.

And half a world away, a vengeful Captain Price wages a personal war from the shadows, staying one step ahead of those hunting him.

When Price's off-book mission collides with the forces behind the invasion, the war spreads beyond anyone's control.

Activision announces an entry pushing the series into darker and more dangerous territory, where consequence and escalation bring long-running storylines to an emotional breaking point.

The announced theatres: trench warfare in Korea, close-quarters combat in New York, high-octane chases through Paris, SAS night raids in Mumbai, and city-wide assaults to reclaim occupied territory.

Trench warfare in a contemporary Call of Duty is an image nobody expected, and it is probably the most interesting on that list.

The young soldier, and why I am noting this detail

The series has spent twenty years putting you in the boots of over-trained operators who know exactly what to do.

Playing a conscript discovering combat is the genre's most effective narrative device, and also its oldest: it is the device of the great war narratives, where you see chaos through somebody who understands none of it.

If the writing holds, alternating between Park, who endures, and Price, who decides, could produce something stronger than a run of spectacular set pieces.

If it does not hold, we will have two parallel campaigns where one is a breather from the other, which has happened several times in this series.

The modes, and the calendar

Beyond the campaign there is multiplayer and DMZ, whose early access began on 20 October for pre-orders.

That split deserves explaining, because it has become normal and remains strange. You pay seventy euros, and the product arrives in three pieces on three different dates, two of them before the official release.

The pre-order items follow the same logic, and the list is slightly vertiginous: a weapon blueprint to unlock at Modern Warfare 4's launch, but also items usable immediately in Black Ops 7 and in Warzone.

In other words, pre-ordering a game that is not out gives you things in two other games that are.

That is not a scandal, it is simply the state of the market, and it is worth looking at squarely once a year.

What I am watching

The campaign's length and staying power. That is the series' historical complaint: six hours of remarkable spectacle and an ending that arrives before you have taken a position. Promising an emotional breaking point for long-running storylines needs more time than that.

The technical state at launch. We have watched enough releases arrive in pieces this autumn for that to be the first thing to check, and a Call of Duty is also judged on its server stability over the first weekend.

And the handling of the subject. Staging a North Korean invasion of South Korea is not a neutral backdrop. The series has already been heavily criticised for how it uses real or plausible conflicts as scenery, and choosing that peninsula in 2026 is a commitment. That will be a genuine evaluation criterion, like everything else.

I am not going to pretend to be neutral about this series: the best Modern Warfare entries produced sequences millions of people still remember twenty years later, and the worst produced noise.

The difference always came down to one thing: did the game have something to say, or only something to show.

Trench warfare, a kid under fire for the first time, and a Price with no chain of command left to answer to: the ingredients of a good entry are there. The recipe remains to be seen.

We will come back with a score on the 23rd.

Already finished the campaign in early access? Come and say what it is worth without spoiling it on the InsertCoins Discord.