{"id":24883,"date":"2026-10-19T12:57:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T12:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/igamemag.com\/?p=24883"},"modified":"2026-10-19T12:57:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T12:57:04","slug":"modern-warfare-4-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/igamemag.com\/en-gb\/modern-warfare-4-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Warfare 4 Review: We Played the Beta, and the Multiplayer Isn’t There Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Operators<\/p>\n

Our Modern Warfare 4 review<\/strong> starts with a confession: we wanted to love it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on 23 October<\/strong>, and the campaign is getting the best reviews the series has had in years. But we played the multiplayer open beta, and we came away disappointed. The time-to-kill is too fast, the spawns are all over the place, and too many deaths feel like they happen before you can do anything about it.<\/p>\n

To be clear about what this review covers: our score is based on the multiplayer beta<\/strong>, not the finished game. We haven’t played the full campaign or the launch version, and Infinity Ward has promised more changes before release. If launch fixes what we didn’t like, we’ll update this review and the score.<\/p>\n

Modern Warfare 4 review at a glance<\/h2>\n\n
Release date<\/strong><\/td>23 October 2026 (Campaign Early Access from 16 October for digital pre-orders)<\/td><\/tr>\n
Platforms<\/strong><\/td>PC (Steam, Battle.net, Xbox app), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2<\/td><\/tr>\n
Price<\/strong><\/td>$69.99 Standard, $99.99 Vault Edition (Steam UK: \u00a359.99 \/ \u00a389.99)<\/td><\/tr>\n
Game Pass<\/strong><\/td>Not included at launch<\/td><\/tr>\n
Developer \/ publisher<\/strong><\/td>Infinity Ward \/ Activision<\/td><\/tr>\n
What we played<\/strong><\/td>The multiplayer beta (Early Access 21 August\u201325, Open Beta 28 August\u20131 September)<\/td><\/tr>\n
Our score<\/strong><\/td>5\/10, Wait for a sale (based on the beta)<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/tbody><\/table>\n

Modern Warfare 4 review: the time-to-kill is too fast<\/h2>\n

Our biggest problem with Modern Warfare 4 was how quickly you die. Time-to-kill (TTK) is how long it takes to down an enemy, and in the beta it was so short that most fights were over before we’d had a chance to react, let alone outplay anyone. Getting shot from an angle you couldn’t see and dying instantly isn’t tense, it’s frustrating, and it happened far too often.<\/p>\n

We weren’t the only ones who felt it. Infinity Ward made several weapon-tuning passes during the first beta weekend, then gave every single weapon<\/strong> an update for the second weekend, aiming for “more survivability and room for skill expression in combat.” Even after that, its own closing notes on 1 September admitted: “we aren’t fully satisfied with TTK and will continue dialing in our weapons ahead of launch.”<\/p>\n

The spawns are all over the place<\/h2>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Spawns were the other big problem. Too often we spawned straight into the enemy’s sights, or so far from the action that we spent the next half-minute running back to it. Combined with the fast TTK, it made matches feel random: you’d die, spawn somewhere strange, and die again before you’d got your bearings.<\/p>\n

Again, Infinity Ward agrees there’s a problem. It changed spawn logic in every respawn mode at the end of the first weekend, cut spawning on squad members, and rebuilt how Hardpoint spawns work for the second. Its own notes warned: “You may still see some bad spawns on smaller maps, and on larger maps you may spawn too far from the action.” Its 1 September update listed “additional spawn improvements” as a focus for launch, especially “on certain map\/mode combinations.”<\/p>\n

What Infinity Ward got right in the beta<\/h2>\n

It isn’t all bad. Infinity Ward patched the beta almost every day and was unusually open about what it was changing and why. Some of those changes were smart:<\/p>\n