Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 - 9 Key Multiplayer Changes

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]We are not ready. We could all die tonight. We don't even get a choice.

[00:00:05]>> I'm Ryan McAffrey with IGN and I am joined by my friend Mark Medina. Mark, you made the trek down to Infinity Ward in Los Angeles in secret in the dead of night.

[00:00:14]>> Yeah.

[00:00:15]>> With your night vision goggles on.

[00:00:17]>> Yeah.

[00:00:17]>> To go check out Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4. It is the new one this year.

[00:00:22]It's just been unveiled. It is out in October 23rd. And you got yourself some multiplayer hands-on, did you not?

[00:00:31]>> I did. I played probably like two hours of multiplayer just across the various modes, you know, against just other media personalities and creators and stuff like that. It was a It was a good time.

[00:00:44]>> So, you came back and your your preview article on IGN is headlined, "Modern Warfare 4 feels like the first truly nextgen Call of Duty."

[00:00:55]>> Yeah. you kind of came came away with nine points, like nine key differences, nine key changes, but can you kind of explain what you mean when you say feels like the first truly nextgen Call of Duty?

[00:01:08]>> Yeah, I Call of Duty has, you know, Call of Duty always kind of known to push graphical fidelity and all that kind of good stuff. Um, but no matter how good something looks on PS5, right? It it still has to serve the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, right? So, even up to Black Ops 7, you know, that has to be able to run on the 2013 PS4 and X VCR Xbox One. And so, um, it's one of those things where it's like when you play it, you're like, "Oh, this looks great. This looks so good." And then you jump into Modern Warfare for the first time and you're like, "Oh, never mind.

[00:01:51]No, Black Ops 7 looked not that great.

[00:01:54]Never mind. This is what looks good."

[00:01:56]And it's like it's immediate immediately apparent that they are not having to cater to those older consoles anymore.

[00:02:04]>> Yeah. Five years into the generation.

[00:02:06]Almost six actually. I guess by the time the game comes out, it is it is six years into the generation. Yeah. So, that is good news that they're finally leaving last gen behind. And uh it's great that you can like see it on the screen immediately. That is awesome. So, >> what's weird real quick? Sorry. What's weird about that is the fact that we're already having nextg conversations and this is the first truly current gen Call of Duty. But that has nothing to do with the preview.

[00:02:34]>> It's true. You are correct. That's the whole next console watch uh topic.

[00:02:40]So, you you came away with uh nine key changes, and I wanted to have you talk through them all for us here. Let's start with you mentioned movement. So, what's what's the deal with movement in Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer?

[00:02:52]>> Yeah, so the big thing people are going to notice uh with this game, especially since there hasn't been a Modern Warfare in a while, is that there is no more omniovement. And what that means is you can no longer sprint left and right and backwards. Uh there's no wall jumping.

[00:03:07]There's nothing like that, right? you're it is a more grounded kind of boots on the ground. The tagline they keep using is that it's like an action movie but still set in realism, right? Like everything is theoretically possible but it's it's set in a world where you're you never get tired and you get surfaces are never slippery. So yeah, but they they've made a lot of changes to movement because of this, right? So, no omni movement, but there's mantling in different ways than there used to be.

[00:03:40]So, before you would mantle onto a ledge or something like that, and your character would just climb up, and there was nothing you can do about it. They've changed it in a few ways now. One is you can cancel a mantle now. So, if you're mantling up and you you happen to peek over and you see somebody, you can be like, "Nope, don't want to do that." And you can mantle out. Another thing you can do is uh just do a simple ledge grab, which is you go halfway through a mantle and then you're just holding on to the ledge and you can actually aim your gun over the cool cover and shoot people while still kind of peeking behind the cover. Uh and then the uh third thing is that you can uh shimmy now. So they're calling it a ledge shimmy. So, if you're on a ledge, you can now move left and right and reposition yourself, get yourself still in cover, but still be able to do shots.

[00:04:28]Alongside the mantling is they have a backwards slide, so you can do a backwards slide that allows you to still shoot your gun. Not totally new, but I think this is the first time you can do it backwards. You can also slide into a ladder, like a, you know, like a ladder climb. So, if you're on a roof and there's a ladder, you can slide and your character will automatically spin and grab onto the ladder and you can start going down. That's pretty cool. And then the last like major big thing is that you can climb up poles and stuff now.

[00:05:01]So, if you are see an apartment building and you see a pole, you can actually climb up that pole and then almost like Assassin's Creed style vault over to a window and and then climb through the window. So, they've added that. And then and then what one more thing is that they've there's there's tactical sprint still which is uh when you double tap the sprint and you throw your gun up and you start you know running super fast.

[00:05:25]It's now more telegraphed that your character will start to like breathe harder and the gun will start to lower.

[00:05:30]So they've made a lot of changes to movement while still kind of keeping it grounded. It's interesting that Black Ops and Modern Warfare are are really starting to diverge now in their in the way that just even on character movement, which which is good. It makes them feel like legitimately or more like legitimately different games.

[00:05:48]>> Yeah.

[00:05:49]>> Uh for gunplay, you mentioned no more Bloom.

[00:05:54]>> Yeah. Before I before I go into that, I got to I got to remind people what Bloom is because it it may not be a term that people are super familiar with. Bloom is essentially a hidden mechanic in video games where let's say you have a circle and those are the possible points that your bullet can go. The game essentially rolls a dice in the background as you're hipfiring and the bullets just kind of go anywhere within that point. I think it was really really cool in like Modern Warfare 1 days, like Xbox 360 days. I think it's completely archaic now to add like that sort of a random element, especially when games like Counterstrike, people have been going back and playing Counterstrike and and and something a lot of people do right at the beginning of a Counter-Strike match is they run to a wall and they shoot to see the bullet pattern of their gun. Call of Duty is now adopting that uh system where there's no more bloom.

[00:06:50]Your bullets go where your gun is aiming.

[00:06:53]>> Okay? And that does mean there's still going to be spread because bullets, you know, guns kick when they fire. And so there is still going to be spread, but it doesn't feel like it's completely just a look of the dice if you win a close quarters combat. Now you actually kind of understand where your bullets should be going. And they've worked hard on this to make sure it's like the sniper rifle is not the best shotgun in the world anymore. Yeah. Because uh they said when they first started ba basically people were hipfiring snipers you across shooting sniper rifles from across the map and just hitting shots because it's like well if the sniper rifle's pointing forward and there's no bloom it's going to just hit people. And so they've added you know kind of gun sway and stuff like that. So, it just bloom is gone, but that com that feeling of kind of randomness could still feel there, but it's it's there's like an honest answer for it now, I guess, is the best way to put it.

[00:07:52]>> Nice. Okay. So, next you mentioned that weapons feel like they belong in the world now. What do you mean by that?

[00:08:00]>> Yeah. So, normally when you play uh any shooter to be honest with you, right, your your gun is just in front of your character and if you run up to a wall, what happens?

[00:08:11]Right? It's essentially like the tip of your gun is more or less just stopping your movement, right? Uh so now when you run up to a wall, your gun will actually kind of be pushed more up against your body, right? when you are peeking around cover your gun.

[00:08:35]It's this like action movie thing, right, where people naturally think that your gun should be the first thing that enters a door. And that's actually like completely not true cuz that's the best way to get disarmed in something like an action sequence. And so Call of Duty is kind of taking that right where now if you're peeking your gun will still be kind of hidden. It's it's kind of your eye is the first thing through the door.

[00:08:56]And so there's just a lot more. You you'll notice it like when you're playing it, you'll see that your gun just moves in a it moves a lot more than than it used to.

[00:09:06]>> Yeah.

[00:09:06]>> But that's realism, right? That's how guns actually work. Nobody's just holding their gun out, right? They're constantly moving it. They're constantly pushing it up against their body. And so kind of how you see in like Uncharted and the new just released 007 uh first light where when he walks through a doorway, he'll kind of like put his hand there. And it's kind of like these reactions to the environment. That's what you're seeing now with the guns in Call of Duty is it's fully aware that you're up against a wall and it's reacting to that naturally.

[00:09:37]>> Nice. Uh this next I guess we kind of touched on this at the top, but you say dropping last gen was clearly the right call.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah. So, not only graphically, but they're doing a thing now where the map you're entering is not the map you're leaving. And what I mean by that is not only does it look pretty, but all maps have decorations. And now these decorations can be shot off the table and stuff like that, right? So, if you see like a dish set and you go in there and you shoot it all up, that dish set's just going to stay on the ground all shot up. Bullet holes are going to stay in the walls. And these are normally things that either a couldn't be interacted with before or the game would quickly despawn to save that memory for the actual gameplay. And now you're entering a map that looks pristine and you're leaving a map that looks super messed up, right? Because that's all just staying on the map. And they said that that's basically not possible with the memory limitations of PS4 and Xbox One. But the PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X and S allows for those decorations and just visual aesthetics to persist throughout a whole round without the need to despawn them for for other things.

[00:10:55]>> Cool. That's good stuff. All right. Apex attachments, you say, are where things get a little wild.

[00:11:00]>> Yeah. So, every gun in every Call of Duty has its own leveling up system. And as you level a gun up, you'll eventually unlock new attachments and stuff like that. In this game, you can do five attachments, but when you get to the end, it's like normally it's like, okay, you got the best scope. Or usually in in the case of Call of Duty, it's you got this really cool like tiger glimming skin, stuff like that, right? In this one, you're getting apex attachments.

[00:11:30]They are separate from your normal normal gunsmith loadout. uh and they get added and they change fundamental things about your gun. So, some examples are having a pistol that when you go into the apex mode all of a sudden becomes a hammer fire pistol that as quick as you can pull the trigger is as quick as the pistol could shoot. Another really cool one was a it's a shotgun that they added a strobe light to. So now you're basically walking around with a uh you know a flashbang in your eyes. So now people are getting blinded when they walk into a room and then they're getting shotguned. Other ones is like, you know, adding under barrel shotguns or grenade launchers. One really really cool one was taking a submachine throwing knives to it. So the character will kind of move it over and then be throwing throwing knives. So, it's that just kind of cool stuff where you're like, "Okay, I have used this gun a lot and now I'm actually getting some sort of like actual fundamental kind of special bonus for staying dedicated to that gun." And I mentioned in the preview as well that those attachments will stay after somebody's been killed, right? So, if you have a really cool Apex gun, there there's a good chance you'll eventually fall victim to that because somebody else will pick it up and use it and then vice versa. While we're on the subject of guns, talk about Gunny, which you say is basically gunsmith but without the headache.

[00:12:52]>> Yeah. So, Gunny is my favorite thing that they've added to uh this year's Call of Duty, which is you want to try a new gun or you've been leveling up a gun and you're you're going through the gunsmith and you're like, "Okay, this one this has this kind of sight, but does this kind of sight match up with the actual caliber of bullets that I'm, you know, using or or the, you know, the the buck of the gun?" All these different things. you're like, "Am I building a good gun or am I building a monstrosity?" The the pro pro Call of Duty people are aware, but me, I'm over here on YouTube being like, "How do I like make something actually where it's not like a Frankenstein's monster of a gun?" Uh, and so what Gunny does is now when you go to the gunsmith, it'll say like running gun, you know, close range, long range, balanced, and you just select it and it goes, okay, this is the gun you want to use. Here are the attachments for that play style that you've selected. So then from there, you could be like, okay, but I don't like that scope, so I'm going to change the scope still, but everything else I trust you with. Or you could be like, I want to do run and gun. and you're like, "Actually, I don't like what you've built. I'm going to click run and gun again, and it'll build another setup for you." And it's all still just based on stuff you've unlocked. But it gets rid of that I I would say like math in between matches where you're like, "What's what's the best kind of you're just like, "No, this is this is my kind of preset loadout based on what I've um added to my gun." And it it it makes for some really cool but very easy ways to to make uh loadouts and actually stay competitive.

[00:14:34]>> Sweet. All right. Quickly tell me about maps, modes, and lots of variety.

[00:14:38]>> Yeah, so the game's launching with 12 maps. I I would say probably about half of them are from the single player, you know, variations of the single player that have then gone on to become multiplayer maps and then a few others that are, you know, made from the ground up for multiplayer. And so you'll be on, you know, the streets of Korea, you'll be in a Korean nuclear base, you'll be in Russia, you'll be in New York, Mumbai. It's a it's a globe trotting game and the multiplayer kind of, you know, lends itself to that. Uh there's one specific map called Kill Block, which is really cool, which is basically they have what they call slabs. And so you play a 10v10 gunfight mode, which for folks that don't know, it's between rounds you're getting put with a a gun that everybody's using the same gun and it's 10v10 permanent death until the next round. And what it does is the map is constantly changing. So every time between rounds, the map, there's three sections, one of the sections might change or two of them might change or the middle might change. And so every single time you finish a round, not only are you getting a new gun that you have to play with, but also the map is completely different.

[00:15:52]>> Cool.

[00:15:52]>> And they're really proud of it. They said that there's over 500 uh combinations, so it's very unlikely that anybody will ever play the same thing twice. Um but they are >> Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people play Call of Duty. Um but then when I asked them about a seed um possibility, they said that they eventually might do something down the road where it's like, I really like this combination. So, I want to do a custom game and type in these string of numbers and that's the combination I'm going to get.

[00:16:20]>> Sweet. All right. And the final thing, talk to us about prestige this time around.

[00:16:24]>> Yeah, this is where I get my name in the credits for Modern Warfare 4. So, uh, yeah, they have two prestige modes in this game, which is prestige classic and prestige regular. Prestige classic is your normal level up to level 55, reset, everything, rank, guns, everything gets reset, but you get multiple rewards. You get a prestige badge and you get to start over this time with an XP boost.

[00:16:48]Now there's re prestige regular, which is you don't reset everything when you get to level 55, but you get fewer rewards, fewer XP boost on your next track, but it's for the people that want to say, "I've prestige. I've earned the next badge, but I still have all my guns and attachments." And my gripe with them came from the fact that that didn't make sense that regular is it should be called prestige new. So uh and they said that they're working on that. So we'll see what it's called by the time it's uh done. And if you see a big special thanks to Mark Medina in the credits, that's why.

[00:17:23]>> Yeah. But but basically everybody's first trek to 55 will be the same. Then at 55 you get to choose prestige classic or prestige regular. Then once you get to 55 again, you get to choose again. So every single time you prestige, you get to choose. I want to go a classic route.

[00:17:40]No, I want to go the regular route. And the way is because the reason for it is because they they've noticed that a lot of people just don't prestige because they don't want to lose all their stuff.

[00:17:48]So they're trying to cater to those people that don't want to lose their stuff but want to be part of the prestige conversation.

[00:17:55]>> Lots of new stuff in there. Mark Medina, >> Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 4. We're going to get to see more of this at the Xbox showcase on June 7th, which we'll be airing live right here on IGN. Uh, I'll be hosting our live pre and post show for that. So, come hang out beforehand and then stick with us after for all of our reactions and analysis.

[00:18:16]Mark Medina, thank you so much, sir.