It’s been over a decade, but the Call of Duty series is back on a Nintendo platform with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Given the visual pizazz that the series is known for on more powerful hardware, does the Switch 2 version do enough on the visual front to make this worth it? How about the online play? We tackle all of this and more in this review. Let’s get into it.
Story
For those who aren’t up to date with the story in this series since the soft reboot of the “Modern Warfare” series in 2019, a handy recap of all of the things that have happened up to this point is available under the campaign. For MW4, the world is thrown into chaos as North Korea invades neighboring South Korea. A squad of Korean and American soldiers are fighting to not only survive but to also push the invading forces back. Simultaneously (and occasionally before the events of the invasion), rogue captain John Price is consumed with getting revenge on politicians and military personnel who have wronged him in the past. You’ll even get a look at the North Korean side of things as the story unfolds. The game has you playing through these storylines throughout the 16 campaign missions. Things here are varied, offering similar and yet different gameplay scenarios and locales across the globe.
Although this is the last part of a four-game series, you don’t necessarily need to have played the previous games to enjoy the story. Sure, it helps, especially with the Price sections and all of the characters that pop up there. Still, it was a really cool story and it was interesting to see how it all came together in the end. I haven’t played Call of Duty on a yearly basis for quite some time, so it’s a bit difficult to say how this stacks up to others in the series, but things here are fairly realistic, well acted and well written.
As an additional note, you better make sure that you have ample space on your Switch 2 (or your SD card) for this one. The download here is over 90 GB, so it’s best to prioritize what you’ll want to keep on your system alongside of MW4.
Gameplay & Modes
Modern Warfare 4 features three main modes - Mulitplayer, the Campaign and the online sandbox DMZ. I’ll get into the online centric modes a little bit later. The 16 Campaign missions offer quite a bit of variety when it comes to gameplay. There are missions where you’ll use stealth, fight enemies in open areas, creep around tight corridors in restrictive buildings, drive vehicles and more. Controls are on point as you would expect from the series, and anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with shooters will feel at home here. Gyro controls are also available here and are pretty customizable. My setup during game has the gyro activate only when I’m looking down the sights (ZL), which works out great for me. Since there is quite a bit that can be tinkered around with, it’s worth checking out what works best for you via trial and error.
Mouse Controls
The Switch 2 version of MW4 allows players to make use of the mouse functionality of the Joy-Con 2. By default this can be activated by just simply removing a Joy-Con and placing it on a flat surface, though you are free to go into the settings and adjust things to your liking. This control method allows for significantly faster aiming while controlling your character with the left Joy Con. It generally feels pretty good, but I did have one issue with this - things like reloading or reequipping armor plates were still assigned to the buttons on the right Joy Con, the same one being used to look around with the mouse. This felt a bit clumsy to me, especially when things start getting a bit hectic. There may be some more that can be adjusted in the dense settings menu, but I overall I just felt more comfortable playing with my Pro Controller or with the Joy Con attached to the system in handheld mode. At any rate, it’s nice to have this as an option. It should be noted, too, that the mouse controls do not work outside of gameplay, so you won’t be able to use them in the menus.
Online Play - Multiplayer & DMZ
Just as you would expect, MW4 features a full multiplayer suite of options - the same that you will find on other platforms. What’s great here is that both cross platform progression (via an Activision account) and cross platform play are available, so you can play with friends regardless of what they’re playing on. Online play is separated into two specific modes in this year’s game with the Multiplayer hub and DMZ. Multiplayer has all of the trappings that you have come to expect with the series with modes such as Domination, team death match and more. Everything that is available in other platforms can also be found here, so you don’t have to worry about the Switch 2 build being inferior in terms of the content on offer.
DMZ is touted as the “definitive extraction experience” and has players enter a huge map of the Hajin Exclusion zone, the fictional region located in North and South Korea in the game. Players are deployed in squads of three (with up to 20 squads on the same map) as they look to scavenge for goods and complete objectives before heading back to base camp. Story missions are available as are dynamic randomly generated missions, though players can opt to ignore these and just explore. Players are also free to work with their squad, go off on their own or try to actively take out other players on the map. Regardless of how you tackle it, the world is also littered with a number of NPCs that vary in difficulty and firepower. The goal here is to get as much loot and complete as many objectives as you can before returning to base. If you die out on the field, it’s over, thought some progression and skills are on offer. I haven’t played this mode a ton, but the scope here is really awesome. There are just so many crazy things that can potentially happen, and playing with friends is probably the optimal way to experience this if you’re going online. If you want to play solo with no others in your squad, be sure to turn off the “Squad Fill” before you hop in.
From my experience so far with the game, things on the Switch 2 are pretty smooth, and I rarely ran into any connection issues in docked or handheld. I was playing with all of the default options enabled, including cross platform play, and things here ran great. If you’re looking for a way to play Call of Duty online while sitting on the sofa with sports on TV or something like that, the Switch 2 is definitely a great place to play the game.
Visuals, Audio & Performance
Visuals and performance vary depending on which mode you are playing between the Campaign and multiplayer. The frame rate is set to a (pretty much) locked 30 fps when playing throughout the Campaign. There are occasional dips here, mainly when there are some kind of cutscenes, but overall things ran pretty smoothly. With the default settings, the game can be a bit washed out from time to time and hair can look a bit fuzzy. I’ve also found that the default HDR settings can sometimes make the game just too dark to play, though this is something that is really going to depend on your TV and/or the lighting in the room where you’re playing.
In terms of online multiplayer, things vary here, too, depending on which mode you tackle. For the standard “Multiplayer” option, the game runs incredibly smoothly, right around 60 fps with minimal dips in the action. The tradeoff here is that the character models, levels and textures aren’t nearly as detailed as what is found in the single player campaign. A similar thing can be said about DMZ. While it doesn’t quite get all the way up to 60 fps, it seems to be a bit over 30 and is still a serviceable way to play the game. Textures can be a bit flat from time to time, but things run pretty smoothly.
Most of what I’ve outlined is also applicable to the game in handheld mode. Throughout my time with the game for this review, I’ve spent probably about half of that playing the game in handheld mode and the results have been impressive, but still not perfect. Playing this way runs the game pretty smoothly, but there will be some occasional hiccups, particularly in cutscenes during the Campaign. Online fared well, with the game running at a pretty consistent framerate. One of the benefits of playing on the smaller screen is that you may not notice some of the fuzziness compared to when its blown up on a bigger screen. Things like that are still there, but might not be as noticeable to some.
Tucked away in the Graphics Settings are two different types of upscaling options. The one on by default is SMAA TX2 and the other is DLSS. This isn’t as cut and dry as things have been with other games on the platform that feature Graphic and Performance mode. I think most people will be pretty hard pressed to see much of a difference between SMAA and DLSS. To me, the DLSS seemed to offer a better experience overall as things played a bit smoother and looked a little bit better. To take things even further, there are additional settings that you can tinker with under Graphics that may result in a better looking game. Just to be clear, I was testing this mainly in the Campaign. User “Stetson&Spurs” made a comment about this on our gameplay video and I also found a YouTube short by a user by the name of “N64 Josh” about this very thing. While slightly different, I went ahead and did the following:
- Eco Mode Preset - Off
- World Motion Blur - Off
- Weapon Motion Blur - Off
- Film Grain - 0.00
- Fidelity FX CAS - On
- Fidelity FC CAS Strength - 60 or higher
- On-Demand Texture Streaming - Press X
- Allocated Texture Cache Size - Large
- Download Limits - Off
- Resolution Scaling Technique - NVIDIA DLSS
Even with these changes, I don’t know if I would say that the game looks leagues better, but perhaps it does run a bit smoother. I think those of you checking out a review like this might be outliers and the main default visuals will be good enough for most. Still, it might be worth messing around with these to see what looks best to you because to me, there is no definitive answer.
I will say this about MW4 on the Switch 2. Although it’s not perfect, what the developers were able to do to get MW4 running consistently on the Switch 2 is impressive. Obviously some conceits had to be made, but this is a competent port that should not be overlooked, especially if you’re wanting to play the game in handheld mode.
Conclusion
Modern Warfare 4 was a great jumping point for the series to make a return to a Nintendo platform. Sure, the game doesn’t look as good as it does on other platforms, but the visual shortfalls can be overlooked by some. The consistent performance (30 fps in the Campaign, a bit higher in DMZ and 60 fps in online Multiplayer), compelling story, depth of the modes and tight gameplay make this a great title to pick up and play on your Switch 2. To top this off, the game runs nearly as well in handheld as it does in docked.
But let’s turn things over to you. Did you pick up MW4 on the Switch 2? Are you planning on it? What’s your favorite game in the Call of Duty series? For me, it’s definitely Modern Warfare 2 back on the Xbox 360/PS3. It was one of the first titles that I really dug deep into with the story mode, online play and those awesome juggernaut missions with friends. Anyway, sound off in the comments down below. We’d love to hear from you.
Final Score: 8.5
by Danny Bivens
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