And so we return perhaps one final time to Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare strand, with stories, “ripped from the newspaper headlines”, featuring shady terror organisations, nefarious rogue states and the brutally capable, monosyllabic war fighters who stand between us and Armageddon. Last year’s Black Ops 7 instalment was a sales disappointment for Activision, and that has no doubt put extra pressure on Infinity Ward, the studio leading Modern Warfare 4 development. Fortunately, this developer – like series heroes Price, Gaz and Ghost – seems to thrive on pressure.
As you may have read, this year’s campaign is based around a fictitious North Korean ruling family that has seized an opportunity to invade its southern neighbour. Amid the chaos, a small group of Korean and American marines must help lead the fightback, while in the shadows, SAS hard man John Price makes an unlikely new comrade in his own morally ambiguous quest to put the world to rights. Mads Mikkelsen pops up as evil mastermind The Archer, but like Kiernan Shipka in Black Ops 7 he’s rather wasted, with very little screen time.
