As I watched the credits roll on Modern Warfare 4's campaign, a sobering thought infiltrated: I've been playing Call of Duty for over 20 years—two-thirds of my life. While I consider it primarily a multiplayer game these days, what I loved about Call of Duty all that time ago was its campaigns. In 2006, as a shy fourth grader at a new school, I made my first friend because we both played Call of Duty 3 on the Wii and spent a week recounting cool moments from the campaign over lunch. By 2007 (the year of Modern Warfare, of course), our lunch table was losing its collective shit over the part where Captain Price slides you the pistol right as he (as we thought at the time) dies.

As memorable as that sequence was, it marked the moment Call of Duty became globe-trotting romps about superhuman, super serious operatives who prevent WW3 before breakfast. It was pretty badass at the time, but what they gained in the sort of spectacle that makes great Sunday Night Football ads, they lost in relatability.

Sure, those early WW2 campaigns were shlocky riffs on movies, but they starred normal people who primarily wanted to go home—grizzled sergeants and green privates who fended off helplessness with humor. They depicted large-scale offensives won by smaller contributions. That's the energy that Infinity Ward tries to harness again in Modern Warfare 4. At times, it totally works.

This is the most fun I've had with a Call of Duty campaign in years, lending mostly to its new, non-elite faces.

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