Last night, I started the campaign for Modern Warfare 4, the latest Call of Duty game. I fully expected the usual things one expects from a Call of Duty campaign: shoot some bad guys, hide behind cover, maybe even blow up a tank or parkour through a busy city. What I didn’t expect: Parries. And not just an errant parry here or there, but an entire parrying mechanic, as if it’s a first-person Soulslike.

Modern Warfare 4 starts traditionally enough. You play as part of a group of soldiers stationed in Hajin, a fictional city in South Korea. The North Korean regime bombs the city. You shoot some bad guys, hide behind cover, and blow up a giant truck. Then comes the second mission, “Out in the Cold,” which casts you as longtime Modern Warfare protagonist Captain John Price. You’re tasked with infiltrating a Manhattan nightclub and extracting information from a Russian asset. Price intentionally enters the club without any weapons. Almost immediately, a lumbering giant of a bouncer raises a fist, and a string of terror-inducing words splash across the screen.

For the first part of the mission, combat plays out like this: pressing L to parry bouncers, then following it up by pressing R to punch them in the face. You eventually get a pistol, and the rest of the mission plays out with unabashed John Wick influence. You punch and shoot your way through a series of neon-lit nightclub rooms. Quintessentially 138bpm deep house thrums through the speakers.

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