The final Modern Warfare is a fitting swansong that rights the wrongs of previous outings.

The Call of Duty series needed a win this year. Last year’s Black Ops 7 was a clown car of bad decisions, featuring an always-online campaign mode with ridiculous zombie bosses and open-world Warzone. Worse still, the multiplayer mode (the only reason that many people buy the game) was entirely forgettable. Developer Treyarch was tasked with putting out Call of Duty games two years in a row — that crunch was a recipe for disaster.

On the other hand, that means Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward had plenty of time to cook up the fourth and final entry in its own series. Thankfully, the studio used that extra runway to its advantage. Modern Warfare 4 may not have returned Call of Duty to the highest highs of the original trilogy that ended in 2009 (and which Infinity Ward rebooted over the last decade), but this is a leap in the right direction for a series that has become increasingly sloppy in recent years.

Players will find plenty of cinematic action in the single-player campaign, and the multiplayer mode has slowed down just a touch, which I think the game largely benefits from.

More importantly, Modern Warfare Zombies has been completely dropped in favor of DMZ, an accessible player-versus-player-versus-AI extraction shooter experience. The experimental swing feels like a lifeline for the series, and DMZ is the standout mode for the game.

Modern Warfare 4 still suffers from some of Infinity Ward’s worst impulses, including open-world campaign sections, but this is still one of the better modern Call of Duty games.

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