Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s early access beta is giving players their first hands-on with the newest entry in the juggernaut FPS franchise, and while it mostly feels like business as usual, I did come away impressed with one particular change in this year’s installment: smoke.
In many shooters, smoke works one of two ways: It’s either close to useless, failing to provide sufficient cover, or entirely too effective, making items like smoke grenades feel mandatory.
Modern Warfare 4 takes a different approach. This isn’t your granddaddy’s smoke. Rather than just shrouding an area in fog, equipment like smoke grenades and field upgrades like the smoke wall create actually interesting gameplay scenarios thanks to developer Infinity Ward’s new volumetric smoke tech. Far from being static, this smoke interacts with its environment, moving and morphing as players run, shoot, and slide through it. Explosions will disperse the smoke, too.
This opens up all kinds of tactical possibilities, both offensively and defensively. Attackers can use it to block sightlines while still making temporary kill holes by shooting through the smoke. It’s a dynamic that works on defense as well. Throwing a smoke grenade and seeing where bullets are opening up holes in the smog gives you more information on where hostiles are coming from.
Being able to disperse smoke with bullets and grenades also presents players with decisions to make in the middle of a firefight: Do you shoot through the smoke to try and clear sightlines but give away your position? Do you throw a grenade and try to disperse the smoke? Or do you wait patiently and try to take full advantage of the shroud the smoke provides?
These moment-to-moment gameplay questions are present to a lesser extent in previous Call of Duty games, but this new volumetric smoke, and all the ways players can interact with it, is a small game changer. It’s an addition I would love to see Infinity Ward double down on and design more of the game around. It makes Modern Warfare 4’s objective modes in particular more engaging, with more choices when it comes to attacking enemy capture points or positions.
It’s tactical and clever in a way that most of Modern Warfare 4’s multiplayer isn’t, and strangely enough, feels at odds with the overall speed and pace of this year’s Call of Duty. Infinity Ward seems to want to have its cake and eat it too.
The newer Modern Warfare subseries that started in 2019 is known for being more grounded, realistic, and slower-paced than its Black Ops cousin. In many ways, Modern Warfare 4 delivers on those expectations. Guns feels weighty and powerful, with impressive visuals and excellent sound design. But when it comes to gameplay, Modern Warfare is faster and less tactical than ever before, with blisteringly fast (and fluid) movement.
One match of the beta is all it takes to reveal players are jump firing and sliding around the battlefield like they’re pilots from Titanfall. Movement isn’t as over-the-top as it has been in recent Black Ops games with their (very fun) omnimovement system, but Modern Warfare 4 still feels like a far cry from the “boots on the ground” of the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot.
Infinity Ward’s new volumetric smoke, for all its impressiveness, feels a little out of place as a result. After all, why play tactically around this impressive new smoke tech when you could just constantly slide around shooting people in their kneecaps instead?
Modern Warfare 4 isn’t the first shooter to use volumetric smoke, of course. The most obvious comparison to make is the upgraded smoke that developer Valve debuted as part of Counter-Strike 2 back in 2023. Therein, however, lies the point. Counter-Strike 2 is a tactical shooter, one where smoke creates scenarios that skilled players can play around. In Modern Warfare 4, smoke, while visually impressive and extremely cool, feels at odds with the rest of Infinity Ward’s fast-paced vision.
As it stands, Modern Warfare 4’s new volumetric smoke is one of the few aspects of this year’s game that feels new to the series and stands out. There’s still more beta, and the full game, to play, so it remains to be seen how useful or powerful Infinity Ward’s new smoke tech will be post-launch. Nonetheless, it’s a cool addition for a franchise that too often feels the same year after year, and one I hope Infinity Ward does more with in the future.
