Call of Duty Franchise

Today's the day DMZ fans have been waiting for - those in the UK who pre-ordered a digital edition of Modern Warfare 4 will have early access to DMZ from this evening.

The actual time it opens up is the same for everyone around the world. For us here in the UK, it's 6pm BST.

Enjoy, and stay frosty!

Yesterday saw the start of early access for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. This included the new single player campaign - a return to the story which last featured back in 2023's Modern Warfare 3. The usual characters return - Price, Ghost, Laswell, Makarov, Graves, Archer etc, but you also get to play characters from both North and South Korea as the storyline evolves across multiple threads.

There is plenty of content online around the campaign, but none better than IceBurgZ in my opinion. His storyline recap is well worth a watch, as is his overview of the MW4 campaign.

DMZ streamers have been busy, none more so than Westie. These are well worth a watch:

• Crafting plus details of the Trait Tree and how the new Gunsmith works
• PvP and the new bounty system
• Forward Operating Base and how it all works
• Gameplay
• Dynamic Operations - the new style of contract
• Overview covering most of the above

Infinity Ward and Activision have finally dropped some major reveals for the upcoming DMZ - one of the core game modes in Modern Warfare 4.

All the usual streamers have provided their take on it - here are a few:

• Phixate, and more Phixate
• On1c
• Westie
• Cross2Crown
• ElClaptain, and more ElClaptain

Some of these will have the same content, but definitely worth watching a few ahead of official release later this month!

Infinity Ward have dropped a trailer for the upcoming Modern Warfare 4 game - watch over on youtube

We're also seeing the DMZ streamers returning to the game following recent updates, including ON1C who has play-tested DMZ 2.0 - see what he says (apart from the bits he's NDA'd not to say) over on his channel

Rumours are doing the rounds hinting that the upcoming Call of Duty Modern Warfare IV - the Infinity Ward title that's supposed to include a new DMZ - will not be on Game Pass from Day 1. The presumed reason is that Microsoft made way less money than they expected following their acquisition of Activision after including all previous Call of Duty games on Game Pass. It is widely believed that the recent Game Pass price hikes were an effort to reclaim some of those losses.

Read more analysis on the rumours over on Game Rant and join the debate on r/CodCompetitive

Activision have made a significant change to Call of Duty HQ for players of the two older games - Modern Warfare II and III. Both these games have been moved out of HQ and are now standalone games in Steam, meaning you can go straight into MWII without having to make the hop through HQ first. It also means you don't suffer from having to wait for massive Black Ops updates that you don't care about if all you want to do is play DMZ.

Well done Activision for porting settings across - keyboard and mouse settings are preserved, as are system settings such as graphics and audio.

Less well done Activision for leaving 80GB behind under the cod22 and cod23 folders within Call of Duty HQ.

Update: rumours are circulating that the underbarrel grenade launcher glitch is back. If that is right, it could spell the end of DMZ. If you recall, this was fixed by accident via a Warzone patch last year, but the move away from Warzone has regressed DMZ to pre-fix status. Devastating news if true.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Season 4 Reloaded launched overnight, introducing a bunch of new features, map adjustments and gameplay changes. For all the details, have a read on shacknews

Some more DMZ 2.0 leaks have emerged, and from a credible source. Phixate gives us the details in his latest video

Black Ops 6 Season 4 is here - head over to CallOfDuty.com for the full details of all the new content, gameplay changes etc.