When Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 released last November, I expected its plethora of modes and cooperative play to consume the small subset of my friend group that were Call of Duty faithful. Endgame felt tantalizing and relaxed enough that it wouldn’t reek of the same stench as bitter MP and Warzone defeats. Plus Zombies is always hectic in the best way.

Yet that year, Call of Duty gathered dust quicker than ever.

Two weeks prior, Embark Studios dropped the overwhelming megaton that was Arc Raiders. It swallowed up every conversation. It became an obsession. Viewed by tens of thousands on Twitch. Dominating the concurrent players charts on Steam for months. Arc Raiders‘ success was undeniable.

And in its wake, my friend group was caught. Evenings on end we would conduct raids, fighting against deadly robots and hoping to avoid the ire of other players. As with many games that are voraciously ingested, Arc Raiders eventually ran its course but that hollow space where Call of Duty would have lived that year was palpable.

Call of Duty was a trendsetter in the multiplayer space but over the years, other developers have worked to hedge bets on the Brand New Thing. Yet Call of Duty has always had the budget and runway to experiment. What other franchise or property would be able to split its yearly product into multiple modes or develop a full-fledged spin-off?

Black Ops 4 was Call of Duty‘s first attempt to capture the flashpoint that was the battle royale genre. While “Blackout” was good enough in 2018, it wasn’t until months after the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot that Warzone dropped and made Call of Duty‘s take on a 100-person elimination fest a permanent fixture.

Warzone has proved it has the staying power for the foreseeable future but since then, another nascent genre became too irresistible for Call of Duty to take a stab at. When DMZ became available as a part of Modern Warfare II, extraction shooters were still finding a foothold in the gaming space. And honestly, it still is.

Few examples of true successful extraction shooters can be found in our exceptionally busy and competitive space. Much like the corpses of numerous studios and games that thought they could send a bunch of players into a map for a chicken dinner, extracting for loot is a similar pipe dream. Titles like Escape from Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, and Delta Force have nestled themselves into the niche. Marathon, unfortunately, has struggled to retain relevance and is more or less on life support until a shot of adrenaline directly to the heart is hopefully administered by Bungie in December.

Arc Raiders proved that the extraction genre has mass appeal, that a wealth of success can be found when done right. When DMZ released for Modern Warfare II, I wonder if Activision and Infinity Ward knew how popular the genre could become. Or if they were just hoping to have their piece of the pie too and have lightning potentially strike twice, like with Warzone.

After all, if anything has the opportunity to prove something has mass appeal, it’s Call of Duty.

DMZ‘s original iteration attached to Modern Warfare II is one I barely remember. Because I wasn’t playing much online with others at the time, DMZ felt too lonely and too intense to enjoy by myself. I could see the appeal of going into larger maps and having enemy AI to kill in addition to other players. In fact, one of the reasons I’ve never enjoyed Warzone and the battle royale genre much is because their sole focus is on hunting down other players. Once you’re dead, that’s it. There’s nothing to work towards outside of that win. DMZ‘s contracts, objectives, and enemy AI gave me a separate purpose, one to fill the empty space. And knowing that fellow players could catch each other unaware and steal some glory was a delightful temptation.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 comes to me in a different period. One where I’ve experienced the thrill of other extraction shooters and one where I have an active group of friends who similarly wish to be dragged through hell. This chapter-closing entry in the Modern Warfare reboot saga is hoping to plant another flag, establish a foothold in another genre with hopes of domination.

Infinity Ward’s genuine attempt at a full-fledged extraction mode is a shocking adrenaline rush. In it, I had moments of tension, desperation, and awe that are normally reserved for the game’s campaign. Seemingly with all these years to refine the formula and watch how others have played out, DMZ might just be the next big thing for extraction shooters.

DMZ–and by extension, Warzone–play so well and feel so good because they are rooted in Call of Duty‘s phenomenal gameplay. Over the decades the series has been tinkered with by four main studios, all who have had differing ideas of how a gun shoots, how fast a player dies, and everything that happens between those two events. To me, the only competition Call of Duty has in terms of first-person shooting is Bungie and I truly thought that was one of the elements that would drive Marathon‘s success (oh well…). One of the main reasons Fortnite never clicked for me in its first year was because I never enjoyed the way its guns felt. The stakes were too high in battle royale and third-person wasn’t the way. “Blackout” felt significantly better but it was still very much an early stab.

Players waiting for Call of Duty to have its extraction moment are granted safe passage with DMZ. And as one of the three components of Modern Warfare 4 (and considering how feature-packed Black Ops 6 and 7 were), it was important that Infinity Ward nail DMZ out of the gate.

The unsurprising elements, the mechanics to get your foot through the door are here. DMZ very much plays like a Call of Duty game. Gun feedback is responsive and smooth. Sniper rifles crack over a distance in hopes players have properly lined up a shot. Shotguns explode with fury and can mow down AI fodder with a trigger pull. Accompanying that top-tier gunplay is a full arsenal of weapons that players will either find randomly or work towards building with cash. Have a weapon you love in MP? With enough cash you can craft it, attachments and all, and bring it into a round of DMZ. Of course, you’re clutching it for dear life hoping that no one pries it from your corpse.

Stripping the other human players out of DMZ, runs play similarly to campaign missions, just without most of the scripted moments. Enemies attack and hit as if they were tuned somewhere between Regular and Hardened difficulty. Players need to be mindful of constant patrols while they are looting and working towards completing missions. I watched vehicles drive past, fully stocked with soldiers. Helicopters flew overhead, threatening to land if too much commotion was going on. And most encounters can be mopped up with minimal effort, especially for a team of three competent players.

Twists in the formula begin to form with the more mayhem players unleash on the map of Hajin–DMZ‘s current playable space. Kill too many NPCs and the alert level will raise, causing enemies and eventually kill squads to converge on your location. Players can certainly take out pesky patrols that may cause problems during humble, routine looting. But this mechanic is in place to both encourage a bit of stealth and raise the stakes.

In one of DMZ‘s story missions, my team was required to infiltrate an enemy base, ultimately finding a key card that would provide us entry into a secure bunker. The base was surrounded by a tall concrete fence with watchtowers and minimal avenues for an unseen entrance. I pulled the trigger a bit too lackadaisically and plunged my two teammates into a bloodbath. Within minutes, alert ranks had risen and my closest ally and myself kept scrambling for safety while the other teammate was at the perimeter trying to work their way in. My HUD kept notifying me of impending support and soon enough, I could easily identify it by the fleet of blood-red vehicles populating the mini-map.

Scrambling through buildings, we were required to hold down a position momentarily to further hone in on the location of the key card. All the while, gun fire and grenades were tearing through windows with fanged accuracy, hoping to flush us out. Eventually we made it inside, facing dwindling ammunition as dead NPCs only drop barely enough bullets for half a magazine. Any and all containers I could loot for items and supplies while skirting around cover from gunfire were necessary though not often entirely helpful. And because we had spent so much time causing a ruckus, the timer ticking down to hazardous radiation flooding the map had already expired.

As the mission led us back outside, we had given up hope that we could exfiltrate but maybe we could defend the local SAM site and get credit. And in those final moments, the story concluded with a desperate, last-moment exfil only a few meters away, allowing us to fly out as radiation literally overtook us.

This single moment in DMZ provided one of the most thrilling sessions of Call of Duty I’ve ever played. My senses felt on fire as we surgically and often clumsily moved through the base trying to accomplish objectives and hoping against hope we would survive. And flying away in that chopper was a rush I never expected.

DMZ is absolutely going to go hard.

That thought has needled its way into my brain since I wrapped up my early access review period with Modern Warfare 4 a week before DMZ launched. I felt as if I was barely able to scratch the surface of what players will eventually witness when going through the mode. Because there is one thing my session couldn’t account for: a deluge of other players.

When DMZ fully launches, up to 20 squads for a total of 60 players will be on the same map at once. Imagine that bunker infiltration knowing that other players might have the same mission as me. Will they be friendly? Or will they wait for an opportune moment to come out of the shadows and mop up what the NPCs couldn’t?

The competitive nature of Call of Duty doesn’t need to be isolated to multiplayer and Warzone. But DMZ unites these fronts in a way that encourages competition and cooperation in whatever measure players deem necessary. Infinity Ward has found ways to prop up both types of player so that neither feel completely unwelcome.

Arc Raiders eventually ran into the problem of splitting its community into those who wanted to PvP and those who wanted to take on massive Arc robots and loot. Players were afraid of engaging in PvP or even defending themselves because it could alter the hidden algorithm that would put players in lobbies with others.

DMZ offers those wanting cooperation the ability to wave a literal white flag to signal to other players they don’t want combat. It’s the “Don’t Shoot!” of Call of Duty and, obviously, no one has to pay any heed to it. Roaming high value targets and lieutenants provide a significant challenge for players and a high payout if they extract with their dog tags. But other players around the map are also able to watch those dog tags move, enticing them for the challenge. Players who start killing others will be listed on a bounty board, knowing that the price on their heads might be too tempting, especially if it has come at the cost of killing others.

Incorporating these risks and rewards into the extraction formula is an essential part of the genre and we saw Infinity Ward tinkering with them years ago. But for Modern Warfare 4‘s DMZ, they are fully realized and fleshed out. It is equally exciting to imagine helping others complete their difficult challenges as it is to pick them off at the very end and take their loot.

Currently, there is room for growth and the biggest is the specter of one solitary map. While Hajin is a sprawling locale, will it be the only one? According to Infinity Ward the current plan is to incorporate Russia into the North and South Korean sections. At launch the player can see a red mist on their map indicating it will open up. But will that be enough?

Designing engaging and worthwhile maps for any mutiplayer game can be tricky. For an extraction shooter they have to feel different enough to justify their existence while also offering valuable spots for engagements and looting. Hajin has a bountiful amount of tucked away secrets, areas that require keys and effort to access, and hot zones for fighting. And for several months, I think it will be enough for the large portion of players who were also satisfied by Warzone‘s initial offering. Yet my hope is that Infinity Ward already has tricks up their sleeve to occupy players who may grow tired of fighting the same mil-sim enemies on the same mil-sim map day in, day out.

DMZ is packed with random missions that players can go around collecting and accomplishing for reward. These are relatively quick and simple tasks meant to move players around the map and grow their pool of equipment and crafting materials. Disabling SAM sites that will shoot enemy helicopters out of the skies, taking out a specific target, collecting intel, are all easy enough and sometimes feature multiple steps so as not to be over too quickly and potentially push teams into each other.

As DMZ picks up after the events of Modern Warfare 4, there are a handful of story missions meant to continue the plot of opportunists and soldiers coming to Hajin to scour for materials and potentially concerning weapons. My task at the enemy bunker was one of the harder missions. An easier one required my team to breach a casino, find data, drill through the casino vault, and eventually extract with bags of cash from the vault to an exfil. These multi-pronged missions have certain suggestions for the quality of the loadout, usually better armor plating and larger backpacks. Eventually players will be asked to go to the radioactive zone where the hardest enemies roost and a gas mask is absolutely required for survival.

Being an extraction shooter, make no mistake that loot is one of the most valuable parts of DMZ. Materials sourced through missions are taken back to the Forward Operating Base to be used at the 3D printer. Here players can spend money at the Gunsmith to make weapons, check out the bounty board, upgrade various stations, and mess around with their operators.

For DMZ, operators are essential to survival. Players level them up on a separate track to unlock a series of perks from three schools that will give the player an edge. Those operators can also prestige a few times to keep valuable perks. But if an operator falls, players will have to spend money to get them back, incentivizing careful play and consideration.

Witnessing all the parts of DMZ work in harmony with each other, I found myself to be having some of the most fun I’ve had in Call of Duty since the days of Black Ops 3 and Modern Warfare 2019 multiplayer. For some, it may not be evocative of those peak moments of multiplayer from the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era but it’s damn near close. Infinity Ward has dubbed DMZ the “action extraction shooter” and I can absolutely see why. This is pure Call of Duty married with the best parts of an extraction shooter. And this is the kind of high-risk thrill Call of Duty thrives on.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4‘s campaign is one of the franchise’s strongest in years. DMZ is just another cherry on top. This is Call of Duty at its best because Infinity Ward has put the time and effort into making this mode the best it can be. And as players start to flood in, I can’t imagine them being torn away from it for quite some time.

Disclaimer: Our full impressions and final review score for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will arrive right before the full game launches on October 23. For campaign coverage, check out our review here.