Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 boasts ‘DMZ’, a bolt-on extraction shooter mode that’s an evolution of the 2022 ‘beta’ experience that launched on the Modern Warfare 2 platform. It’s a welcome addition to the offering that has been lapped up by fans worldwide, but while it clears some competing extraction games in some respects, it has one glaring flaw.
The players inhabiting the PvPvE world are split down the middle because there are no PvE-focused considerations in the extraction platform, which many believe should be part and parcel of the game. This has led to an immense debate surfacing online that’s tearing the community apart, spoiling what might have otherwise been an excellent extraction game.
Here’s my full COD DMZ review.
COD DMZ Could Be Phenomenal, But It’s Still Great
There’s so much meat on DMZ’s bones, it’s unreal. That’s something I’ll make clear immediately. You can leap in, and you’re immediately presented with a large, open-world map to explore, a story to chase, side missions to complete, and all the emergent gameplay opportunities that come with an extraction shooter.
The base content is juicy enough to surprise the average Call of Duty gamer even before the title’s first official season has dropped, which is indicative of some great planning from Infinity Ward.
DMZ is a PvPvE extraction title, which means you load up, load in, complete objectives, win fights (hopefully) against AI and human enemies, and extract again. If you die when you’re in the game, you lose everything you’ve brought in with you and everything you’ve found.
That’s the fundamental operating model of an extraction shooter, and DMZ nails it, with some strange caveats.
I mean, there’s a strange financial mechanic that requires you to pay for ‘lost operators’, which are characters that you control that are killed in action. The downside to this is that the higher the level of that operator, the more you’ll end up paying to recover them, lest they be lost forever.
And the price tags attached to these recovery actions can be exorbitant. I’m talking hundreds of thousands in ‘DMZ Cash’, which is a massive sticking point, especially when you’ve died to some nefarious player lurking in a dark corner somewhere. It’s immediately off-putting.
That brings me to the ‘one thing’ I mentioned in this DMZ review title.
The community is in tatters over this game. The split is tangible, right down the middle, and on one side, you’ve got players begging for a PvE-only mode, while on the other, you’ve got the more hardcore PvP fans telling them to get stuffed. It has proved to be massively divisive, and it has been extremely harmful for an already pretty toxic community.
These days, it’s pretty weird for an extraction game to not consider PvE content in some way. Every major extraction game either has it or is getting it (or testing it), and for DMZ to launch without any mention of the offering being made feels odd. Perhaps it’ll come later; we don’t know. For now, it’s not there, and it’s leaving a gaping hole in the ecosystem.
That’s because the PvP-focused players are mostly tearing the platform to shreds. They’re going out of their way to kill people minding their own business, treating the game like Warzone and mowing down all and sundry. It’s ruining the game for many folks who want to explore the world, complete missions, and level up their FOB, and that’s a glaring flaw.
And it sucks, because elsewhere, DMZ shines.
The map of Hajin is a wonder to explore; it looks phenomenal on the surface, the AI enemies aren’t all that bad, and it’s diverse enough for every raid to be fairly different. There are loot routes to take and missions to farm, but mostly, you can sink a few hours at a time into DMZ and have a different experience in every run.
You’ve got solid progression mechanics in the DMZ level and the FOB, and there’s grounds for expansion there. We already assume that the map will expand later this year or early next year, thanks to a ‘secret cutscene’ at the end of DMZ’s order chain. Looting is satisfying and non-complex, the missions offer some exciting set pieces and sequences, and driving isn’t entirely buggy as hell.
The extraction elements are handled pretty well in DMZ, and there’s no doubting it’s a fantastic addition to the genre, but the community issue is going to run rings around most of the positivity for this game. I think if Infinity Ward added a PvE ‘toggle’, they’d solve the issues there, but that’s not going to happen overnight.
Ultimately, I’d say that DMZ’s second iteration was worth the four-year wait. It’s a hearty extraction experience that leans on the success of Modern Warfare 4 to get a foothold in the genre, and it has done so with aplomb, bringing a few twists and more freedom to a typically oppressive vertical.
Are you enjoying DMZ? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out our review of Modern Warfare 4’s campaign. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
