Modern Warfare 4 Beta Switch 2 Preview: Call of Duty Goes Portable
After spending the weekend getting hands-on with every part of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s beta on Switch 2, I’m walking away with some very mixed thoughts. This is the first time Nintendo players have had boots on the ground in a proper Call of Duty since Call of Duty: Ghosts on Wii U, making its arrival on Switch 2 a pretty big deal. But after all this time, can Activision and development partner Digital Legends deliver the Call of Duty experience Nintendo players have been waiting for? There’s only one way to find out. So, gear up, lock and load, and let’s deploy into the Modern Warfare 4 beta.
Before we move further behind enemy lines, there’s one important thing to keep in mind: this is a beta. While it gives us our first real hands-on look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2, what we’re playing now shouldn’t necessarily be taken as representative of the finished game. That’s particularly important when discussing performance, graphics, bugs and overall polish. Things can change between this beta build and launch, and issues we encounter now may well be addressed before the full game arrives. So while these are my genuine impressions of what’s available right now, consider this a snapshot of Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2… not a final verdict.
Let’s talk about the visual elephant in the room: Modern Warfare 4, in my opinion, doesn’t exactly make the best first impression on Switch 2. My first hands-on experience with the game was the campaign, and it immediately stood out that the resolution appeared fairly low, with some form of upscaling being used to reconstruct the image. The result is a noticeably grainy presentation, with dithering and some image ghosting that can become particularly apparent when things are moving. There’s been plenty of discussion around whether the Switch 2 version is using DLSS, but whatever reconstruction technology is being employed, it doesn’t feel particularly refined in this beta build. The image can look soft and unstable, and the ghosting only adds to that impression. It’s certainly not the crispest-looking version of Call of Duty I’ve seen. Still, the interesting caveat here is that in motion, it’s serviceable.
Campaign
The campaign targets 30fps, and that is noticeable. At times, the frame pacing also feels a little inconsistent, which prevents the game from ever feeling quite as smooth and slick as I’d like. But once you’re actually playing, the presentation does enough to sell the experience. Where Modern Warfare starts to win me back is in its environments. The indoor sections in particular can look impressive, with the lighting doing a lot of heavy lifting. The developers make good use of shadows, contrast and environmental lighting to create some excellent-looking spaces, and it’s here that the lower resolution becomes much easier to overlook. Character models and weapons also hold up well, with plenty of detail in both. It’s when we move outside that the cracks start to become more obvious. Draw distance is where I began noticing some of the more aggressive compromises, with distant detail looking considerably less convincing. Thankfully, this wasn’t something I encountered quite as often during the campaign, but it becomes much more apparent once we move into the larger multiplayer environments… particularly Ground War and Warzone, which we will talk about shortly.
After testing the different modes available in the beta, I found that Modern Warfare’s visual performance varies considerably depending on what you’re actually playing. The campaign gives us one impression of what Switch 2 can do with the game, while multiplayer, Ground War and Warzone each introduce their own challenges. So rather than judging the Switch 2 version purely on its first visual impression, it’s time to see what happens when we take Modern Warfare out of its carefully constructed campaign environments and throw it into the chaos of multiplayer.
Multiplayer
If the campaign gave me some reservations about Modern Warfare on Switch 2, multiplayer was where those concerns started to disappear. Of course, my first experience wasn’t exactly a glowing endorsement. I jumped online at around 2 am, coffee in hand, and was immediately steamrolled. I’m a little rusty when it comes to the competitive Call of Duty scene, and apparently my years of experience have done very little to prepare me for the gamers sliding around the battlefield at ridiculous speeds. But once I shook the cobwebs off, something became very clear: Modern Warfare feels fantastic to play. More importantly, multiplayer immediately highlighted the potential of the Switch 2 version. While the dithering and image ghosting I noticed in the campaign are still present, the multiplayer experience felt considerably more polished. The higher framerate made an enormous difference, sitting around 45 fps mark, and that extra fluidity made the game feel far more responsive. It also meant that, despite the obvious visual compromises, I never felt like I was fighting the hardware as much as I had in the campaign. In fact, the smoother presentation made it feel like I was fighting on a much more even playing field with players on other consoles.
The gunplay immediately brought back the feeling that originally pulled me into Call of Duty. The weapons feel responsive, aiming is precise, and the controls are excellent. Mouse support also felt good when I tested it, although I spent the vast majority of my time playing with the Pro Controller. Movement feels a little more traditional than some of the recent entries, and I found the overall pace much easier to settle into; the maps offered a good variety of encounters. The Transit Station provides plenty of enclosed spaces and close-quarters engagements, while Rooftops opens things up considerably. Silkworm, meanwhile, takes the action to a South Korean street, offering another change of scenery and a different balance between open sightlines and cover. The maps felt fairly balanced. I rarely came away from a match feeling like the map itself had decided the outcome, and the variety meant I never felt like I was simply playing the same encounter over and over again.
Across the beta, I spent somewhere between 15 and 20 hours playing multiplayer and grinding my way to the level cap. That’s considerably more time than I expected to spend, especially considering I went into the beta wondering whether Modern Warfare could actually deliver on Switch 2. Some matches I was the pigeon, some matches I was the statue. Such is the way of online multiplayer, but regardless of whether I was dominating or getting absolutely obliterated, I kept wanting to play another match. That, more than anything else I’ve experienced in this beta so far, gives me hope for the final game. If Activision and Digital Legends can iron out some of those visual inconsistencies before launch, the standard multiplayer experience could be something genuinely special on Switch 2.
Ground War
Day two of the beta brought Ground War into the mix, and unfortunately, this is where the Switch 2 version started to look considerably less convincing. Performance drops back towards 30fps, and character animations can appear to dip even further. Combine that with the aggressive draw distance and suddenly trying to engage enemies at range becomes a real challenge. There were times when I simply couldn’t make out an opponent clearly enough to feel like I was fighting on equal terms. That’s the biggest problem with Ground War: the compromises start affecting the gameplay. Coming straight from the much more polished standard multiplayer, Ground War felt noticeably undercooked. Having opponents who can potentially see further and react more smoothly puts Switch 2 players at a distinct disadvantage, and it made the mode frustrating rather than exciting. For me, Ground War was easily the weakest part of the beta so far.
Warzone Resurgence
Warzone Resurgence fared a little better, although many of the same problems remain. Performance again sits around the 30fps mark, and while the experience felt more stable than Ground War, I still felt like I was playing at a disadvantage throughout. The larger environments and increased draw distances make those visual compromises much more apparent, while the lower framerate makes it harder to react as quickly as I could in standard multiplayer. It’s playable, and I had fewer complaints here than with Ground War, but after experiencing how good the regular multiplayer can feel on Switch 2, the difference is difficult to ignore. And that really became the defining theme of my beta experience: Modern Warfare can feel fantastic on Switch 2 when the hardware isn’t being pushed too hard, but the further you scale up the experience, the more obvious those compromises become.
Despite some of the concerns I’ve raised throughout this beta, I’m actually leaving my time with Modern Warfare on Switch 2 feeling pretty hopeful. We’ve already seen footage of the campaign running on the Switch 2 version closer to launch, and it looks considerably more polished than what we’re playing here. If the final release can deliver the improvements in visual fidelity and performance that we’ve seen in that footage, then this could be an easy win for Activision and Digital Legends. The important thing to remember is that this is still a beta. What we’ve played this weekend isn’t necessarily representative of the final product, and there is still time for the developers to refine the image quality, performance and overall polish. The foundations are certainly there. Standard multiplayer in particular showed just how good Modern Warfare can feel on Switch 2, and if the weaker areas can receive the same level of attention before launch, we could be in for a great time. Regardless of how things ultimately turn out, you can count on us to bring you a full review closer to release, alongside our usual deep dive into the game’s graphics and performance on Switch 2. Until then, stay frosty.
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