Respawn Monday #14: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 Beta and My Return to Rainbow Six Siege

It’s the second long weekend in a row for those of us in the Philippines, but it was another busy weekend of playing games. I’ve already started covering Marvel’s Wolverine (review out September 10, 2026), returned to Rainbow Six Siege, and tried the open beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Some thoughts.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Is How I Expected It to Go

This weekend was very first-person shooter-focused. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 hosted an open beta on consoles and PC, so I gave it a shot and downloaded its 50+ GB beta.

The file size for a Call of Duty beta feels like a crime. But I carried on and submitted to the download needed to play the latest Call of Duty multiplayer offering. After spending around five hours with it, the verdict is about what I expected: I felt roughly the same way I have about every Call of Duty game I’ve played over the last five years.

It’s not bad, per se. It just isn’t getting me all that excited anymore both in engaging with the fast-paced gameplay or even the usual grind.

The feeling I had toward the franchise was different back then. Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 were the series at its peak for me. Memorable maps, straightforward gunplay, and none of the ultra-fast movement we see today. Just arcade-y Call of Duty multiplayer fun.

When I played my first hour of Modern Warfare 4, I was reminded that the core of the series continues to stay the same. What I felt playing Black Ops 6 is almost exactly what I felt playing Modern Warfare 4. Advanced Warfare, World War II, even when the settings and features change, they all give me a similar feeling.

The same tension. The same frantic engagements.

Every corner can be met with someone sliding into you, jumping around, or dropping into a crouch to throw off your aim. It’s all fair. It’s just that everyone is playing the game in roughly the same way.

I get it. That’s Call of Duty.

But as a yearly franchise, it increasingly feels like it struggles to get me excited again. The campaigns haven’t really hit the mark for me in recent years, although I still enjoy jumping into Zombies when available, then finding a group of friends willing to spend full price on another shooter.

On paper, Modern Warfare 4 is a perfectly decent Call of Duty multiplayer game. Avid players will find plenty to praise or criticize, but from the outside looking in, I see the same game with a different coat of paint.

It feels like a series rotating features and game modes to hopefully keep it fresh for the majority of its player base. Like McDonald’s bringing back Twister Fries for a limited time, only for them to disappear and return again months later as if they’re a brand-new idea.

Modern Warfare 4 will sell. Of course it will. But I do wonder how long the community can tolerate the yearly structure, especially in today’s video game market where I consider games to be a very expensive hobby.

All I needed was one night with the beta to tell me I didn’t miss its overall gameplay structure all too much, and the latest game doesn’t feel like it does enough to pull me in.

The Return of R6

The same goes for the other game I spent a significant amount of time with this weekend: Rainbow Six Siege.

I’ve been playing this shooter since it was released in 2015, but in 2023, I stopped keeping tabs on it and logging in regularly. I felt burnt out. I loved the game, but after spending more than 1,000 hours with it, I needed to step away for a while.

The hours spent might not sound like much compared to people who play Siege every day, but it’s the only shooter that has ever gotten me that invested for years.

So why return?

My friends who regularly play the game never quit. They would always remind me that I was free to return whenever I wanted. Last Thursday, I finally impulse-downloaded the game.

Within one night, everything I loved about Siege was clear and front and center again.

The sheer number of Operators and gadgets remains intimidating, but it’s also exciting to experiment with. Every engagement feels like it has some sort of plan behind it. When I win, there are usually a series of decisions and actions that led to the outcome. When I lose, my team can usually figure out where we went wrong.

That’s something I’ve always loved about Rainbow Six Siege. There’s a reason behind what happens, and every match can be won in multiple ways; you just have to take a step back and figure out how.

Playing with friends amplifies that feeling in a way no other shooter has really managed to replicate for me.

Of course, Siege is still heavily monetized, and looking through its Discord or social media will show plenty of complaints about the game’s current state. But the game is alive and well. Despite all the noise, there’s still optimism and appreciation that it’s still being supported over 10 years later.

Solid Snake is now in the game. Two new maps I’ve never experienced are in rotation. And because I played so much Siege years ago, my account had enough resources saved up that I could purchase all the new Operators without spending any real money on my return.

We’ll see if my love for the game continues, but I have a feeling it will.

I’m already eager to answer my friends’ call in our group chat to party up and play a few rounds of Ranked.

How was your weekend?

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About the Author - Carlos Hernandez

Carlos Hernandez is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Too Much Gaming, where he writes about video games, reviews, and industry news. A lifelong gamer, he would do anything to experience Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time again and has a love/hate relationship with games that require hunting for new gear to improve your character.