Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Walkthrough Guide

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 splits its sixteen-mission campaign across four fronts: the Korean Peninsula, New York, Paris and Mumbai, and it jumps between two playable soldiers to tell the story from both sides of the invasion. If you're trying to get through it cleanly on your first pass, or you're going back for a tougher difficulty run, here's every mission in order and how to handle the sections that actually give players trouble.

01What to Know Before You Start

The campaign runs sixteen missions from the opening firefight, Mayhem, to the closing mission, Greater Good, and Activision's own campaign announcement puts the story across the Korean Peninsula, New York, Paris and Mumbai. Most players clear it in roughly eight to nine hours on a normal difficulty setting. Completion rewards earned mission-by-mission carry over into Multiplayer and DMZ, so it's worth playing through even if the campaign isn't usually your focus.

You'll switch between two perspectives throughout: Private Park Hyun-Jun, a South Korean soldier living through the first night of the invasion, and Captain Price, operating off the books with Las Almas Cartel leader Valeria Garza while Ghost and Gaz are ordered to bring him in. The two threads don't fully intersect until the back half of the story.

02General Tips Before You Load the First Mission

A few habits carry across all sixteen missions. Check your loadout screen before each level starts — the campaign occasionally swaps your default kit to match the mission's setting, and you can usually still adjust attachments and lethal/tactical equipment from there before the cutscene rolls. A suppressor is worth keeping on through the quieter infiltration-style missions like Following Orders and Decapitation, since staying undetected for even part of an encounter buys you time to reposition before the firefight turns into a full room-clear.

Stock up on flashbangs or stun equivalents for the close-quarters sections — several of the indoor assaults, including the bunker ambush in Assassins and the underground push in Decapitation, put you in tight corridors where a thrown flashbang before you round a corner is safer than peeking blind. And don't be afraid to let your squad soak aggro during the larger firefights in Mayhem, Losing Ground and Counter Attack; your AI squadmates draw fire and call out flanks, and trying to solo a room usually gets you killed faster than letting the mission's scripted support do its job.

03The Korean Front: Mayhem Through Losing Ground

Mayhem opens the campaign with Park's squad caught in the first hours of the North Korean push into Hajin City — it's a scripted, fairly forgiving introduction to the controls and squad commands, so use it to get comfortable before the pace picks up. Following Orders switches perspective to a North Korean soldier ordered to help hunt down a defector and carry out an execution; it plays more like a stealth-tinged interrogation than a firefight, and your choices here echo later.

Losing Ground has you holding a collapsing defensive line as Hajin City falls, ending with a bridge dropping behind your squad mid-retreat. Keep your squad grouped up and fall back to the marked rally points rather than pushing forward — this mission punishes players who try to hold ground instead of retreating on cue.

04Price on the Run: New York, Paris and Mumbai

Out in the Cold puts you in Price's boots hunting Makarov through New York, and it ends in a tight knife fight in a dead-end alley built around parry-and-counter timing rather than gunplay — watch for the telegraphed lunge and counter on reaction, not on a guess. Hired Gun has Price escorting a package through a rail yard under Shadow Company fire before bringing down Graves's helicopter with a grenade launcher while Valeria keeps you resupplied; don't burn through your launcher ammo on ground troops, since the helicopter fight is the point of the mission.

Traffic is a vehicle chase across Paris with both the French Mafia and the police in pursuit. It's unforgiving about collateral damage — clipping a civilian vehicle can force a checkpoint restart, so prioritise clean lines over speed. Gone Dark sends Price and Gaz through Mumbai during a citywide EMP blackout and a high-rise assault that ends with the enigmatic Archer taking them prisoner, closing out the mission on a cliffhanger rather than a clean win.

05Turning the Tide: Survivors Through Counter Attack

Back on the Korean front, Survivors has Park's squad crawl out of a downed transport and cross a freezing river before meeting defector Ko Jin-Hyuk, who becomes a key ally for the rest of the campaign. Stranded is the campaign's one open-area mission, tasking you with sabotaging three targets across open snowy terrain — it also holds most of the campaign's collectibles, so if you're going for a completionist run, do it here rather than trying to backtrack later.

Defection is a night raid on Air Base 3 to destroy missile launchers, with Ko turning on his former unit mid-mission to cover your escape. The mission is built around staying unseen for as long as possible before the raid goes loud, so take the slower route around patrols rather than rushing the objective markers — getting spotted early means fighting through reinforcements you otherwise skip entirely. Counter Attack follows immediately with the allied push to retake Hajin City, where Park spends most of the mission marking targets for support vehicles rather than clearing rooms solo — let the armor do the heavy lifting and focus on calling in strikes on anything your squad flags.

06Assassins, Escape and Entrenched

Assassins drops you with Ri Seung-ho trying to escape his own palace during his sister's coup, ending in an ambush inside a bunker. It's worth knowing before you start: the Pacifist and Revenge approaches to this mission conflict with each other, so don't expect to clear both in a single playthrough.

Escape has Price breaking out of the Archer's prison and freeing Ghost, including a knife duel with Ghost on an unfinished floor before Price is recaptured at the garage — a reminder that not every mission in this campaign ends with a clean victory. Entrenched then puts Park's squad on the assault against trench lines defending a Hajin nuclear power station, escaping the reactor itself as the mission closes.

How to Beat the Archer in Greater Good

1. 1The mission opens with your convoy ambushed on a frozen mountain road. Get clear of the burning vehicles immediately — lingering near the wreckage is what gets Price killed early, not the Archer himself.0-2 min
2. 2Follow the blood trail and gunfire across the frozen lake. Stay low — the open ice offers no cover — and take his attacks from a stance rather than mid-sprint.2-5 min
3. 3The Archer closes distance for a grapple. Hit the counter prompt the instant it appears — missing the window puts you on the back foot for the rest of the fight.5-6 min
4. 4Loose ice and debris around the lake can stagger him between exchanges — it's the only breathing room the fight gives you before the final clinch.6-8 min
5. 5The last exchange is a scripted melee struggle on the ice. Keep tapping the prompt without pausing — any hesitation resets the sequence and forces you to restart the finisher.8-9 min

07Decapitation and the Story's Perspective Shifts

Decapitation is a raid on the North Korean palace targeting Commander Ri, built around an underground, night-vision-only section where friendly fire fails the objective instantly — move deliberately and confirm targets before you shoot rather than reacting on instinct. It's one of the clearest examples of how this campaign keeps shifting who you're playing and why, bouncing between Park's grounded, squad-level view of the invasion and Price's more personal hunt for the people who set him up.

“This is the latest game in the series, it's new territory, a place that we've never really been before.”Jeff Negus, Narrative Director, Infinity Ward

That perspective-shifting structure is deliberate, and it's why missions like Following Orders and Assassins sit the way they do between the more conventional firefights — they're there to show the same war from the other side of the front line before the story folds both threads back together.

08The Ending: Greater Good

Greater Good closes the campaign with Price escaping the convoy crash that opens the mission and finally catching up to the Archer for a melee struggle on a frozen lake. He kills the Archer, but the mission — and the campaign — ends with Price succumbing to his wounds rather than walking away clean. It's a deliberately bleak note to end on, and it sets up whatever Infinity Ward does with the story next.

Once you've finished Greater Good, the campaign rewards unlock automatically for Multiplayer and DMZ, so it's worth running through the full sixteen missions even if you came to Modern Warfare 4 mainly for the live modes. If you're chasing every trophy or achievement, plan for at least two playthroughs rather than one: Assassins alone forces a choice between the Pacifist and Revenge approaches, and several of the stealth-leaning missions have separate rewards for going loud versus staying unseen the whole way through.

A second run on a harder difficulty is also the best way to appreciate how deliberately the mission order is built. Knowing where Following Orders and Assassins sit in the timeline changes how the North Korean side of the invasion reads on a replay, and the firefights in Mayhem and Counter Attack hit differently once you already know what's waiting around the corner.