How I Finally Got My Revenge On MeriStation

“… is Rex ok?” I couldn’t stop asking the question because I was worried. The military-trained pooch eagerly sniffs out your objective with tail-wagging enthusiasm in Breaking New Ground, the introductory DMZ operation in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Tasked with recovering a black box from a downed drone, this brief excursion goes awry when you discover the device has already been taken. Rex heroically defends you when two patrolling troops catch you off-guard while searching the drone’s innards, but takes a bullet to his back leg in the process. Moved out of harm’s way until you can return to exfiltrate with him safely, you trace the black box’s signal to its location, upload the data for the powers that be to scour what it holds about North Korea’s operations, and race to make your escape, only to be stabbed in the chest and later executed by a masked assailant.

This is the scene-setting for DMZ, an extraction mode that makes a Herculean return after its concept was first seen in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and later integrated into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Mobile.

Hajin City is now a desolate wasteland, left standing as a grim reminder of the events that unfolded during the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign. While North Korea’s invasion was ultimately stopped, victory came at a horrific cost, when a catastrophic nuclear meltdown poisoned the tripoint region where the borders of Russia, North Korea, and South Korea converge, blanketing the area in deadly radiation. Once home to thriving communities, the region is now an Exclusion Zone.

Beneath its ruins lie undisclosed military facilities housing experimental chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Intelligence suggests that North Korean forces are attempting to seize these stockpiles, while rogue soldiers continue to operate throughout the region, either working for North Korea or pursuing their own agendas. Your mission is to enter the Exclusion Zone, eliminate hostile forces, gather intelligence on enemy operations, and secure these dangerous weapons before they fall into enemy hands.

Before you can leap into action, you must first choose your Operator. Your selection will be made from a long roster of characters with predetermined appearances, although most have alternate skins to unlock that change their armour and clothing. Ghost was locked in our build running on Nintendo Switch 2, so I opted for the rather fearless-looking Min-Hee. I wouldn’t mess with her fists-first stance, so I hoped no one else I was going to come across would want to either.

You are stationed at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) that the public doesn’t know about, and that the government flatly denies exists. This is your home from home, a momentary safe haven from which you can manage your Operator’s progression, tinker with your weaponry at the Gunsmith, use the 3D Printer to craft recipes, and make other preparations for your next deployment.

It is here that you are introduced to DMZ Orders. These are an objective-based checklist that helps you to steadily raise your DMZ Level; the first three that you are instructed to clear have you gear up with a weapon, backpack, armour vest and medkit from your Stash, practice at the Firing Range, and deploy to the Exclusion Zone in Dynamic Ops. Straightforward to clear, this eases you into the rhythm of the gameplay experience that Infinity Ward and the long-running series’ many support studios have worked tirelessly to deliver.

When it comes to deploying to the Exclusion Zone, you are free to deploy solo, as a duo, form a three-person team with friends, or use Squad Fill to deploy with two other random allied players. Each run supports up to 60 players, though you’d be forgiven for forgetting it at times. With everyone scattered across the map, encounters with other squads of human players can be surprisingly infrequent, as you are all focused on gathering materials, achieving your objectives and exfiltrating before the 30-minute clock runs out.

I was fortuitously teamed up with Gavin from Nintendo Life and Llorenç from Digital Legends Entertainment, who became our irreplaceable tour guide, helping to keep us on track across the Exclusion Zone. I refused to play without him, because it wouldn’t have been the same. I think we set the tone fairly quickly, too. Whenever Llorenç asked us what we’d like to do, I always somewhat mercilessly stated that I wanted to hunt down PC players. It became a laughter-inducing joke across our multiple DMZ sessions, but, despite the clear (and somewhat worrying) murderous intent, what I really wanted to determine was whether playing on Nintendo Switch 2 put me at a disadvantage. It turns out that it didn’t.

We have so many stories from our sessions that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that, even in this short review period, I made some of my favourite gaming memories for a long while. Our first successful extraction, when Llorenç somehow managed to spectacularly tumble out of our helicopter as it took off, meaning we couldn’t rescue him. In NuriGO Mall, doing our best to recover power cores from downed robotic dogs before they exploded, only to fail miserably, causing us to keep getting downed. Recklessly attacking the 14th Political Prison with its Critical threat level, and laughing at how miserably we failed. Frantically scavenging enemy corpses for gas masks while radioactive fumes ravaged our health at Haneul Nuclear Reactor, hoping that we could survive long enough to decontaminate an “Ultra” rare Irradiated Container for its lucrative rewards. There are countless more.

And then there was our unexpected vendetta with MeriStation and Vandal. In our desire to eradicate PC players, I remember this had been ignited when we’d enthusiastically used the Bounty system to randomly select a squad for us to hunt down. We managed to locate them, down two of their squad, only to be blindsided by the fact they managed to revive each other and wipe us out in response. They then returned the favour by making it their mission to use the same system against us. Their pursuit was relentless across multiple sessions, and we became increasingly desperate for payback. That came when we made a temporary truce with Nintendo-Town and ntower, seeking their help to lure MeriStation and Vandal’s squad to our location so that we could ambush them. It worked. Perhaps it isn’t as memorable to simply read about, but the adrenaline I felt in that moment and the reaction in our room when we knew we had at long last claimed our revenge was incredible.

Back to DMZ as a mode, though. Whatever success you achieve in each run will reward you with DMZ XP for your Operator, earning them Trait Points every time they level up that can be used across three Trait Trees: Warfighter, Scout and Survivalist. These could grant you extra loot from enemy hostiles, the chance to revive your squadmates faster when downed, or layer you up with thermal padding to shield your location from enemy UAVs. You’re free to shape your Operator however you wish, playing to your strengths while helping to counter situations when you are caught out. Which, let’s face it, is largely when you’re unexpectedly downed and need to be revived.

What you will need to be wary of is your Operator being eliminated during a run. They will become Missing in Action (MIA), and you will need to spend your hard-earned DMZ Cash to rescue them. This cost is determined by their Trait Points, meaning that the more you invest in a particular Operator, the more expensive it will become to retrieve them. I did reach a point where it was far too costly to do so, and chose to start playing as another Operator to earn the DMZ Cash required to get Min-Hee back. You can simply reset the Operator from scratch, but I’d levelled her up so much that it felt wrong to leave her to her fate. I worry about whether the DMZ Cash that you earn can keep pace with how much it costs to rescue your MIA Operators, though.

Simply put, I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed my time with DMZ. It remains one of the most compelling multiplayer experiences I’ve played in recent years. I could not tear myself away from it. Determining what objectives to chase, which locations to avoid, and, perhaps even more importantly, when to call it quits and prioritise your squad’s extraction, results in an experience unlike any other. Even more so on Nintendo Switch 2. I can’t I still may not know whether Rex is ok, but I can’t wait to leap back in to find out.

DMZ Early Access starts today (Tuesday 20 October) for those who have pre-ordered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2.