Not since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts launched on the Wii U has a mainline COD game appeared on a Nintendo console. 2026’s Modern Warfare 4 is breaking that 14-year dry spell by releasing on Switch 2, and I got to play a couple of missions from the campaign to see how it fares. I won’t lie, my expectations were low – Call of Duty is always on the cutting edge of graphics and performance, and Nintendo’s latest isn’t intentionally built for that. And yet, I came away pleasantly surprised by what Digital Legends, the Activision studio dedicated to this version of MW4, has achieved from a technical standpoint.
For my full review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, I played on PC, which provided a useful benchmark for what the most ideal version of the game looks like. Of course, when placed side-by-side with the Switch 2 version, you’ll immediately notice the difference — it looks stunning on PC and runs like a dream, as you’d expect. But, shifting over to Switch 2 didn’t offend my eyes quite like I feared it would. Granted, the textures are nowhere near as detailed, with flat surfaces and faces smoothed over to give the impression of plasticine versions of the campaign’s characters. It’s by no means a looker, but considering the reduced horsepower Nintendo’s latest console is working with, the gameplay itself was smooth, running at 30fps at 4K while docked. The campaign is locked at 30, while multiplayer will target 60.
That campaign framerate remained consistent, too, not even hitching or stuttering during some of the story’s most explosive moments — I deliberately made sure to capture part of a mission that showcases one of its most hectic sequences to test it out. You can check that gameplay out for yourself in the video above, but I was left impressed that a game which normally demands so much of the hardware it is being played on performed so well on the Switch 2. Yes, it’s quite a visual downgrade when compared to the likes of PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, but that comes with the territory. And if you’re solely a Nintendo owner who’s been locked out of Call of Duty for over a decade, you’re getting a version of Modern Warfare 4 that feels every bit as snappy as the series usually is, even if it’s a bit muddier than Nintendo’s own crisp visuals.
