DMZ is one of the three major modes of Modern Warfare 4, and it’s essentially an endgame extraction looter-shooter. Unlike the campaign, DMZ is tied into the game’s experience system so you’ll earn the same level, weapon, and Battle Pass XP in DMZ as you do in the multiplayer mode.
You begin play in your Forward Operating Base (FOB) which serves as the mode’s hub location. Here you have access to your stash and various stations such as the 3D printer that’s essentially a crafting bench and the gunsmith, but you’ll need to advance in level to unlock them all. The FOB is where you’ll upgrade your gear and choose your operator (you can have up to three in this mode) and loadout before heading into battle.
DMZ is designed for three-person squads and supports matchmaking to fill out your team, but you’re free to enter as a two-person squad or even solo. If you do go in solo, the game makes some concessions to you in terms of self-revives, but the mode is a free-for-all and you will find yourself outnumbered if another player squad decides they want to PK.
Once your squad is ready, there are three modes to choose from: Story Missions, Dynamic Ops, and Free Roam. Story Missions continue the narrative of the campaign with a set sequence of objectives that unfold as you play through them. Dynamic Ops provides random missions with supply drop rewards while Free Roam leaves things open for you to do whatever you’d like. All modes take place on shared instances, so you will always be sharing your world with other players. When you encounter another player squad you can signal that you’d prefer a truce, but you can probably guess how often that will turn out peacefully for you.
The instances are timed, and a battle royale style radiation cloud will start consuming the map when time is running down. It’s not so dangerous for the players - the health drain is minimal and there are a lot of equipment and consumable options to manage the radiation - but the real danger is that it will start overwhelming the extraction points on the map. I played one match where my squad found itself on the wrong side of the map when the radiation decided where it would manifest itself, and while we didn’t die of radiation poisoning, we couldn’t get to the final extraction point in time. If you stay the distance, expect the run to take your squad about 40 minutes.
As an extraction shooter, your biggest challenge will be keeping your greed in check and knowing when to secure your gains. You can exfil at one of the extraction points at any time, but if you push it too far and your squad all bleed-out then you lose everything. That includes everything that you brought into the battle as well as your operator. You’ll be given the chance to revive your operator using your banked cash, but that gear is gone forever.
Why would you want to save your operator? Because as you play, you’ll earn points than can be spent on operator traits in one of three tracks, adding a little Borderlands style specialization to your operator. And since this is a Call of Duty game, you’ll have the opportunity to prestige your operator once you fill out the skill trees.
The game’s map is extensive and filled with activities, and there are plenty of secret locations to discover. The world is dynamic, so you’ll need to contend with enemy patrols, convoys, air cover, and moving assets that add variety to every run. The mode also has what is essentially a ‘wanted level’, so the more mayhem you cause, the more enemy attention you’ll attract. Go into a difficult situation with guns blazing and things can quickly get too hot to survive.
Overall, there’s a lot to do in this mode and it will take some time for you to unlock all of the map’s secrets. The crafting system is quite extensive, but it can be a little overwhelming at times with all of the ingredients available and the limited inventory slots that you can use to bring things back to the FOB. The amount of time you’ll spend with this mode will depend on how much you enjoy extraction shooters. While there’s plenty to do, the activities do all fall into a limited number of categories, so you’ll eventually reach the grind point. Still, I do have a penchant for open world game modes and can see myself popping into this mode from time to time even though I don’t necessarily have the patience to grind my way to the top-tier gear or scour the map looking for that one last crafting material item I need to craft an item.