Modern Warfare 4's new collateral mode borrows from CS

Less than a month before launch, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has revealed Collateral, a brand-new multiplayer mode aimed squarely at the franchise's competitive community. 

The mode draws unmistakable inspiration from another long-running shooter, and it arrives at a moment when Call of Duty appears eager to prove it can still innovate.

As detailed in an official blog entry that outlines the technical specifications of Modern Warfare 4 on the PC, Collateral is developed solely for players who have enjoyed the Search and Destroy mode of the series up until now. 

In this game, players begin every round with just a pistol in hand, with which they will need to earn money through the completion of objectives and the killing of other players, with which they will be able to acquire more advanced pistols, weapons, body armour, perks, and equipment, with friends able to combine money to buy a UAV.

There will be two teams fighting against each other near a bomb site, one trying to attack while the other defends, and a death removes from the player the whole arsenal but does not remove money.

The mode will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played Counter-Strike's Bomb Defusal mode, which predates Call of Duty's own Search and Destroy by three years and established the same attack-versus-defend bomb site premise. 

What's new here is the pairing of that formula with a persistent cash economy, a mechanic Call of Duty has used before in modes like Vanguard's Champion Hill and in Warzone, but never previously combined with Search and Destroy's core structure.

The timing isn't incidental. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 currently holds a Top Critic Average of just 65 on OpenCritic and a recommendation score of only 36%, with critics repeatedly pointing to a lack of innovation across its campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies modes. 

Modern Warfare 4, introducing a genuinely new mode, rather than another iteration of familiar formulas, reads as a direct attempt to sidestep that same criticism.

In addition to reviving classic game modes such as Team Deathmatch and Domination, MW4 is being released with six completely new game modes, Counter Attack, Inflation, Hijack, Frontal Assault, Combat Outpost, and Gunfight 10v10. 

Some of these game modes can be played in the new Kill Block map, which changes scenery and other element every round.