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It’s a bountiful weekend for the military FPS: two highly-anticipated military shooters are holding betas for those with a pre-order, and they couldn’t be more different. One is, predictably, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the other is a new kid on the block: Wardogs, a 100-player milsim that recently surpassed one million wishlists.
The pair are currently the top two sellers on Steam overall. Call of Duty is number one—no surprise—but to see Wardogs, a totally new game from a relatively unknown studio, going toe-to-toe with Activision is surprising. Though its instant popularity won’t surprise those who’ve been following the game: Wardogs has built up a ton of organic buzz throughout 2026 through closed playtest word-of-mouth. I played an alpha build a few weeks back, and honestly, it’s something special.
Wardogs beta details
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- 17:00 UTC August 21 to 02:00 August 24
- Pre-order access guaranteed
- Steam playtest requests open
- Refundable
Modern Warfare 4 beta details
- Pre-order beta (weekend 1): August 21 to August 25 10 AM PT
- Open beta (weekend 2): August 28 10:00 AM PT to September 1 10 AM PT
Modern Warfare 4, on the other hand, is more of a good thing. This is Infinity Ward’s first at-bat since 2022, and I could tell from my first match this morning that the best Call of Duty developers are back. These games really excel at bottling up the aesthetics of reality—meticulous reload animations, ear-piercing thwips, the rattle of empty round casings—into an arcadey format that anyone can pick up. This year’s beta also includes a campaign mission, which is fun.
Wardogs seeks to simulate a lot of that reality, too: Time-to-kill is short, headshots are extremely lethal, and reloading sometimes means loading individual bullets into magazines. Maps are gigantic, kilometers-wide regions that require dedicated player pilots to taxi soldiers to warzones. But Wardogs is also an outlier among milsims like Squad, Escape From Tarkov, and Arma for its arcadey concessions aimed at accessibility, like a killcam. Developer Bulkhead is building an on-ramp for folks who play mainstream shooters or battle royales to try something more complex. If you like Battlefield, Wardogs isn’t a huge leap.
I’ll be trying both this weekend, but if I could only play one, it’d be Wardogs. It’s a $40 pre-order to get in, but the devs are encouraging folks to refund it if they don’t like the beta. Unfortunately, nobody’s been able to play enough to decide for themselves yet—Bulkhead is working through crippling server issues caused by higher-than-expected turnout (over 87,000 people as of writing). I guess I can level up my M4 in Modern Warfare while I wait.
