In Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4, Tactical Sprint is not automatic anymore as of the open beta patch that dropped august 28 2026. Infinity Ward yanked it out of the base kit entirely and now its only available inside the perk Blood Rush. If you want that extra movement speed, you now have to build for it.
That's not a small tweak. Tac Sprint has been a baseline expectation in every modern Call of Duty since it was introduced. So removing it changes how every single engagement opens. Infinity Ward's own patch notes say the goal is a "More classic feel" and better pacing. Basically they want fights to slow down just enough that skill matters and movement will not overpower.
What Actually Changed This Weekend
The Tac Sprint move is the headline but it is a part of a bigger patern. Infinity Ward tuned nearly every weapon in the game to push TTK (Time to Kill) up slightly. not by touching the base health but by adjusting damage ranges and multipliers gun by gun. It tells us they are being very cautious after how the TTK felt in the Weekend 1.
Aim assist also got reduced globally. And that includes Warzone. Infinity Ward opening admitted in their own notes that "this is not the exact tuning we want" which is rare bit of honesty from a AAA studio mid beta. They know that there is much tuning to be done on this topic.
On the killstreak side, every kill streak now costs one more kill than before. Additionally UAV Health got cur by 60% and the Artillery Beacon's blast radius shrank across the board. All aimed at killstreak spam, which was apparently a real complaint after weekend one. Infinity Ward specifically called out duplicated announcer callouts making it feel worse than it actually was.
Content wise, Weekend two added the Lithium Map, a new Hijack mode, Ground War: Combat Outpost and for the first time in any COD beta ever, Warzone Resurgence test on a brand new map called Zodiac, set in a South Korean weapons facility.
Do People Actually Like it?
Here's where it gets interesting, because the outlets that played it don't agree.
The AU Review came away genuinely optimistic, calling it "a strong return to form" and specifically praising the campaign mission Entrenched for feeling grittier and more grounded than anything in the previous game. Best Buy's write-up landed in a similar place excited about the direction, though they flagged spawns as unpredictable and footstep audio as too loud, which are exactly the kind of beta-stage complaints you'd expect a studio to still be tuning.
Gamereactor was the outlier, and not in a good way for Activision. Their verdict was "a small step in the right direction" meaning better than Black Ops 7's beta, sure, but not the real course correction they were hoping for. They liked Entrenched too, but came away unconvinced the multiplayer changes go far enough to repair what they see as real damage to the franchise's reputation.
That gap matters. It's not a case of one bad review among good ones it's a genuine split on whether this is a turnaround or just damage control. Worth remembering both exist before you form an opinion off a single thumbnail.
Wintro's Take: Removing default Tac Sprint is the boldest change in this beta, and it's the one worth watching closest. Movement-first CoD players are going to hate losing free mobility. But if it actually slows engagements down the way Infinity Ward wants, this could be the difference between MW4 feeling like another reskin and it actually feeling like a different game. The aim assist nerf is the other one to track Infinity Ward admitting they haven't nailed it yet is honest, but it also means whatever you're feeling in the beta right now isn't the final version.
Bottom Line
If you've got Open Beta access, this is the weekend to actually test Blood Rush and see if losing default Tac Sprint changes how you play — not just complain about it in chat. The beta runs through September 1, and Infinity Ward has been patching daily, so expect more tuning before it's over. Launch is October 23 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and notably Nintendo Switch 2, the first Modern Warfare entry on a Nintendo platform in over a decade.