Call of Duty: Modern Warfare marked Infinity Ward’s return to the Call of Duty franchise back in 2007. Call of Duty was already a popular, well-known franchise, but nobody was quite expecting the level of success which followed. In a very short amount of time, Call of Duty became a household name, kicking off what came to be known as the FPS (First Person Shooter) boom; publishers clamored to piggy-back on the success of Modern Warfare, have spent the last 7 years since investing ludicrous sums of money into what are lovingly known as CoD Clones. For some, this desperate attempt to recreate success has paid off, but most shooters fell to the wayside like the discarded shells of the ubiquitous AK-47. What was it that made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare such a success? And 7 years on, is it worthy of this level of fame?

In short, yes.

Long gone are the WWII shooters. This is Modern Warfare

Modern Warfare is set in the then-future year of 2011, and starts with a radical terrorist executing the president of an unnamed country in the Middle East. At the same time in the game, an ultranationalist movement in Russia starts a civil war. It’s perfectly normal for Call of Duty games to follow two squads through one or two conflicts at the same time. In the case of Modern Warfare, we see the conflict through the eyes of a US Marine and an SAS Commando, but unlike the previous Call of Duty games and their kin, these two stories are not played in parallel. Instead, they’re actually closely interlinked. How the two teams meet and interact is a big part of the story, so for the sake of spoilers, we won’t discuss it here.

That being said, the campaign is very good. At the time, there was a fair amount of criticism over the length of the campaign, and in fairness it is pretty short, easily completed in about 6 hours on an Easy or Medium playthrough. You can squeeze a further 10 hours out of the campaign on the cheat-level Hardcore difficulties, but that’s only for the hardcore fans, or those too stubborn to walk away. Either way, those first six hours are pretty fantastic. The enemy AI had been vastly improved over the previous Call of Duty games and their competitors; enemies actually work in teams, with one providing suppressing fire while others flank you or throw grenades to make you move, diving out into the covering fire. Likewise, your squadmates are actually useful, helping you flank, and even seeing incoming grenades and tossing them back. For the time, this was a pretty novel feature, and is part of what marks Modern Warfare as the first game in a new generation of FPSs.

This opening mission is one for the history books

The pacing, unlike most of the bilge which has been released in the wake of Modern Warfare, is sublime. There are plenty of games on the market today where the game will keep your adrenaline levels high with run and gun and shoot and GRENADE!! Instead, Modern Warfare will give you entire minutes of silent infiltration, killing a few enemies at a time when it is more advantageous than letting them live, sneaking forward and dispatching two more, slowly building up your adrenaline levels to the point when your squadmate gets compromised - the tension creshendoes in an all-out fire fight, and you breathe a sigh of relief as you are evac’d, placing your controller on the ground to stop your hands from shaking. Not every level is like this, and you may even have several firefights like this in a single level - either way, the pacing is brilliant. The opening mission alone should be the textbook example of how developers should pace a FPS.

Camouflage!

The campaign is so much more than simple infiltration missions, though. Certain missions will have you providing cover fire from a helicopter while your squadmates exfiltrate. Others have you destroying enemies from the safety of an aeroplane overhead, viewing your enemies from a black and white IR monitor, casually swapping between high caliber guns and missile launchers to dispatch the little ragdolls with a creepy level of emotional detachment. In fact, as you swat these enemies away with your missiles, you can hear your pilot chuckling the words “boom” or “nice one”. These missions are a lot of fun in their own right, but none of them hold a candle to the sniper mission where you are charged with taking out a VIP from a long distance and are forced to act like a real sniper. You must take distance, windspeed, and even the Coriolis effect into consideration.

Modern Warfare feels like a very real game, and the campaign is utterly fantastic. Upon completion you also unlock Arcade Mode which gives you the ability to replay while seeing a score based on your kill count, any creative kills, and anything else which will dampen the realism. With or without Arcade Mode, you can expect a good 12-14 hours out of this campaign, as you will most likely play it twice.

This all being said, most of the wider appeal of Modern Warfare was always in the multiplayer modes. With 16 maps straight out of the box, and an RPG-style leveling system unlocking more weapons as you kill more and more enemies in various ways with various weapons, there is endless entertainment to be had. There’s the straight-up deathmatch for the traditionalist, team deathmatch and even a few variations on capture the flag - one where you have to capture the bomb and keep it away from the enemy, and another where you have to capture the bomb and blow the enemy’s base to high hell.

On top of this there is a Hardcore Mode which takes away your HUD screen, and deals more realistic combat damage; this mode is not for the faint-hearted - it’s as hard as it sounds. The other intersting mode which you can play is Old School Mode, which makes everyone start with an Uzi and every other weapon on the map is a pick-up. Likewise, there are pickup perks which you can stack to make your character run faster, shoot more accurately, and other things as well.

Yes, if you are feeling particularly daring, you can even combine these two into Oldcore Mode, which is pretty daunting but can be quite a laugh.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a game which revolutionized the videogame industry. It didn’t do anything particularly different, but what it did, it did incredibly well. Between the watertight campaign and the endless fun of the multiplayer, Modern Warfare is a game which won over the hearts of many to a franchise which has sadly seen spectacle creep play havoc with their story lines, and started making modern shooters unrealistic again. If you are a fan of FPSs or military shooters, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is well worth your time, and comes highly recommended. If you’re simply interested in playing it for the multiplayer however, do yourself a favor and play the campaign all the same. You won’t regret it.

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Nic Bunce

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A South African born, London raised Brit living in London. Studied Microbiology at the University of Leicester, and taught English in Japan. Jack of all trades and Master of the Universe...

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Writer of all the things. UK Editor at @continueplaymag. My views are both highly amusing and often correct.

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