Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"While not necessarily introducing anything genuinely new to the FPS genre, Call of Duty 4 has nearly perfected it."

For years, the Call of Duty franchise has been a staple of the first-person shooter genre, building upon the violent history of the second World War. However, after three consecutive games focusing on the same setting, not to mention many competitors in the genre following in Call of Duty's footsteps, the series began to lose its flair. How many more stories could be told about World War II? How many more games would it take before it became completely stale?

Thankfully, Infinity Ward caught on to this and offered to change that with their unveiling of the fourth numbered entry in the franchise. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare offered a fresh setting, one that would be fast-paced and draw upon modern military properties rather than the ones of old. Some of the more loyal fans of the franchise were skeptical, however. Could the same level of quality from past games be maintained with such a drastic change in setting?

Well, the answer is a resounding yes.

Taking place in modern times, the game itself has a fictional scenario. It seems between the Russians and the Middle Easterns, both England and the United States of America have a lot on their hands. While the story itself is fairly typical – you switch between two primary characters, one being British and the other being an American – you fight to maintain peace and order after discover hostile motions going on behind the scenes. Nuclear threats and full-scale urban battles are all present in the campaign, and while the story may never truly enthrall the player, the cinematic presence and photo-realistic quality of the presentation can never really be avoided. If you were to be able to play the movie, Black Hawk Down, as a videogame, it'd probably feel a little bit like this.

The gameplay really isn't drastically different from other entries in the series, or other FPS titles in general. You won't find anything ground-breaking or necessarily innovative, but that's not to say it's bad. The gameplay is well-polished and the controls are tight and responsive. Aiming is done by holding the trigger – tapping it will perform a sort of quick auto-aim – and firing is done with the right trigger. You'll have different grenades at you disposal, ranging from your standard fragmentation grenades to more situational and tactical ones, such as flash and smoke grenades. There are plenty of different guns, some being different, real-life models and variations of your basic weapons, like shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, RPGs, and others. Everything that's to be expected can be found in the game, even with a few bombing missions and mounted turrets for you to use, even though gameplay is usually ground-based.

Enemy A.I. can be a little gruesome, even if the battles start off with enemies in pre-decided situations. They adapt to your movements and fight to keep you pinned down, and even players that are beyond casual may struggle a bit on the normal difficulty, not to mention the more difficult ones like Veteran. Luckily, the campaign is set up with a sort of introductory stage that measures your skill and suggests a difficulty setting. Even so, the game has some unforgiving scenarios, but this is easily helped with your ever-present squad of teammates that, while constantly being shot and killed, never seem to decrease and are able to lend more than a few bullets.

The campaign is over before you can even blink, however. Probably lasting about six hours in length with the average gamer, this isn't quite the longest experience out there. Thankfully, Infinity Ward offers an experience that is nothing but six hours or thrills. The firefights are consistently intense and you never really have any downtime like you might in other games, which leads to one of the most hectic and engaging campaigns out there for the genre. XBOX 360 users will also have the achievements all going in correlation with the single-player experience, which will add some quirks and feats to attempt on other playthroughs. Beating the game will also unlock cheats and an arcade mode, which is really just a way to continue the single player experience and build up points.

Even if the single player experience may feel lacking in quantity despite the quality, the multiplayer is where the game truly shines. While offline multiplayer offers a split-screen matchup setting, it isn't really anything to keep you entranced and there's no co-operative mode for the campaign, but the online aspect is above and beyond any other shooter available now.

It's set-up to reward people for simply playing the game rather than winning at it. Kill someone, you get some experience. The more experience you get, the more match-types and other unlockables you can obtain. Want some new weapons? Maybe some new camouflage? It's all there for you to get. You're encouraged to try and broaden your online experience with different challenges that grant you more experience and more options, which in turn lead you to more gametypes and more opportunities to level further and expand even more. Couple that with the fact that you can design your own character classes as well as utilize ones already set-up within the game itself, and you're going to find yourself trapped in a vicious cycle that encourages and rewards you for going on with the game.

Taking this all into consideration, you've got a game with a quality single player experience and an amazingly deep and rewarding online aspect that gives you complete control over your own experience. Both of these aspects remain entirely unparalleled at this point the market. The short campaign and lackluster offline multiplayer components hurt the game a little and may limit the value of the package for some gamers. But for those who are yearning for a polished cinematic experience and a competitive online multiplayer arena, both of which feature remarkable gameplay, Call of Duty 4 may be the best FPS out there on the market.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/07

Game Release: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (US, 11/05/07)