Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)

Back in high school, in the far-off era of the mid-2000s, I couldn’t escape discussion about Call of Duty (CoD) from fellow students, particularly the Modern Warfare trilogy (even one of my teachers played Modern Warfare 2 at the time). Despite this, however, I never really touched the games for one reason or another due to my differing tastes in games at the time. I have since played more FPS games, as you can see on this blog, but even then, I still never touched CoD and hadn’t intended to thanks to the series’ increasingly mixed reception. That would change, however, as I learned that the series had more than just the name going for it and actually left a major impact on FPS games and gaming as a whole. As such, I decided that for the fifteenth anniversary of this blog, I would finally do my due diligence and play the Modern Warfare trilogy, beginning with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) from 2007, developed by Infinity Ward. I didn’t know exactly what to expect going in, but I walked away finally understanding the game’s appeal and lasting influence.

In 2011, warlord Khaled Al-Asad begins a coup in the Middle East while Russia is in the midst of civil war between the government and Ultranationalists. Meanwhile, the Bravo Team of the British Special Air Service (SAS), inducts a new recruit, Sergeant “Soap” MacTavish, and attempts to locate a suspected nuclear package on an Estonian freighter, but only walk away with the shipping manifest. Al-Asad completes his coup and executes Saudi Arabian President Yasir Al-Fulani, triggering an invasion from the United States Marine Corps (USMC) 1st Force Recon, with involvement from Sergeant Paul Jackson.

Soap's mission begins at sea.

Since CoD4 codified the modern FPS, and so the reviews of Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Modern Warfare 3 (2011) can focus more on the differences, I’ll describe the gameplay (based on the PS3 version) in more detail in this review. A compass at the bottom of the screen shows you where to go at all times, as well as whether or not your objective is above or below you, but it’s done in a non-intrusive way, like a guide but without treating the player like they’re stupid.

The controls are pretty easy to pick up thanks to an efficient tutorial that fits in-universe with the SAS recruiting Soap, though you still learn a little more on the battlefield. Traversal is easy, as you can vault with Cross, toggle a sprint with L3, Crouch and go prone with Circle (through toggles and holds) and climb ladders just by facing and walking into them. You also collect weapons by holding Square, though you can only hold two at a time (as well as C4, claymores and two grenade types based on the Mission), as well as an optional collectable with hidden Enemy Intel. Interestingly, the tutorial includes a cargo ship mock-up time trial that tests your understanding of the controls and recommends a difficulty level based on performance. You can retry the time trial to get a better score and I did get recommended Regular after a couple tries, but played on Recruit (the lowest setting) for personal reasons.

As for combat, aiming has extra utility in that you can repeatedly lock on to nearby enemies by popping in and out of sights. Bullets can penetrate thin material, so shooting at some cover is a viable option if you can’t see your enemy, but this also affects you. You can switch between your main gun and sidearm at any time with Triangle, which is faster than reloading, as well as use your knife with R3, which is even faster than switching to your sidearm. I found it interesting that the opening shooting range gives you the option to invert the Y-axis during target practice (I chose not to), but I also had to adjust to aiming and shooting with L1 and R1 in this space, as I was used to performing those actions with L2 and R2 in more recent FPS games. Those are instead bound to throwing either of the grenade types you have on hand, with R2 doubling as a button to throw nearby grenades back at the enemy. Apart from grenades, however, environmental vehicles and barrels can also explode, so positioning is key when moving around and choosing cover. Hiding behind cover is also good when your health gets low, represented by the screen turning red and distorted, so that you can recover and keep fighting.

There's also a Last Stand mechanic that affects not just the player, but enemies as well. During the campaign, if an enemy is downed but not dead, they can pull out their sidearm and continue shooting at you. During multiplayer, players have a chance of doing the same thing while waiting for someone to revive them, though they otherwise will eventually bleed out and die. This mechanic made me pay more attention to the enemies that I shot to make sure they were actually dead.

Admittedly, the core gameplay can feel “generic” if you’re only coming to this game now after playing more modern shooters. However, since this game was very innovative at the time and every FPS since then has either borrowed from or improved upon it, it’s less that CoD4 plays like a generic shooter and more that generic shooters play like CoD4. Since I myself went through that thought process before researching for this review, it’s an important distinction to keep in mind.

Simple, but with plenty of utility.

What makes CoD4 work, however, isn’t the gameplay itself, but how it’s integrated into a story that takes advantage of its medium. I didn’t know what to expect going in, but as I played through the game’s eighteen Missions, spread across a Prologue and three Acts, I realized that I had grown attached to the characters and invested in what happened to them. What helps is that you don’t just play as one character, but switch POVs between multiple characters, giving the player a more complete picture of what’s going on. For example, there’s one effective scene where you take control of Al-Fulani as he helplessly views what’s happening as a result of the coup up until the player experiences his execution firsthand, all without any blunt exposition. In fact, while CoD4 does have some necessary exposition for the sake of moving the story forward or updating you on the mission at-hand, it does so very efficiently and is focused more on letting things unfold through gameplay, including some jaw-dropping setpieces. Since the campaign was so action-packed, I didn’t really mind the rather brisk pace and still felt like I got a substantial story out of it.

The only complaint I would have is that, while I didn’t mind certain interactions or scenes occurring in real time, it’s possible to unintentionally miss things just by not being in the right spot at the right time or running too far ahead of your squadmates. As such, I reloaded a checkpoint a couple times just to make sure I caught what I was supposed to, which did help with making certain moments more effective. My only advice then would be to not wander too far off from your squad leader unless directed to. If you’re looking around for Intel at the time, it’s okay to still reload, since whatever you collected will persist even if you quit.

CoD4 also does a good job with its level design. Although a lot of it is fairly linear, there’s a lot of variety in locations and they’re only recycled based on the needs of the story. Many encounters are semi-scripted or potentially skippable, but the ones that are required don’t go on for too long and feel meaningful instead of constantly throwing enemies at players and calling it a day. It helps that the Missions also have some variety, like sneaking, attacking from a helicopter or dropping bombs based on thermal image readings. If you die, you can also restart almost instantly, which helped maintain the desired momentum.

Out of all the Missions, a handful of them stood out for one reason or another. "Death From Above" may look like a simple mission where you're dropping bombs on enemies from above, hence the title, but the presentation made me feel a cold detachment. Eliminating groups of people with a simple button press through a computer screen feels much different from the effort of gunning them down on the ground. It feels almost too easy and although I didn't have an emotional reaction to the instant loss of life, that may be the point as a commentary on this style of warfare, especially with the equally detached and emotionless comments that another observer gives. Although I found this noteworthy, I can also see how any potential commentary wouldn't land for other players.

Then there's “Shock and Awe”, which focuses more on fighting to rescue fellow soldiers until a very powerful and explosive ending setpiece that had me in, well, shock and awe from going through with a bold storytelling decision that showcases the brutal reality of war without coming off as simple shock value. Since this occurs during the midgame, it also has an impact on what the SAS and USMC did moving forward. I’m aware that other games have since copied this midgame twist to some degree, but going in without any prior knowledge of the game and nothing else to compare it to (outside of the genre deconstruction Spec Op: The Line) helped it leave a greater impression.

“All Gillied Up” also certainly lives up to the hype as a prequel mission told from Captain Price’s POV. It breaks up the breakneck action with stealth and does so in a way that builds up a lot of tension with a quick punishment for failure. The big moments are still scripted, but were nonetheless effective in their design. During the ending, when moving between buildings, there’s a brief but haunting moment where you can feel the lack of life in an abandoned building. The following Mission, “One Shot, One Kill”, continues from where it left off with a tense assassination attempt where the player only really has one shot and must actually take distance and wind speed into account for the shot. Although this Mission ends with more shooting, it’s more defensive than offensive, which felt fitting for the more vulnerable atmosphere. 

"All Ghillied Up" lives up to the hype.

What impressed me about the game on a technical level while playing was not only the buttery smooth framerate, but also the use of directional audio for an extra level of immersion. The really small file size, a minimum of 50 MB according to the box, also stood out compared to more recent CoD games where file sizes are so poorly optimized that they can potentially eat up entire drives. As much as I liked the voice acting and music, including a memorable theme, those coming to the original release of CoD4 now would need to know that the HD subtitles may show up small on a CRT. They weren’t unreadable, but I did need to focus more on them during cutscenes.

Once you finish the campaign, you unlock a short Epilogue, “Mile High Club”. This particular Mission doesn’t have any direct connection with the rest of the story, but is a good test of the player’s skill and efficiency within a unique environment.

Completing the Epilogue unlocks Arcade Mode, which lets you replay any Mission, or even the full campaign, but with the goal of getting as high a score as possible based on your actions. I tried it on “Mile High Club” and got a good idea of how it can offer good replay value, as well as opportunities for developing speedrun tech (much of which I’m sure has been solved by now). You can also get some extra fun out of the Cheats menu you get for finishing the campaign, with more options that unlock when you collect certain amounts of Intel. Many of them are humorous, with a spread of cosmetic changes and those that directly affect gameplay. Of the ones I had unlocked, the funniest one was Ragtime Warfare, which makes the game resemble and sound like an old silent film, even overriding all audio with piano music, while doubling the game speed. Ragtime Warfare also made me appreciate AAA developers incorporating silly elements into otherwise serious games as optional content.

As expected from a CoD game, there is a multiplayer component, one that takes the mechanics players are familiar with from the campaign and introduces new wrinkles. When a match starts, players pick their Class, which determines their loadout and thus their approach against other people. You can change your Class during a match, but won’t actually see any changes until you die and respawn. As you play through the various modes, you’ll also earn XP, which increases your Rank and opens up even more features like Clan Tags or creating your own Class. If you reach the maximum player level of 55, you can Prestige, which starts you over from Level 1 so that you can Prestige multiple times. If you do well enough during a match, you can unlock rewards for getting a killstreak, going from a Radar where a UAV scans for enemy locations to an Airstrike in a designated location and then a Helicopter that automatically engages enemies for one minute.

The fantasy.

Although that sounds rather fun, I unfortunately couldn’t get a good enough grasp of the multiplayer for this review. While the servers are miraculously still online, I couldn’t find anyone to play on several modes after about thirty minutes waiting for five minutes each, which didn’t even cover all the modes. The only one that I could get a match for, which only took three minutes, was Team Deathmatch and I didn’t have that much fun with it because most of the enemy team was composed of very high-level players. As such, I spent most of the Match dying within seconds. Despite it all, however, I still managed to get to Level 2, which unlocked a new Feature, though I didn’t feel like trying again, as getting higher Levels felt Sisyphean.

Fortunately, CoD4 came out at a time when Split Screen (and LAN Party) options were more commonplace, so I still got to try out the six main game modes (fewer than those found in Online matches): Free-for-all (aka Deathmatch, where players kill each other for a high score), Team Deathmatch (players on opposing teams kill each other for a high score), Search and Destroy (teams take turns defending and destroying an objective), Sabotage (grab the bomb in the center of the map and destroy the enemy objective), Domination (players capture and hold designated positions) and Headquarters (capture and defend the headquarters on the map). Unfortunately, I quickly found that games got stale and repetitive with only two people, not helped by the rather small map sizes. There also didn’t seem to be any contingency for both players picking the same team in a team-based mode, as you can complete any objective-based mode with no resistance.

Although I may not have the best view of the multiplayer, that doesn’t mean the mode itself is bad. Time and circumstances mostly played a part in this and I’m sure I would have had a better time if I played it when the game originally released or if I had more people who could play locally with me.

Current state of the PS3 multiplayer aside, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is certainly a classic game and one worth picking up for the well-written and well-paced campaign alone. Even if you’re a newer player who may not understand what made it so influential on the modern shooter, it has plenty of memorable moments that will stick with you.