Genre Defining Games: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Extended Review - The Birth of Modern FPS.

If you guys have been following my stream(or lack of) you'll know that I decided to give Modern Warfare Remastered a go and it dawned on me that I never wrote a review about this game, we all have that one game that stands out in their life and evokes a ton of memories, for me this is Call of Duty: 4 Modern Warfare(henceforth known as MW) I didn't have it on steam so I can't tell you how many hours I played but it's in the 1000's, i was obsessed with this game and even bought a second account so i could level up again and unlock the golden weapons(i really was obsessed) but it wasn't until I played through it again in the remastered version that I realized "holy shit this game is 11 years old now".

At that time i was 16 years old living in a completely different state and was spending every waking hour on the game, it wasn't until a few years later i'd realize just how much of an effect Modern Warfare would have on not only the FPS market but the gaming industry as a whole, speaking objectively it was the first real "Mainstream" game that went viral, everyone and their dog was playing it as this was the first offering of the old Call of Duty franchise in the modern era, say what you want about the current team and company, Modern Warfare helped to carve out a legacy in the FPS world and would go on to spawn literally hundreds of different titles, so lets dive into the review and look at the legacy of Call Of Duty: 4 Modern Warfare.

Setting and Story.

Modern Warfare was the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to step out of the WW2 setting it was so heavily rooted in, instead focusing on a tighter more relevant story and members while also exploring the possibilities of moving more games outside of the standard level design and hold/defend type of single player game, set in 2011 the game was roughly 4 years ahead of when it was launched in 2007 and featured a story line and game play system many people weren't expecting, people often overlook Modern Warfare for the huge impact it was on the gaming industry due to what came after it and how quickly the fresh and unique experience of Modern Warfare quickly became extremely cliche and common place in nearly every shooter in the market, but since this is a review lets focus a bit more on the review topics and get to exposition later.

Modern Warfare begins in 2011 as your character, Sgt. "Soap" Mactavish joins the SAS under one Captain Price, you and a small SAS team under the command of Captain Price infiltrate a freighter in the bearing sea looking for evidence of nuclear materials being shipped to a warlord currently waging a brutal civil war in the middle east, Al-Asad captured the president of his country and executed him live on TV along with most of the political parties and is waging a genocide among his own people, upon discovering that the nuclear materials have been smuggled off the ship two Russian MIG aircraft bombard the ship causing catastrophic damage leaving the SAS with no time to investigate before they go down with the ship.

On the other side of the world, Sgt. Paul Jackson under the command of Lt. Vasquez are currently leading the invasion of Al-Asad's country to retake control and with rumors of nuclear materials being in play, hopefully secure them before they can be activated, fighting street by street they eventually receive a call to assist a M1 Abrams that has stalled out under heavy fire and need assistance, their team rushes to help fend off attacks before pushing deeper into the city to regain control and make their way to Al-Asad, the SAS during this time are tasked with a mission to rescue their informant, Nikolai that has been taken by ultra nationalist forces and exposed, during their mission to extract Nikolai they meet with Sgt. Kamarov who informs them that Nikolai is being held deep in the village and asks for support to attack the rebels.

Extracting Nikolai they're shot down and must escape on foot which leads to a hunt all over the mountains, at the same time however Sgt Jackson and his team are pushing deep into Al-Asad's territory when a call goes out that a NEST team(Nuclear Emergency Support Team) has been dispatched on site as the rumors of a nuclear weapon may be real, Seal Team Six confirms there is indeed an armed Nuclear weapon in the city and all teams are ordered to retreat, during the retreat a cobra pilot is shot down and Jackson's team goes in to rescue her, securing the pilot they return to their chopper but are hit by a massive shockwave that knocks their chopper into a tailspin, scrambled reports over the radio confirm that a nuclear bomb has been detonated in the heart of the city.

Sgt Jackson awakens sometime in the destroyed ruins of the city to see a massive mushroom cloud looming over head, he stumbles around in a daze before finally succumbing to the deadly radiation of the blast, it is later reported that over 30,000 marines have been killed and that Al'Asad was not even in the country to begin with, now the SAS have to race against time as Al'Asad and his russian counterpart Imran Zakhaev, leader of the russian ultra nationalists vow to become the worlds leading super power, but when the SAS kill his son he swears revenge against the entirety of the western world.

A Much Darker Story Than We're Used To.

The above story isn't too shocking or too dark by today's standards but in 2007 it was pretty shocking, coming off the backs of WW2 stories where the good guys always triumph and there's no real lasting damage(since it's an historical event) the story line of Modern Warfare was a lot more fluid and allowed for Activision to explore more adult themes and setup an entirely different world, one of the biggest things that stands out to me and a lot of other gamers at the time is the Nuclear explosion, I really wasn't prepared for it or the fact that the co main character died a pretty violent and lonely death, it was also the first time iv'e really experienced a characters death having so much impact on the story line of a game that should be pretty cut and dry( Single player FPS wasn't really known for it's immersion outside of explosions and bullets).

As i said, it was very rare for a triple A game to be marketed almost entirely to adults in 2007, yes there were a lot of titles out there that did, but this was a AAA studio making this with a very big budget(at the time) and taking an incredible risk, games were beginning to focus more on multiplayer at this time and while the multiplayer of MW was amazing, it's story didn't suffer from it, rather it explored the darker parts of war including the loss of friends and witnessing the consequences of your actions(or inaction) instead of being the generic good guys save the day and maybe a friend dies a long the way for a greater sacrifice, at the end of the game(spoilers) your entire team is gunned down in front of you, execution style and you're left as the last one standing.

This would of course shape how Activision did story telling in their games for the next....12 years, but it was really well done and the continuing story line in Modern Warfare 2&3 made number 1 stand out even more once you understood what was happening in the background at the time and how you were being "played" by the developers from the beginning into believing a lot of things you should of known better than to believe, but again I do understand the confusions of some people as this was a pretty big gamble on changing the story line of linear games into something a lot more expansive that had rammifications in the following games as opposed to in the same game.

It's kind of hard to explain and i'm not making it any clearer, unless you were really active in gaming in the early-mid 2000's you won't really understand the shift that was happening in the gaming market, it's pretty much like the story aspects of games went through puberty and into adulthood in a small 3 or 4 year stretch, even at 16 the game was still pretty provoking to me as I just wasn't used to politics, genocides, sacrifices and nihilism being a part of the gaming world, yes it was around but it wasn't really at the forefront as it was in Call of Duty and having sold over 15 million copies, it was more prevalent in the gaming world than most games, but it's not just the story that made MW such a success, arguably I'd say it was a smaller part of it being a big success, what really made it huge was it's game play.

Game Play

Modern Warfare was a strange switch in FPS, while closer more "arena" type game play like Unreal and such had been out for numerous years now and Team Death Match was a big staple in Shooting games, it wasn't until Modern Warfare came along that it arguably got it "right" for casual game play, one of the biggest disconnects in the fast paced shooter genre's was the skill ceiling where high skilled players would completely dominate new players until they had poured hundreds of hours into it like the pro's had, MW found a good go between by delivering fast paced action with the upgrade tree but also by giving casual players the chance to get better over time while still giving them "perks" to help when they're still fresh.

While a lot of people have criticized the perk system in Call of Duty over the years at the beginning of Modern Warfare it was actually one of the only things that kept the game somewhat balanced, equipping the Last Stand perk let you fire from the ground with a pistol after being downed and the Matyrdom perk let you drop a live grenade when you died, while these things were considered annoying or bad by high skill players it was an essential part of helping casual players get more involved in the game and it also produced a new skill ceiling for said high level players, since you don't know who had what perks it would constantly keep you on your toes to be sure you secured a kill and that you minded your footing as to not get killed by a grenade.

However the gunplay is the real winner of Modern Warfare, allowing players to unlock and select numerous different weapons and gadgets let players play their way as well in a big way, personally i was very very fond of sniping which meant good positioning, quick reflexes and spatial awareness of where I was, likewise on the opposite side you had people who loved to sprint around the map with a knife or SMG in a test of their reflexes, map knowledge and awareness of the front line, looking back it may not seem that impressive but keep in mind this was 2007, it was pretty fresh then as you had a disconnect between tactical game play and reflex shooters like quake or unreal, the addition of the perk system also greatly improved the quality of life of your chosen play style.

I played a lot of professional and semi professional Modern Warfare and that's really where the game got interesting for me personally, it was interesting to see that Activision had actually put a lot more detail into the game than most people thought, maps were actually a lot deeper and more technical than most people thought, likewise weapons and their attachments played a much bigger part(excluding the Pro Mod) and 5v5 Search and Destroy matches could become incredibly intense and calculated much like Rainbow Six Siege would eventually capitalize on almost a decade later that was pretty much the standard match for a pro league game, it was an incredibly far cry from the absolute insanity of Team Death Match.

But that aside what made MW's game play so unique was the smoothness and fluidity of the game that most people found extremely enticing, at the time the closest game to Modern Warfare was Counter-Strike and while people love(d) Counter-Strike we always wanted something a little bit more, obviously the CS formula has worked extremely well over the years but it didn't quite quell the thirst of people looking for a little bit more fast paced and frantic action, things like weapon attachments, gadgets, perks and kill streaks made Modern Warfare such a huge success and of course made some people furious(claymore's and grenade launchers) but for all the time I spent in the game it was just part of what made the game so hilariously fun to play.

And that's really the essence of Modern Warfare, it was a fun as hell game to play even if you were getting destroyed, obviously now it's been repeated to death by Call of Duty and every other franchise that sought to capitalize on it's success but for all the negatives that came out of this game a lot of positives came out as well, even just simple things like automatic regeneration of health was a bit of a game changer as it ensured that people wouldn't be running around on 1 health or constantly searching for health packs to heal and thus taking them away from the combat, 10 minutes in a modern warfare match felt like a lifetime of experiences that could happen and that's really why the game got so huge, it was fast, enjoyable and had so much replayability.

A profound impact on the Gaming Industry.

Above I have talked about Modern Warfare being a starting point for the new wave of FPS gaming in the world, now people can argue about this all they want but the fact remains is that this game was everywhere, on every platform, played by every type of person, being very very active in the gaming world at this point in time I was surprised at just how big the game was getting for what it is, at the time we also had World of Warcraft which again, was everywhere but it was an MMO, it was meant to be a game played for years on a daily basis, Modern Warfare wasn't, the statistics for that time don't exist but the difference between Call of Duty 2 and Call Of Duty 4 were immense, while I had some people know of CoD 2 and some friends played literally everyone knew about CoD 4 and played it.

Now obviously there are games that have been like this in the past, but in 2007 right towards the end of the golden age of gaming two genres were becoming increasingly stale, FPS and RTS, RTS didn't have it's renaissance in such a huge way but i don't think it's hyperbole to say that Modern Warfare was the renaissance project of the FPS genre, it's very rare that you get a game that every body talks about and rarer still a game that essentially went viral in the early years of mainstream gaming, you could of course compare Modern Warfare to PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds in that regard(if MW was a broken piece of shit with one of the worst "developers" in gaming...ahem) it's hard to describe the reach Modern Warfare truly had on the markets.

While yes gaming was becoming more mainstream, it also coincided with Modern warfares release and marketing, while I never played on console, on PC even at 4am on a tuesday morning there were literally dozens of servers at max capacity with people in them in my region in Australia which is pretty insane given that Australia has a population of 24 million and i'm pretty less than 2% of that were gamers, the only thing I can really compare it to is the initial launch of World of Warcraft when literally everyone I knew was playing it til dawn every night, but why was it so popular exactly, a lot of amazing games were launching that year so what really singled it out?

Like i said in the game play section, it was just fun as hell to play, leveling up your weapons, unlocking different attachments, using( or abusing) perks and just the general chaos of the matches was what contributed a lot to the fun, but also the fluid and accessible game play is what really made the game and why it had such a massive effect on the gaming industry, at a time when FPS was stuck in a strange place, MW helped revive the genre and some might say ruined it a bit but it gave companies a whole new perspective on where to go with the FPS genre adding in what you might consider RPG and RTS elements though only in their most basic forms such as progressive leveling and a very basic framework of functional class support that would later lead into things like aforementioned rainbow six and the like.

Critical Review and Reception.

It's hard to really describe Modern Warfare in a few short sentences, the game itself is responsible for a lot of happenings in the gaming industry in the past decade and has changed game development a lot,some for the better, some for the worse so it's important to keep it in perspective of looking at the game from it's appropriate time period, from a 2007 perspective, Modern Warfare was truly a modern game that was changing the way things were made, an emphasis on a great story line while never compromising on it's multiplayer and game play mechanics was an amazing thing to see as usually it was a trade off, all though it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is today, it was still there.

The funny thing being that Modern Warfare is the precise game you can pinpoint where singleplayer and multiplayer started to go to war with other(well technically Modern Warfare 2 but yeah) as I said, it's really hard to look back on Modern Warfare in an overwhelmingly positive light even though the game was fantastic in itself, it was responsible for a lot of dodgy design choices that would later come out as a result of it, a real catch 22 in the most literal sense, we got an amazing game that arguably "ruined" the gaming industry for a long time simply because of it's popularity and how well it sold and due to Activision's greed would later make them one of the most divisive companies in the gaming world, it's really strange and I could probably do an entire article just on that topic alone.

But lets just leave that where it lay, Modern Warfare was and still is an amazing game for it's time, recently the remastered version came out which I enjoyed a lot and to activisions credit was pretty well done as a remaster, I didn't really notice how much effort went into the remaster until i loaded up Modern Warfare 2 and realized that it's actually really well done, but that's neither here nor there, Modern Warfare has a special place in gaming history, hence why it made it into my Genre Defining Games series, it really was a game changer in every sense of the word in terms of game play, story, development and how game developers created FPS games going forward, there has been a slow down effect from Modern Warfare but it's hard to argue that without the game the FPS market would be where it is now and a lot of amazing games wouldn't of existed without the new concepts and dynamics that Modern Warfare brought with it.

However you feel about the game though or if you missed it, it's an amazing game, the story is tight and interesting, the game play is fun and enjoyable and if you were lucky enough to play it when it was current the multiplayer component was phenomenally great and I still have some amazing memories rattling around in my head from Modern Warfare, even today there's still a very small active community on the original and remastered, but mainly you'll probably pick up Modern Warfare to see the start of the Modern Warfare series and to follow the story line(which continues to be great up til number 3, if you ignore No Russian that is) even today it's an awesome story line and there's enough content to give you a general feel for the game.

I'd probably recommend this just based on it's history, I've had friends ask me why i was playing the remastered version just for the campaign because a fair few people that are either younger than me or not a fan of Call of Duty actually base that off what the games became rather than what they were, Modern Warfare was an amazing game, one that still holds up to scrutiny to this day and i'd highly recommend it to fans of FPS or fans of story driven games, it has a long history in the gaming world and I think it deserves recognition for what it brought to us and how, for good or bad, it changed the gaming industry forever.

Thanks for taking the time to read my article, if you enjoyed it, feel free to up-vote, resteem or follow me for more content, how did you guys enjoy Modern Warfare? let me know if I was off the mark or not in the comments below or if you have any other questions, thanks guys!