Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

aka: COD4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Reflex Edition, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Édition Réflexes
Moby ID: 31074
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

A fresh approach in the long-running Call of Duty franchise with the original developers back behind the wheel, chapter 4 has the player assume the role of a British S.A.S. squad member in various missions over Europe, as well as a U.S. Marine in the Middle East, fighting against fictive global terrorism driving persona.

Without breaking the traditions of its heritage, Call of Duty 4 is a true military-based FPS, only this time it has the player fight in a fictive setting and in a modern-day world, against modern enemies and ditto weapons. There are various campaign-based missions that enable the player to take the role of two different soldiers, from two different kinds of military enforcement disciplines. As usual, multiplayer is also available with different game modes.

The missions in the single-player campaign give various tasks to accomplish and take the player through many twists as the plot unfolds. A large arsenal of weapons is available, offering diverse options to suit different playing styles. For the first time, the game does not run on an id Tech engine, but a proprietary 3D engine based on the id Tech standards, with physics, dynamic lighting, bloom, and depth-of-field.

Spellings

  • コール オブ デューティ4 モダン・ウォーフェア - Japanese spelling
  • 콜 오브 듀티 4: 모던 워페어 - Korean spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

591 People (526 developers, 65 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 93% (based on 180 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 258 ratings with 5 reviews)

The Best Online Shooter You've Ever Played

The Good
The Good: Almost everything. Call of Duty 4 delivers a thrilling war shooter experience, and its new setting and tone distance it enough from its predecessors to make it feel really fresh. The single player story line is better than it sounds. You’ll control two different men, one in the service of the British army, the other working for the US. The narrative hops back and forth between these two men, following them as they track down a few select (and dastardly) terrorists, mowing down armies of faceless Russians and Middle Easterners (the half of the game is set in a purposefully unnamed yet obviously Iraq-based Middle Eastern country) troopers.

Now normally this doesn’t do it for me, but the portrayal of the consequences of your actions (basically, fucking up when you shouldn’t, in various countries) is portrayed unflinchingly. Likewise, the storytelling and characterization of various comrades is detailed and adroit. This marks a big departure from most war shooters, as does the serious and tasteful depiction of extreme disasters (in one case, you experience the aftermath of an atomic explosion). The shooting mechanics are good, and while there’s no cover feature, the prone, sprinting, knife, grenade and scope options all combine to keep you interested throughout the campaign.

The multiplayer, simply put, blows the single-player away. Most of the multiplayer levels are condensed or modified versions of single-player ones, and almost all of them are great (and all of them are well-balanced). As you fight through ruined Russian and Middle Eastern locales, the options available to you are astounding. You can outfit yourself with multiple different weapons and explosives, but that’s only half of it. As you get kills, you level up, gaining experience.

Aside from kills, there are different achievements to be had. You get XP for using certain guns in certain ways, for shooting down helicopters, for doing almost anything, really. Along the way you’ll unlock “perks,” which are special abilities. You might unlock a perk that lets you sprint for longer, or one that steadies your aim. This makes it so that most character load-outs are unique. Some people might favor carrying two SMGs, and a full compliment of grenades, while others might want to silence all of their guns and make themselves invisible to radar. The options are endless, and since there are 50 levels of experience, which you can repeat once over to get a special medal, you can see just how much depth there is to the experience.

The Bad
Not much, except the aforementioned creepy neo-Imperialist feel. Sometimes, in multiplayer, grenade spamming can get crazy, but that’s about it. As is always the case with Call of Duty, every 100 feet your boys will halt, and wait for you to move up, just enough to trip an invisible wire and cause them to advance. If you don’t advance yourself, your comrades will hunker down and stay put, weathering the onslaught of an unending stream of bad guys. This can get annoying, to say the least.

The Bottom Line
COD4 is the best multiplayer game I have ever played. It is well-balanced, fast, entertaining, and constantly surprising. Every new perk unlocks a new strategy. When you get the Martyrdom perk (it drops a live grenade when you die), every battle will end with you rushing toward the opposition, hoping for that extra kill. Infinity Ward has announced that they’ll be releasing new maps soon. Call of Duty 4 is about to get a lot more exciting. For once in my life, I can recommend a war shooter to somebody. Go try it; you won’t want to stop, once you’ve gained that first level.

PlayStation 3 · by Tom Cross (28) · 2008

Different context, but the same war experience

The Good
When I played Call of Duty for the first time, I felt like I was in the Second World War. Call of Duty 2 was more of the same. Infinity Ward made a good game, but they need several changes. Taking apart Call of Duty 3, the next Call of Duty was this one, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and it was the next step for Infinity Ward. They managed to develop a new game in a different context, the modern war, instead of the Second World War.

When the game was released many people was averse to that change. Purist players wanted more Second World War experience, but the Call of Duty series needed an evolution, and that's what Infinity Ward tried.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has better graphics than any other Call of Duty made before. The game has many different weapons and many different missions (including a hard final mission as a bonus once you've finished the game). All the previous features from other Call of Duty games like different difficulty levels are here too. To complete the game in the hardest level is something epic.

All the things that you could say about the previous games of the series are here, so, there are not bad things at all about the game itself, the problem is that what you're going to play was played before. You have different cutscenes and special parts during the game that looks good, and I really love the ending part that really works as a climax, but the rest of the game is not good enough to be considered a complete new and unique game.

When you die, you can still read once of those sentences to think about the war. I really love them from the first Call of Duty.

The Bad
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the same game as the others, with no important new features. It's just the same game in a different time and context, but I feel like I've been playing the same game since the first Call of Duty was released. They tried to make something new, but the didn't change the concept of the game, just the stage and nothing more.

I noticed some gameplay problems while I played the game. It's really difficult to avoid dogs, you have to be really fast and that's hard. Another big problem, your team members are sometimes your worst enemy, specially when you have to run for your life because some enemy threw a grenade or when you're under fire. You'll come up against them many times and you can't continue running because they're blocking your exit with their own bodies.

The game's as linear as always, you can only take some information from the enemy by finding some computers all over the game, but they're just bonus items. Sometimes it's like playing a shooter on the rail, going from point A to point B killing all the soldiers.

I really enjoyed the beginning and the end of the game, but in the middle the story is not attractive. The story is sometimes vague and it's like a brainwash for the player, you should enjoy this game as a fictional one, and not trying to understand what's happening in the world using this game as a reference.

The Bottom Line
A new Call of Duty in different context, with a different enemy and different weapons but still with the same structure as the previous games of the series. It could have been one of the best FPS in a long time, but the feeling is that it's the same game when you've played some hours. Anyway, it's one of the best games, a realistic war experience that should be played if you love that kind of games.

Windows · by NeoJ (398) · 2010

Spectacular single-player campaign

The Good
As the name suggests, this departure from WWII scenarios to modern combat is flawless. It is a wonderfully crafted cinematic military action game that ignited the CoD fever on PS3. The only regrettable thing was how long it sat on my backlog.

The atmosphere is the highlight, intensified by the awesome music. When the action reaches its peak, the graphics hit the mark perfectly, accompanied by epic music... There's nothing quite like it. Additionally, the guns are solid; there's a wide variety, and they all feel great. The gunplay is well-balanced, and the enemy AI doesn't feel cheap.

Regarding the story, it's good enough, with the usual baddie wanting to destroy stuff. What makes it enjoyable are the new modern combat tactics you get to deploy; anti-tank missiles, night-goggles, AI teammates that are truly competent and make you care for them. The intro sequence alone drew me in; it felt like watching a classic military movie.

The Bad
The only downside of the PC port is the lack of controller support in the original version, although the remaster addresses this issue. Other than that, there's nothing negative to say about this masterpiece.

The Bottom Line
This game is a classic. I had forgotten about this series for a long time, but I wish I had played it sooner, knowing now how epic this game is. It is not a run-and-gun shooter or hardcore first-person shooter; it is a story-driven game. While I can't speak for the multiplayer aspect, as I'm not interested in that, I've heard good things about it.

Windows · by Lal Fam (68) · 2024

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Saves for CoD4 MichaelPalin (1414) May 10, 2008
1573 images, o_0 MichaelPalin (1414) Mar 7, 2008
Veteran anecdotes MichaelPalin (1414) Feb 14, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

Infinity Ward considered over 1,000 names before settling on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, including more humorous titles such as Call of Duty: Warnado.

German version

In the German version the blood in the sniper sequence during the mission "One Shot, One Kill" and the whole arcade mode were removed. In the multiplayer statistics "headshot" was translated to "Volltreffer" (direct hit).

References

  • On the multiplayer map "Vacant", in the outside area, a truck is parked. Its licence plate reads: "Я3T4ЯD0", obviously a nod to the word "retardo", which is slang for "retard".
  • There is a tribute to Airplane! in the mission "Mile High Club". When the screen loads one man can be overheard saying, "Surely you can't be serious?", with the other man replying "I'm serious..and don't call me Shirley". This is a homage to a scene between Leslie Nielsen and Robert Hays during the movie. The scene for CoD 4 can be seen here with the scene from Airplane! here.
  • Three of the in-game level names are references to movies: "Charlie Don't Surf" is a line from Apocalypse Now, spoken by Colonel Kilgore; "One Shot, One Kill" from Sniper and "No Fighting In The War Room" from Doctor Strangelove, where the president declares: "Gentlemen! There's no fighting in the War Room!"

References to the game

  • The game is referenced in detail during a conversation in the 2008 movie The Wrestler. While playing the fictitious game Wrestle Jam on an 8-bit Nintendo console, a boy tells Randy "The Ram" Robinson about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
  • The game was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 04/2008.

Awards

  • GAME British Academy Video Games Awards
    • 2009 - Gameplay Award* GamePro (Germany)
    • March 28, 2008 - Best Console FPS in 2007 (Reader's Voting)* GameSpy
    • 2007 – Game of the Year
    • 2007 – PC Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Console Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Xbox 360 Game of the Year
    • 2007 – PS3 Game of the Year
    • 2007 – PC Action Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Xbox 360 Action Game of the Year
    • 2007 – PS3 Action Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Xbox 360 Multiplayer Game of the Year
    • 2007 – #2 Multiplayer Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Best Graphics of the Year
    • 2012 – #8 Top PC Gaming Intro
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • March 28, 2008 - Best PC Multiplayer Game in 2007
    • September 2008 (issue 12/2008) - One of the "10 Coolest Levels" (Shock and Awe - It lures the player into a feeling of sure victory only to destroy it with one big blast.)* Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2008 - Ultimate Game of the Year
    • 2008 - PC Game of the Year
    • 2008 - Online Game of the Year

Information was also contributed by Big John WV, havoc of smeg, piltdown man, Sciere, sgtcook and Steve .

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by SifouNaS.

Wii added by Charly2.0. Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 added by Sciere. Macintosh added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Solid Flamingo, fourzerotwo, Zeppin, Cantillon, lee jun ho, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Alsy, FatherJack, Zhuzha.

Game added November 12, 2007. Last modified April 19, 2024.