Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare featured image

The fourth installment of the mainline Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare moves the timeline past the World War 2 setting of previous games. Released in 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare brings players of the popular first-person shooter into the battlefield trappings of modern combat, with the appropriate locations, weapons, and tactics of the 21st century. The single-player campaign mirrors current events, with players cast in the role of modern special forces dealing with the terrorist activities of an ultranationalist movement.

Plot and location

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has players primarily take on the roles of British SAS Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish and Sergeant Paul Jackson of the Marine Corps Force Recon in the single-player campaign.

Other prominent characters the players can take control as the story progresses include SAS Captain John Price and Yasir Al-Fulani, the president of an unnamed country in the Middle East. There are also nameless characters for the players to control in the course of the storyline.

The single-player campaign will mainly take place in the Middle East and Russia, with the U.S. and British forces having to deal with a civil war and the terrorist activities of the Ultranationalists and their leader Imran Zakhaev.

Gameplay

COD 4: Modern Warfare is unlike any previous installment in the Call of Duty series. Whereas previous Call of Duty games had a distinctive three-country campaign style, Call of Duty 4 features Marines 1st Force Recon's Sergeant Paul Jackson and British 22nd SAS Regiment Sergeant "Soap" McTavish. It has a more cinematic storyline interwoven with stories from their point of view.

call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare-GAMEPLAY

There are also various missions in which the player controls other characters. For instance, players can find themselves as a nameless operator piloting an unidentified AC-130 attack helicopter. Another example is taking control of Lieutenant John Price during a flashback assassination mission  in Pripyat, Ukraine.

Plus, the move to modern warfare (as per the title indicates) has brought a variety of traditional weapons and tech to the Call of Duty series, including: high-powered assault rifles, night vision goggles, .50 caliber sniper rifles, and C4 plastic explosives as default and optional gear.

Visuals and other features

Unlike previous Call of Duty games (except Call of Duty:United Offensive, Call of Duty 2:Big Red One and Call of Duty 3), Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare has a ranking system that works on gaining XP. A player earns their XP by completing and winning matches (depending on the player's Kills vs. Deaths ratios), defeating opponents (5–50 XP), and completing challenges (50+ XP). Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfarare uses many ranks that roughly follow the ranks of the United States Marine Corp, although not all of them.

The Perks system is also featured in COD: Modern Warfare for the first time. Perks are special abilities that allow users to further customize their characters to suit their play styles. Each class can only have 3 different perks for him within 3 specific tiers.

Loadouts in COD 4 also saw some changes. Players can choose between primary weapons, secondary weapons, and special grenades.

  • Primary Weapons - Choose from assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, shotguns and sniper rifles. For each weapon type, the player has 2-7 options. After the player selects a weapon, the player can also select attachments and camouflages to modify the weapon. Note that a player can only use one attachment at a time.
  • Secondary Weapon - A player using the Overkill perk can select his second primary weapon without stealth.
  • Sidearms - these are pistols used as back up weapons. Note that a pistol can only be selected when the Overkill perk is not used (thus preventing an undue advantage of having 3 firearms).
  • Special Grenades - There are 3 types of special grenades.Flash, Stun, Smoke.

There are 6 weapons that can be equipped with gold camouflage. These are obtained by completing all challenges for each weapon class, except for the Gold Desert Eagle, which is achieved by reaching Rank 55. Each gold camouflage has its own prerequisites:

  • Gold Desert Eagle – Reach Rank 55
  • M1014 – Complete all shotgun challenges (50 kills and 100 headshots for all shotguns).
  • Dragunov – Complete all sniper rifle challenges (100 kills and 150 headshots with all Sniper rifles).
  • Mini-Uzi – Complete all submachine gun challenges (150 kills and 150 headshots with all SMGs).
  • AK-47 – Complete all assault rifle challenges (150 kills and 150 headshots with all assault rifles except the MP44, which only requires the headshots).
  • M60E4 – Complete all light machine gun challenges (150 kills and 150 headshots with all LMGs).

Gold camouflages do not have any real advantage over standard camouflages beyond the cosmetic appearances.

Another addition to the new features are the Killstreak rewards. COD 4 has three killstreak rewards a player can attain throughout playing multiplayer: Radar, Airstrike, and Helicopter.

COD 4: Modern Warfare is also the first Call of Duty game to feature Arcade mode as a tertiary game option. This Arcade mode can be unlocked simply by completing Act III in the campaign.

Release Date

Nov 05, 2007

Metacritic Score

92

Rating

Games in Series

28

ESRB

Mature 17+: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

System Requirements

  • CPU: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz/ Athlon 64 2800+ (Intel & Athlon 1.8 GHz Dual Core or better)
  • GPU: NVIDIA Geforce 6600 or better or ATI Radeon 9800Pro or better
  • RAM: 512 MB (768 MB for Windows Vista)
  • HDD: 8 GB of free hard drive space

Interesting Facts

  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has been banned in both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for its brutality and violence against Muslim soldiers.
  • The Xbox 360 version of the manual incorrectly states that the Use button is (B) instead of (X).
  • Call of Duty 4 ranked him 14th on Game Informer’s 200 Greatest Games of All Time.
  • Initially, multiplayer consisted only of Marines and his OpFor, similar to Call of Duty 2’s multiplayer.
  • During the early stages, the announcer congratulates the player on advancing or completing the challenge.
  • The US Marine Corps and SAS used more realistic icons, as seen in early multiplayer videos.
  • A few abridged quotes from the multiplayer announcer prove that Call of Duty 4 was originally intended to feature Capture the Flag and a few other new modes.
  • COD4 makes a cameo in the movie Kick-Ass. In a scene in the movie, the character of Kick-Ass enters an apartment where Rasul, the character he was supposed to speak to, is playing online split-screen with one of his friends.
  • The soldier featured on the COD 4 cover is former Infinity Ward developer Mark Rubin.

Mod Support

Yes

Cheats support

Yes

Split-Screen

Yes

Number of maps

20

Third/First Person

First Person

Platforms

macOS PC PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Wii Xbox 360

Genres

ActionFirst-person shooterModern

Game Engine

IW 3.0

Protagonist sex

Male

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