Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare turned the first-person shooter on its head with a slew of innovations which forever changed the gaming landscape. Both its multiplayer and campaign brought so many new things to the table which still influence the genre.
With the new Modern Warfare coming out on October 25, 2019, we thought it a great time to look back on this classic and see what holds up and what has aged less gracefully. Fortunately, the game as a whole is still a treat to play through, and even the multiplayer manages to entertain the same way it did more than ten years ago. Eleven years after its release, people still praise it as one of the best in the franchise.
10 Holds Up: Set Pieces
Compared to later Call of Duty entries, the bombastic set pieces are small fry. Yet they are still exciting and shocking, even if one knows what is going to transpire. The campaign is relatively grounded, lacking sci-fi twists and futuristic technology.
Because of this, the surprises really stand out. Up until the "Shock and Awe" mission, everything is running like a normal military FPS. Then a nuke goes off and the protagonist slowly dies while in the player's control. The final mission, which includes a truck chase on a Russian highway, is also nail-bitingly exhilarating.
9 Doesn't Hold Up: Movement
While not the first game to include it, one could make the argument for Modern Warfare helping popularize the sprint mechanic. Over the years, subtle improvements have helped make the maneuver more seamless. While it seemed perfect back then, going back reveals numerous imperfections. Plenty of times one will start to sprint only to be taken out of it by some inexplicable obstruction. It wouldn't be as notable if the regular movement wasn't so slow. Sprinting is necessary when traversing large distances, but this is when the flaws are most apparent.
8 Holds Up: Voice Acting
By 2008, narrative was just starting to take shape as an important facet in game design, equal to everything else. Games like Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2, and Max Payne stressed the importance of story before, but these were outliers within the industry. The previous Call of Duty games always paid attention to their presentations, and Modern Warfare upped the ante even further. The voice performances still convey the drama and tension of the dire stakes at hand.
7 Doesn't Hold Up: Killstreaks
Because it was the first of its kind, the multiplayer is far simpler than its younger brethren. This is most notable in the killstreaks. Three kills nets a UAV, five gets a missile strike, and seven rewards an attack helicopter. There is no way to change this, unlike future games where the killstreaks are fully customizable. Some may appreciate this simplicity and its balancing, but others would certainly miss out on the ability to personalize them. Some also may take issue in general with the idea of someone playing well and getting more killing tools, while those playing poorly get nothing.
6 Holds Up: Multiplayer Maps
The 2008 masterpiece revolutionized multiplayer gaming with a leveling up and ingenious method of acquiring new weapons, but that's not the only reason people stuck around. A metagame means nothing if the core gameplay and level design is garbage, and Modern Warfare delivered a suite of classic maps. Their relatively small size benefits the fast-paced twitch shooting. They simultaneously feel organic and perfectly balanced for the many gameplay modes. None of the levels are perfectly symmetrical, but the geometry on either side never gives one team an advantage over the other.
5 Doesn't Hold Up: Artificial Barriers In Levels
The campaign's levels are all relatively linear. Some battlefields offer several paths of destruction, but they aren't on the same level as later campaigns. A large chunk of the game, however, takes place on open farm land in Eastern Europe. The boundaries are usually marked by low fences one should logically be able to vault over. Soap makes some fairly miraculous feats of athleticism during scripted events, but a small fence proves his match. In 2008, this was already hardly an excusable way of making a boundary.
4 Holds Up: Shooting
This is the main reason why Modern Warfare is worth revisiting. Just as a driving game lives and dies by how good its driving feels, so does a first-person shooter succeed or fail based on how smooth and comfortable the shooting is. Even without auto-aim, lining up shots with a controller is a breeze and squeezing the trigger is satisfying.
The last mission sees Soap on a moving truck shooting at enemies in other cars, and it still manages to play well. We only wish the death animations were less subdued, but that's always been the series' style. Perhaps it is their dedication to realism that prevents enemies from flailing around like rag dolls.
3 Doesn't Hold Up: Death From Above
As a mission, "Death From Above" plays well and serves as a great palate cleanser from the first-person segments. However, something about it makes one feel gross. Killing hordes of people represented as white dots depersonalizes the act. A voice on the radio repeatedly saying "good kill" doesn't help matters either. Perhaps this is the point they are going for. If it was, then they certainly did their job in making a significant portion of their audience uncomfortable. Another game with a similar scene is Spec-Ops:The Line, which stresses the idea of making the player feel bad about their actions in the story.
2 Holds Up: Story
The single player campaign still has some great drama which perfectly balances world-ending stakes with personal conflicts. Captain Price has a personal vendetta against Imran Zakhaev, but he's also working to prevent the northeastern United States from pulverization. It came at a time before the series was known for outlandish stories, so nuclear bombs and arms dealers were exciting subject matter. In just a couple of years, the series would go from grounded war stories to a literal world war involving an invasion of the United States.
1 Doesn't Hold Up: All Ghillied Up
The flashback mission, taking place in the abandoned city of Pripyat in Ukraine, is notable for the scene where Captain Price blows Zakhaev's arm off. Afterwards, it is a daring escape from the town infamously ruined by the Chernobyl disaster. This latter half holds up, but it is the section beforehand that leaves more to be desired. The sneaking section amounts to little more than following an NPC around and shooting at the people he points out. One particular moment sees the player crawling in the grass to avoid oncoming tanks and foot soldiers. While it is a novel idea, in practice it is a case of trial and error. Fortunately, it is a relatively small segment of an otherwise stellar mission.