Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

• 1. Introduction

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  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the game in which a famous military shooter series walked out of World War II and into the present day. Infinity Ward developed it, Activision published it, and it was the fourth main installment in the Call of Duty series. Earlier entries had sent players to the battlefields of that war. This one handed them modern equipment and a story built around nuclear weapons. How does a team decide to abandon the setting that made its series? What did the single-player campaign ask of players, and why did its online multiplayer become a template for other shooters? And how did a game released in 2007 come to be called one of the greatest ever made?

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• 2. Built From Research

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  A team of a hundred people spent two years building the game. The work began after Call of Duty 2, and it produced three game concepts at once. Those concepts became Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3.

  While shaping the story, Infinity Ward chose not to reference current, real-life wars. It kept the series' familiar theme of two opposing forces of similar strength.

  To make combat feel real, the developers attended a live-fire exercise at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, a training facility in the California desert. Standing near an Abrams tank as it fired helped them simulate that experience on screen. The team also talked with U.S. Marines who had recently been in combat, hoping to capture their background, emotions and attitude. Veterans were recruited as well, and they supervised the motion capture sessions and the artificial intelligence design.

  British composer Stephen Barton wrote most of the music. He had previously contributed to film scores by Harry Gregson-Williams. Several tracks appeared on Infinity Ward's "7 Days of Modern Warfare" website, and some on Barton's own site. The rap song that plays over the end credits was performed by Mark Grigsby, Infinity Ward's lead animator.

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• 3. Warlords And Nukes

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  The story begins in 2011, when a civil war erupts in Russia. Government loyalists fight ultranationalists who want to restore Soviet-era glory. Meanwhile, a warlord named Khaled Al-Asad, who holds anti-Western views, leads a separatist group that seizes power in a Middle Eastern country by coup. He executes President Yasir Al-Fulani.

  Sergeant "Soap" MacTavish, a recruit to the 22nd SAS Regiment, joins a team led by Captain Price. Price's second-in-command is "Gaz". Their first operation takes them aboard an Estonian cargo ship in the Bering Strait, where they secure a nuclear device labeled in Arabic. Ultranationalist MiG-29s destroy the ship, but the team escapes by helicopter. Next they rescue Nikolai, a Russian informant working undercover among the Ultranationalists. Loyalist forces led by Sergeant Kamarov help extract him, though the team's helicopter is brought down. They then cross enemy territory with support from an AC-130 gunship.

  The United States answers the coup with a full-scale invasion. The player becomes Sergeant Paul Jackson of the 1st Force Recon, serving under Staff Sergeant Griggs and Lieutenant Vasquez. The platoon fails to find Al-Asad in a coastal town and then fights through a nearby city alongside an M1 Abrams tank. Intelligence from the SAS suggests that Al-Asad may have a Russian nuclear device, so the Marines assault the capital. SEAL Team 6 moves to disarm the nuke inside the presidential palace. The device detonates unexpectedly, destroying the city and killing Jackson, Vasquez and the invasion force.

  Price refuses to assume Al-Asad is dead. He leads a raid on a safe house in Azerbaijan and captures him. During the interrogation, Price answers Al-Asad's phone and then executes him. The caller is Imran Zakhaev, leader of the Ultranationalists, and Price has a history with him.

  That history goes back to 1996. After the Chernobyl disaster and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zakhaev profited from nuclear proliferation. He used the wealth to lure ex-Soviet military personnel into his Ultranationalist party. Then-lieutenant Price and his superior, Captain MacMillan, were ordered to assassinate him at a gathering in Pripyat, Ukraine. Price's shot only severed Zakhaev's arm, and the two men barely escaped.

  In the present, Force Recon Marines led by Griggs rescue Price's team. A joint task force forms to capture Zakhaev's son, Victor, and learn where his father is hiding. The force ambushes Victor at a checkpoint and corners him. He refuses to surrender and commits suicide. Enraged, Zakhaev takes control of a nuclear launch facility in the Altai Mountains.

  The task force moves to retake the site, but Zakhaev launches nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles at the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. The soldiers breach the facility and remotely destroy the missiles over the Atlantic Ocean. As they flee, an Ultranationalist Mi-24 Hind destroys a bridge and traps them. Griggs is killed in the crossfire. Zakhaev arrives and executes Gaz and other wounded soldiers. Then loyalists in a Mi-28 Havoc destroy his Hind. With Zakhaev distracted, Price slides a pistol to Soap, who kills Zakhaev and his escorts.

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• 4. Playing The Missions

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  Thirty collectible pieces of intel are hidden through the campaign. Finding them awards cheats and visual filters such as infinite ammunition, cluster grenades and increased contrast.

  The campaign never stays with a single soldier. The player takes on several characters whose involvement in the plot overlaps, so the perspective changes from one character to another between missions. Every mission has a series of objectives, and the heads-up display marks the direction and distance to each. Some require reaching a checkpoint. Others call for eliminating enemies in a specified location, standing ground to defend a point, or planting explosive charges on an enemy installation. Finishing the campaign opens an epilogue mission called "Mile High Club". It has no bearing on the plot. It follows an SAS squad fighting terrorists who have hijacked an airplane and taken a VIP hostage.

  There is no armor and there are no health powerups, so cover matters. When the character is badly hurt, the edges of the screen glow red and the heartbeat quickens. Staying out of fire lets the character recover. Standing, kneeling and prone stances each change the rate of movement, accuracy and stealth. When a live grenade lands within its blast radius, a marker points toward it. The player can then flee or toss it back at the enemy.

  Underneath runs the IW engine, specifically version 3.0. It provides world-dynamic lighting, HDR lighting effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field. The engine calculates bullet penetration from the surface type and the thickness of whatever is hit, and stopping power drops after a bullet passes through an object. Cars and some buildings are destructible. That makes the difference between cover and concealment important, because wooden fences and thin walls do not fully protect a player. It was the first Call of Duty to use a dynamic physics engine. Death animations combine preset animations with ragdoll physics.

  On Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the game runs at a native resolution of 600p. The console versions hold a steady 60 frames per second, while the Wii version runs at 30. Spawning code weighs nearby weapons and the line of sight between enemies and each possible spawn point. It is meant to stop players from dying right after rejoining a match. Enemies in the campaign can still respawn infinitely, a notable feature of Call of Duty engines.

  The engine had a second life. An enhanced version powered Call of Duty: World at War, and a slightly altered one drove the James Bond game Quantum of Solace. A heavily modified version was used for GoldenEye 007.

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• 5. Multiplayer Rules

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  Three kills in a row without dying earns a UAV reconnaissance scan. Five bring an airstrike, and seven bring an attack helicopter. These streaks replaced an earlier idea in which players would fight over special zones to reach a trigger for air support. Infinity Ward discarded that design because it discouraged the deathmatch style of play the team intended. The killstreak system took its place to encourage players to improve their skills.

  The multiplayer offers team-based and deathmatch-based modes on various maps, and each mode has an objective that demands its own strategy. A match ends when a team or player reaches a set number of points or time runs out. If the score is tied at the buzzer, Sudden Death begins. Nobody respawns, and the winner is whoever is the last one standing or completes the objective first.

  Experience points track performance. Players earn them by killing opponents, completing challenges and objectives, or finishing a round or match. Levels climb to a maximum of 55. On the console versions, a player can then enter "Prestige" mode, which returns the level to one and removes everything accumulated. The process can repeat up to 10 times, and each time a different insignia is awarded.

  Rising in level and prestige lets players customize their classes. They pick a main weapon, a sidearm and a special grenade type. They also choose three perks, one from each of three "Tiers". Perk effects include extra ammunition, higher bullet damage and dropping a live grenade when the player is killed. Players may pick weapons before a match so they can get used to them quickly and spend less time hunting for guns.

  The developers wanted the mode to be balanced and rewarding for newcomers while still giving veterans something to chase. They designed maps primarily for deathmatch, expecting those layouts to suit other modes as well. Layouts were also built to minimize places where a player could hide from gunfire.

  Challenges add further rewards, such as a set number of kills with a specific weapon, shooting down a helicopter, or scoring several headshots. Enough headshots with one weapon, excluding sidearms, earn an extra camouflage scheme, called a "camo", for that weapon.

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• 6. Launch And Maps

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  In March 2006, the site Joystiq received the first leak that Call of Duty 4 would be set in modern times. On the 27th of April 2007, the day before the game's trailer appeared, Infinity Ward launched a website called "Charlie Oscar Delta". The name came from the NATO phonetic alphabet and the initials of Call of Duty. Visitors could complete missions to raise their rank and compete for prizes. The first trailer with game footage followed on the 28th of April.

  A public beta for Xbox 360 was announced on the 30th of August. It was meant to test servers, find glitches and help balance the weapons. It began for residents of the U.S. only and later opened to other countries. The beta ended on the 30th of September. Its maximum rank started at level 16 and rose to level 25 near the end. Players could try three maps, "Crash", "Vacant" and "Overgrown". On the 11th of October, a single-player demo arrived on PC as a Yahoo! download. It offered one level, "The Bog", which showed off the advanced night vision.

  The game reached consoles and Windows in North America on the 5th of November 2007. Australia followed on the 7th of November, and Europe on the 9th of November. Buyers could choose the standard version or a collector's edition. The collector's edition added a DVD with a documentary called "Great SAS Missions", made of archive footage of the SAS and accounts from former members. The disc also held a making-of featurette and a level walkthrough by the developers. A limited edition poster and a hardcover art book came in an oversized cardboard box. At first it was sold only in the U.S. A "Game of the Year" edition later appeared on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

  Aspyr developed the Mac OS X version, released on the 26th of September 2008. It reached the Mac App Store on the 16th of January 2011. Treyarch developed the Wii port, subtitled Reflex Edition, released on the 10th of November 2009 alongside Modern Warfare 2.

  Microsoft and Activision struck an exclusivity deal under which multiplayer map packs for the franchise, beginning with Modern Warfare, arrived first on Xbox 360. The deal ran until Black Ops III in 2015, which brought a new arrangement with Sony and PlayStation platforms. Infinity Ward released the Variety Map Pack for Xbox 360 on the 4th of April 2008. It held four maps: "Killhouse", "Creek", "Chinatown" and "Broadcast". The PlayStation 3 got it on the 24th of April 2008, with the disc of the PlayStation 3 Game of the Year edition including it. The pack drew over one million downloads in its first nine days, a record for paid Xbox Live downloadable material, valued at US$10 million. A free Windows release followed on the 5th of June 2008, sponsored by Nvidia.

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• 7. Selling Millions

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  Retailers ran short. Demand for the game left several stores with only enough copies to fill pre-orders. Predictions had said the game would out-earn Halo 3. It was reviewed as highly as Halo 3 but launched on three systems instead of one.

  The prediction held. According to the NPD Group, the Xbox 360 version was the best-selling video game in the United States from November 2007 to January 2008. In November 2007 the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions sold 1.57 million and 444,000 units there. December brought 1.47 million more for the Xbox 360. January 2008 added 331,000 copies for Xbox 360 and 140,000 for PlayStation 3. For all of 2007, the Xbox 360 version sold 3.04 million units in the U.S. That made it the year's third best-selling game there, behind Halo 3 at 4.82 million.

  Worldwide totals climbed steadily. By January 2008 the game had sold more than 7 million copies and was the best-selling game of 2007. Infinity Ward reported more than 10 million units on the 3rd of June 2008. During a May 2009 conference call, Activision announced 13 million copies. By November 2013 the total stood at 15.7 million.

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• 8. Acclaim And Legacy

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  On Metacritic, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC versions earned "universal acclaim", and the Wii version earned "generally favorable reviews". Reviewers said the gameplay brought the genre to "a new level of immersion and intensity that we had never seen before." GameSpot judged that "the high quality of that campaign and its terrific multiplayer options make Call of Duty 4 a fantastic package." Its one major complaint was that the "single-player campaign is over in a flash". GamePro praised a "tremendously compelling narrative". IGN called the campaign "still very linear" but said that produced "a much richer, more focused experience" with "beautifully scripted set pieces." Not everyone agreed. Xbox World 360 said "It's smoke and mirrors and a host of cheap tricks". The Finnish magazine Pelit said that barging from one invisible checkpoint to the next "just isn't good enough anymore."

  The Wii port earned 76 percent on Metacritic. It lacks split-screen multiplayer and has weaker graphics. In its favor, a second Wii remote can be activated at any moment to give a second player their own aiming crosshairs in the campaign, on a single screen. IGN scored it 7.0, and Official Nintendo Magazine gave it 80 percent. Game Informer scored it 6.5 and blamed the Wii remote, saying it lacked enough buttons and was imprecise. GameSpot gave it 8.5.

  Awards piled up. GameSpot and GameTrailers named it Best Graphics of E3 2007. GamePro named it Best Overall Game of 2007, and GameSpy chose it as Game of the Year. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences gave it ten nominations and four wins, including "Overall Game of the Year". The British Academy Video Games Awards honored it for Best Gameplay of the Year, Best Story and Character of the Year, and People's Choice Game of the Year. In 2010, readers of PlayStation Official Magazine voted it the 7th greatest PlayStation title ever released.

  Raven Software developed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. It first appeared in special editions of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare in November 2016. A standalone release followed for PlayStation 4 in June 2017, and for Windows and Xbox One in July 2017. The remaster added trophy and achievement support, which the original lacked because it came out before trophies existed. Infinity Ward then rebooted the story as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in October 2019. Sequels followed: Modern Warfare II in 2022, Modern Warfare III in 2023, and Modern Warfare 4 in 2026. The original's own sequels, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, had arrived in 2009 and 2011.

  Looking back, critics rank it among the best games in the franchise, if not the best. Cade Onder of ComicBook.com wrote of "some of the most jawdropping moments in gaming". Dan Wenerowicz of Complex said it marked the start of the "Golden Age" of Call of Duty. Reviewers credit its multiplayer with setting conventions that later Call of Duty games and other shooters adopted. Digital Trends wrote that its competitive play put "a renewed emphasis on personal performance rather than winning individual matches", with players "carefully eyeing their kill-to-death ratio". It added that "Call of Duty would no longer play second fiddle to any other series, and its reign would last for the next decade."

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