Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by mh:crappygames:Activision. An installment in the Call of Duty series, it was released in November 2007 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows.

Gameplay
The game breaks away from the World War II setting of previous entries in the series and is instead set in modern times.

The multiplayer portion of the game features various game modes and contains a leveling system that allows the player to unlock additional weapons, weapon attachments, and camouflage schemes as they advance.

Plot
The story takes place in the year 2011, where a radical leader has executed the president of an unnamed country in the Middle East, and an ultranationalist movement ignites a civil war in Russia. The conflicts are seen from the perspectives of a U.S. Force Reconnaissance Marine and a British SAS commando and are set in various locales, such as the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Ukraine.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Amazing visuals for the time.
 * 2) Good voice-acting.
 * 3) Throughout the levels, you can find intel which will unlock cheats. These cheats range from putting a filter over the game to Infinite ammo, paintball bullets, and slow-mo.
 * 4) A good storyline about the U.S.M.C. and the S.A.S putting a stop to a radical leader in the Middle East.
 * 5) Instead of taking place in World War 2 again (which was overused at the time of the games release), it decides to change things up by making it take place in modern times.
 * 6) The characters aren't generic soldiers like many of the games before it, but instead actual characters like Captain Price and Gaz.
 * 7) The AC-130 level is pretty eerie, especially when you consider how perfectly it mirrors real life AC-130 footage. This eerie feeling was the inspiration for the tone of the reboot Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019).
 * 8) A great multiplayer experience that would go on to inspire many other multiplayer components of other games in the community.
 * 9) Shock and Awe ends with what is considered one the most shocking and disturbing moments in the Call of Duty series. At the end of this level, you witness the Marine protagonist's (Paul Jackson) entire unit being wiped out in a nuclear blast. If that weren't enough, you are forced to control that character as he crawls out of his crashed helicopter, struggles across the wasted landscape, and dies shortly from radiation poisoning.
 * 10) A nice soundtrack.
 * 11) The PC port has great mod support, with lots of single-player and multiplayer modes to choose from, not to mention custom maps.
 * 12) The Wii port (Reflex Edition) somehow improves over its version of World At War with better visuals and animations.
 * 13) All Ghillied Up is considered one of the best levels in all of Call of Duty. Taking place in 1996 Chernobyl, you as Price work with MacMillan to kill Zakhaev. Much sneaking with absolutely well done atmosphere and tension ensue, most notably the tank patrol section, where one wrong move will undoubtedly result in death. The foreboding music perfectly sets the tone. Last but not least, the use of real life locations in Chernobyl, plus its inherent isolation making it a perfect place for terrorist deals, help lend much credibility and believability to the level.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Linear level design. Linear design isn't inherently bad, but in this instance it's so linear it's pointless to explore since you can't go almost anywhere off the beaten path since other paths are blocked by knee-high objects or invisible walls.
 * 2) The graphics have aged pretty poorly, with noticeable low quality textures along with cubemaps used on water reflections on some missions, even if they were impressive for the time.
 * 3) Despite the game actually being good, Activision constantly reskinned the game for future titles in the series, which also resulted in many people getting tired of FPS games in general. In other words, this game, and it's sequels are pretty much responsible for the over-saturation of generic FPS games due to its success.
 * 4) The remaster is flawed since it has microtransactions and supply drops despite being a remaster of a game released in 2007.
 * 5) As of 2022, almost every multiplayer lobby is either dead or has a hacker in it.
 * 6) The multiplayer has some problems like annoying perks such as the infamous juggernaut, last stand, and martyrdom (the last two becoming deathstreaks in future installments) and overpowered weapons like the M16.
 * 7) The villains are very one dimensional and Zakhaev's speech during Ultimatum is generic. It's also the only time he is heard speaking in the entire game other than the intro.
 * 8) A really ridiculous moment where after 30,000 Marines are killed you come to find out that Nikolai just so happens to know where Al-Asad's safehouse is. Bear in mind, the Marines' goal was to find Al-Asad.
 * 9) The Nintendo DS port has too many bugs and glitches that will show up more near the end of the game (fortunately, subsequent DS Call of Duty titles didn't have many glitches and bugs).

Reception
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare received "universal acclaim" on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC versions, and "generally favorable reviews" for the Wii version, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The gameplay has been cited by reviewers to have brought the genre to "a new level of immersion and intensity that we had never seen before."

Sales
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare became the best-selling video game in the United States from November 2007 to January 2008 according to the NPD Group. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions would go on to sell 1.57 million and 444,000 units, respectively, in the United States in November 2007. 1.47 million units of the Xbox 360 version were sold in December 2007; the game sold 331,000 copies for the Xbox 360 and 140,000 copies for the PlayStation 3 in January 2008. The Xbox 360 version was the third best-selling video game of 2007 in the U.S. with 3.04 million units sold, behind Halo 3, which sold 4.82 million units, according to the NPD Group. By January 2008, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, and was the best-selling game of 2007. By November 2013, the game had sold 15.7 million copies.

Awards
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare received awards from various gaming sites and publications. Both GameSpot and GameTrailers gave the game the Best Graphics of E3 2007 award, and the Best PlayStation 3 Game of 2007 award, and later ranked it as the third best first-person shooter on its "Top 10 FPS Games Ever!" list. It gained high praise from both video game magazine GamePro and GameSpy, having been named the Best Overall Game of 2007 by the former, and Game of the Year by the latter. Game Critics also named the game "Best Action Game". From other authorities such as IGN and X-play, and the Spike Video Game Awards, the game won awards for areas such as Best Sound Design, Best Shooter of 2007, and Best Military Game. From the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the game won Console Game of the Year, Action game of the Year, and Overall Game of the Year. From the British Academy Video Games Awards, the game also won Best Gameplay of the Year, Best Story and Character of the Year, and People's Choice Game of the Year. The game was awarded with the Academy of Video Games Awards Game of the Year 2007 Award. In 2010, the readers of PlayStation Official Magazine voted it the 7th greatest PlayStation title ever released.