Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Review - 10 years later and it's still a landmark title.

By Sam Coles:

Now I know what you’re thinking why don’t you wait until November to review Call of Duty 4, which you would be right but I absolutely love this game and I just want to talk about it. It has been nearly 10 years since Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare came out on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Believe it or not my first flirtation with this game was on the PC at my mates house and I was totally engaged with the fast pace combat and tight controls, it wasn’t until 2009 when I got an Xbox 360 that I really delved into the gameplay and I fell in love with the series as a whole. I still love the series whether it is set in World War II or in the distant future, when I see that logo on the box I know what I’m getting into.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare takes place in well…. The present day, can’t you read the title; anyway you take control of two characters Sgt Paul Jackson of the United States Marine Corps and Sgt John “Soap” Mactavish of the SAS. The plot revolves around a Russian ultranationalist party lead by Imran Zakaev who is manipulating a conflict in the Middle East involving nuclear weapons.

The plot isn’t anything mind blowing but it is the pacing that is excellent as it can switch gears from a loud gun fight to a calm stealth mission giving the player time to breathe and you know what I’m talking about. I love the constant switch between protagonists in the campaign because you play as the US who tend to cock everything up and then the SAS are behind the scenes fixing it, they’re working together without them knowing about it to begin with.

The gameplay is stripped back with no one off gimmicks like the other games so you will be doing a lot of standard shooting, but you will sometimes take control of AC-130 gunships which was controversial with its realistic look back in the day. 

As I said above you’ll take part in stealth missions the most notable one being all ghillied up where you take control of a young Captain Price when he was a Lieutenant. The main problem I have with the gameplay in terms of the campaign and this something that plagued most COD games during this period that is the enemy throws too many grenades and this is noticeable on the highest difficulty.

Multiplayer was the main reason people kept playing this game years down the line and for good reason because it was simplistic yet hard to master with good progression. The stripped back nature of COD 4 is fantastic so you don’t have over the top kill streaks you only have 3, you have a UAV, Airstrike and an Attack Helicopter when you get 7 kills in a row. These kill streaks didn’t break the game compared to Modern Warfare 2 where they got stupid where you could spam multiple kill streaks.

The weapons are minimal with simple attachments such as red dot sights and suppressors, however the weapon that was completely overpowered was the Desert Eagle it has a high damage output and you could fire as fast your index finger will twitch. Perks were an interesting addition which could double your damage output to not appearing on the enemies radar, there were some useless ones like eavesdrop which gave you the ability to hear enemy voice chat, but it was useless especially if you were playing on PS3.

Visually the game still looks good and yes it’s nothing compared to the remastered version that came out a few months ago, but it still looks fantastic from the rain soaked infiltration on the tanker at the start of the game to the radiated fields of Chernobyl. It has fantastic detail with excellent weapon models and great muzzle flash effects as you pull the trigger of your rifle or side arm.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare is still a great game and it is hard to believe that it is turning 10 years old this year, the game is very cheap to pick up for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, but if you want to play an updated version you can get it with Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition  remastered on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.