Who remembers Call of Duty 3? I sure don't. And it's not because I'm not a massive CoD fan, though that has to play a significant part. No, we don't remember CoD3 because it was rubbish and the shot in the arm that the series would need to recover would be the one and only Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Second World War? That's so old, you know? What the kids want these days is military equipment they can really identify with, yeah? The M1 Garand ping is great, yes, but we don't have to rely on it.
And so, with one eye firmly fixed on Hollywood, Modern Warfare brought the first person shooter into, well, the modern day. Ignore SWAT 4, or Battlefield 2, or any other rubbish that was set in the modern day that doesn't have Call of Duty in front of its name, because they're garbage, and this is CoD4: MW.
I was, again, very late to the party, but with the aide of 5-year-old, out-of-context screenshots, we'll relive the good old days of gaming. Again. That's all this blog does, really.
Fond Memories
One of the first games I sat down to play through on this 'rig' when it was 'shiny and new' in 2015 was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Of all the games on the list, it was an early frontrunner for the category of 'excellent game I hadn't played before that required a keyboard and mouse'. Don't worry, classics like Quake were also dipped into in those early days, but I knew CoD4 simply had to be played, and I sat down and played it.
It only took two days, judging by these screenshots, but then what CoD campaign has ever been of any great length? Those two days would have been packed with gunfire and explosions and more military chatter than you could comprehend.
Like the earlier CoD titles, it doesn't take a lot of effort to get into. WASD your way through linear levels, ducking into prone positions and aiming down the sights towards whatever the biggest threat is to you. Follow the objective markers and keep shooting. It's simple stuff, made all the more real with a bump in graphics.
If the series had been working its way towards Hollywood before, it had made it there with Modern Warfare. This game is all about the story, as you're plopped into the shoes of a variety of folks fighting on different fronts, ultimately trying to rid the world of bad guys.
Frustrations
But let us start with the bad stuff. It's been a while since I've played Modern Warfare. After completing it on the PC in 2015, I'd next come into contact with its Remastered version a few years later, and after another long afternoon, it'd remain untouched until now.
During those two years, the plot of the game has basically disappeared from my memory. I can remember the highlight reel, certainly, and we'll get to that. The actual details, the characters, the reason you're shooting and killing hundreds of copy/paste enemies in all manner of wonderful looking locations? I've absolutely no idea.
Looks flashy, though, dunnit? If the levels don't take place in the blazing desert sun, they take place in the smokey night, or high in the skies through thermal optics, in situations that have you cause utter carnage - somehow justified - upon what heat signatures you hope are the enemy.
Moments like this just didn't happen in video gaming. Not to this grizzly amount of detail and degree of commentary on the issues. You might be put into a plane to shoot ground targets in other video games, but you're not really challenged to ask about all the morals that go along with it, that you might be when this kind of action is put in front of you.
I say that CoD was going for Hollywood, but perhaps it wasn't. Sometimes it does, certainly - detonating a nuke in the middle of a city, for example - but here it's not going for fiction, but for fact. The matter of fact. The blunt, just do what you're told to do.
And that's one of the most annoying things that CoD does because while it tries to make you feel like you're there, it also makes you feel like you don't really matter, and that you're just along for the ride.
It's most apparent when you're following a squad running through a ship or down a road, and when they stop and get into their tactical positions that make absolute, real-world sense, you're left to stand around like an idiot, or press the crouch button somewhere vaguely nearby.
You don't know how and aren't given the tools to really immerse yourself into the action, and you are often little more than a cameraman to the events that unfold. Sometimes, the only time I knew what to do was because I caught someone's name being barked by someone in charge, and assumed that was whatever character I was playing at the time.
More often than not, it resulted in ruining the cinematic storytelling that was taking place. And Modern Warfare sure tried to make that its most impressive feature...
Fun Times
All Ghillied Up. Silly words, I agree, but there is a generation of players that know exactly what you're referring to when you say it. Hailed as one of the most impressive levels in first person shooters full stop, this level takes you back in time to play as one of the chief badasses of the story, Captain Price, back when he was a Lieutenant.
The mission takes place in Pripyat, ten years after the Chernobyl disaster, and has Price and Captain MacMillian sneak their way into position, assassinate a target, and get the hell out. You might imagine it to be a tense affair, full of thrills and set pieces, and it is - just on a level that video gaming hadn't seen.
I made sure to record my very first attempt of this level. I'd been playing CoD4 for however many hours it took to get here, and that's all the experience I had. I was still new to controlling FPS games with the keyboard and mouse. I'm getting as many excuses out before this video as possible, yes...
I got better, thankfully, and enjoyed it just as much on the PlayStation 4 in the remaster. If Call of Duty can only do one thing, memorable moments has to be it.
I can tell you that I and a whole load of other soldiers were chasing him through down, cornered him on a rooftop and watched helplessly as he shot himself in the head, rather than letting us capture him, but the details... yeah, not a clue.
But there was a car chase afterwards and the bald guy we thought we killed in Pripyat actually definitely died on our second attempt. We saved the day?
Final Word
The memories of Modern Warfare - useless though they are - will perhaps always stay with me. I never contemplated stepping into the multiplayer world of the series, but it was ten times more important to video gaming than the single player campaign was, and the single player offering was fantastic.
Forgettable, perhaps, but there's no denying that I had fun with it. Even if took just a long afternoon to get through, even if I was all fingers and thumbs at the controls, or playing on easy mode, it was a blast that simply cannot be missed or ignored.
Sorry for not giving you any details about what it's like to actually play it, though. My notes from 5 years ago mention that I thought using the mouse scroll wheel to change weapons was 'the shit', I assume meaning 'great', and that I kept forgetting that bullets can penetrate thin bits of wood and still hit the fleshy target hiding behind it.
Most of what I wrote was actually moaning about feeling out of place and dragged through the plot by the other characters. Whoever I was playing was a cog in the machine that was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Still. There are worse machines to be cogs in.
Fun Facts
Believe it or not, multiplayer maps were designed to minimise the amount of locations players could use to hide behind, and yet still the campers sat in them...
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, developed by Infinity Ward, first released in 2007.
Versions played: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, PC, 2007.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, PlayStation 4, 2016