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 starts 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, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. 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.
Critically acclaimed, the game received an aggregated score of 94% from both GameRankings and Metacritic, and is considered by many to be the best Call of Duty in the series. The gameplay and story received particular praise, while criticism targeted the failure of the game to substantially innovate the first-person shooter genre. The game won numerous awards from gaming websites, including IGN's Best Xbox 360 Game. It was the top-selling game worldwide for 2007, selling around seven million copies by January 19 and over thirteen million by May 2009.
Gameplay
As opposed to earlier games in the Call of Duty series, the game features modern equipment and new features, many exclusive to the multiplayer part of the game, such as "killstreaks"; killing a number of enemies without the player dying in between kills allows access to various assets including airstrikes and helicopter support. A character can be positioned in one of three stances: standing, crouching, or prone; each affecting the character's rate of movement, accuracy, and stealth. Using cover helps the player avoid enemy fire or recover health after taking significant damage. As such, there are no armor or health power ups. When the character has taken damage, the edges of the screen glow red and the character's heartbeat increases. If the character stays out of fire, the character can recover. When the character is within the blast radius of a live grenade, a marker indicates the direction of the grenade, helping the player to either flee or toss it back to the enemy.Campaign
The player takes on the role of various characters during a single-player campaign. The characters' involvement in the plot occurs simultaneously and overlaps the events in the game. As such, the player's perspective changes from one character to another between missions. Each mission features a series of objectives; the player is led to each objective with the heads up display, which marks its direction and distance. Some objectives require that the player arrives at a checkpoint, while other objectives require the player to eliminate enemies in a specified location, stand their ground to defend an objective, or plant explosive charges on an enemy installation. After the credits, a special epilogue mission is unlocked for play, featuring a four-man squad retrieving a VIP from terrorists who have hijacked an airliner. The SAS rescue the VIP and escape before the plane is destroyed.Multiplayer
The player's performance in the multiplayer mode is tracked with experience points, which can be earned by killing opposing players, completing challenges, completing objectives, or by completing a round or match. As the player gains experience, they advance in level, unlocking new weapons, perks, challenges, and gameplay modes. The highest obtainable level is 55, but on the console versions of the game, the player has the option to enter "Prestige" mode, which returns their level to one and removes all accumulated unlockables. This process can be repeated up to 10 times with a different insignia being given each time.
Completing a challenge grants experience points and may unlock weapon attachments. As a player's level increases by gaining experience points within online games, it unlocks new weapons, perks, or challenges. As the player advances in levels, they earn the ability to customize their classes; this includes selecting their main weapon, side arm and special grenade type. Additionally, the player can select 3 perks, one from each of the three "Tiers", that can customize their character further. Perk effects include, but are not limited to, extra ammunition, increasing bullet damage by the player, or dropping a live grenade when the player is killed. The player is also given the choice to complete challenges in order to receive even more experience points; challenges include achieving a certain number of kills with a specific weapon, shooting down a helicopter or performing a number of head shots. Additionally, when the player attains a certain amount of headshots with a specific weapon, excluding sidearms, the player unlocks extra weapon "camos", or camouflage, to use for that specific weapon.
Synopsis
Characters
Main article: List of
characters in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
During the single player campaign, the player controls six different
characters from a first-person perspective. The player
assumes the role of recent British Special Air Service (SAS) recruit Sergeant
John "Soap" MacTavish for most of the game, starting with his enrollment in the
22nd SAS Regiment.Sergeant
Paul Jackson is part of USMC 1st Force
Recon deployed to the Middle East, and the player controls Jackson's
character during five levels of Act 1. Captain John Price (voiced by actor Billy Murray)
is an SAS officer who is playable in two flashback missions from 1996 in which
he is still Lieutenant. The
player also assumes the role of an American thermal-imaging TV operator aboard a
Lockheed AC-130
gunship during one level, and a British SAS operative infiltrating a hijacked
airliner to save a VIP in a secret level titled "Mile High Club". Finally, the
player may control Yasir Al-Fulani, the president of the unnamed Middle Eastern country in
the game before he is executed, although he has no freedom of action beyond
turning his head.The game's non-playable characters (NPCs) feature prominently in the story: Captain Price and his right-hand man, Gaz (voiced by Craig Fairbrass), serve as mentors to Soap. Jackson's USMC platoon is led by Lieutenant Vasquez (voiced by David Sobolov) and Staff Sergeant Griggs (voiced by and modeled after Infinity Ward lead animator Mark Grigsby); Griggs later accompanies Soap in Russia. Sergeant Kamarov leads the Russian loyalists that aid SAS and USMC forces. "Nikolai" is a Russian informant who helps the SAS. Captain MacMillan is Price's mentor and commanding officer during the flashback to the assassination attempt on Zakhaev.
The antagonists in the story include Imran Zakhaev, the leader of the Russian ultranationalist party and the main antagonist of the game; Khaled Al-Asad, the commander of the revolutionary forces in the Middle East and an ally of Imran Zakhaev; and Victor Zakhaev, the son of Imran Zakhaev and a priority figure in the ultranationalist party.
Development
Call of Duty 4 was developed by a team of a hundred people, over the course of two years. After Call of Duty 2, the Infinity Ward team decided to move away from the World War II environment of previous games in the series. This resulted in three game concepts: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. While developing the story for Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward chose to avoid referencing current, real-life wars, and keep the series' common theme of two opposing forces of similar strength. To enhance the realistic feel of the game, the development team attended a live-fire exercise at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, a training facility in the California desert. This helped the developers to simulate the effects of being near an Abrams tank when it fires. The team also talked with United States Marines who were recently in combat to get a feel for the background, emotions, and attitude of Marines in combat. Veterans were also recruited to supervise motion capture sessions and the artificial intelligence design of the game.
The development team designed the online multiplayer component to be balanced and rewarding for new players while still offering something for experienced players. An early idea to implement air support (air strikes and attack helicopters) involved players fighting over special zones to access a trigger for air support against enemies. This idea was discarded because it discouraged the type of deathmatch gameplay they intended. The kill streak reward system was put in its place to encourage the improvement of player skills. Players were allowed to select weapons before matches to get accustomed to weapons more easily and minimize weapon hunting. Maps were designed primarily for deathmatch games—the developers felt such designs suited other types of gameplay as well. Map layouts were designed to minimize locations players could hide from enemy gunfire.
Game engine
Certain objects, such as cars and some buildings, are destructible. This makes distinguishing cover from concealment important, as the protection provided by objects such as wooden fences and thin walls do not completely protect players from harm. Bullet stopping power is decreased after penetrating an object, and the decrease is dependent on the thickness and surface type of the object. The game makes use of a dynamic physics engine, not implemented in previous Call of Duty titles. Death animations are a combination of pre-set animations and ragdoll physics. Console versions of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare run at a consistent 60 frames per second, and the Wii version runs at 30 frames per second. Code was included to determine spawning points based on the nearby weapons and the relationship between enemy positions and line of sight to the points. The various criteria are meant to minimize players dying immediately after rejoining a match, or being "spawn-killed" due to players simply waiting for others to "respawn". However, enemies may still respawn infinitely, a notable feature in Call of Duty game engines.
The game engine has also been used for the development of two other Activision games. An enhanced version of the original engine was used in Call of Duty: World at War, the fifth installment in the Call of Duty series after Call of Duty 4, while a slightly altered version has been used for the James Bond video game Quantum of Solace as well as GoldenEye 007 using a heavily modified version.
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