But one of the games which seems to defy this convention is a granddaddy of the modern FPS game. Sure, Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein all withhold their rightful place as forerunners of the shooter genre, but what about the evolution of the genre? What about shooters which have come far away from their roots, and which have subsequently transformed into something almost completely different?
For me, this change can most notably be marked around 2007. At that time, shooters went from the grey and shelled fields of WW2 battlegrounds, to the bright and refreshing landscapes of the Middle-East. Of course, games have changed their settings before, not every FPS before this time was based in the Pacific or Western fronts, but there is a certain one which has cemented the change, and hence altered the standard for the first-person shooter.
That game would have to be Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, hence the terribly click-bait title, although I feel it is a apt statement.
It is a game which has been copied and reattempted by many, to no such avail, even by games later in the franchise. So what makes this particular installment so special? I'm not too sure, but here's what I remember from my time with the game, around eight long years ago.
One of the most striking things of Modern Warfare to begin with, was the very initial introduction. Very few games have managed to drop you into their setting in such an immersive and apt manner. It's at this point I realise that if you haven't played this title, (for some unbeknownst reason), you should probably stop reading, what with the threat if spoilers and all that.
You know by now how important first impressions are, and despite the importance of leaving a mark on the player, it still puzzles me how so many games fall flat when it comes to making an entrance. Take Skyrim, for example, which utilises an introduction that insists on throwing confusing lexis in your face while tied to a cart and unable to move. It does very little to aid your understanding of the location, or the events which have previously occurred there. For all the player knows, Skyrim is merely another middle-earth adventure with an extensive back-catalogue of lore. Modern Warfare, on the other hand, does this very differently, and rightly so.
You start off as a the president of an unnamed country in the Middle-East, although you have very little choice, apart from turning your head. The similarities between the chained characters here are few and far between, as Modern Warfare gives you a vibrant stream of scripted events to look at, giving you some context on the story while refraining from using a great, big information dump. You can see the chaos happening in this fictional country as you are driven through it, as people are executed by the roadside, and as ultra-nationalist soldiers fire their Kalashnikovs into the air in celebration at your impending demise.
The ending to this section isn't an unlikely escape due to a dragon happening to attack at the perfect time, the ending involves you being handled into a main square, flung against a post, and being executed with a Desert Eagle. The beginning of Modern Warfare is edgy, (for the time), gripping and unexpected. The player is put into the same shoes as the murdered president, a perspective which has been seldom seen in such games. This merciless killing sets the scene perfectly for the upcoming levels of the game, introducing a near-perfect tone and manages to make death feeling significant, in a game all about killing, a feat which has been only rarely replicated.
Do you remember what was happening in the world in 2007? I don't, I was about eleven or twelve. I remember the announcement of the iPhone, and that's about it. But one thing that Modern Warfare encompassed was the tension in the Middle-East and in Western Asia, making the conflict it created seem authentic, despite the fictional setting.
This atmosphere of realism essentially sparked the explosion of a new sub-genre. Before Modern Warfare, a FPS game with a modern setting was a rarity, but after 2007, this was seldom the case. Of course, you had a variety of shooting games, but after Modern Warfare's release, we witnessed our fair share of such similar games; you had some forgettable titles, Soldier of Fortune and Combat Arms, and the following year gave us Counter Strike Online, Army of Two, and one of my personal preferences, the beginning of a new Battlefield series in Bad Company.
Thankfully, this aftershock of shooters has died down now, or at least the wave of modern military shooters has. The two main franchises in this area, Call of Duty and Battlefield have now moved on to hopefully greener pastures, delving into the future, with the likes of Black Ops 2, and Battlefield have attempted something rather different with Hardline, which was released earlier this year. It does now seem that shooters are now looking ahead, rather than to the present or past.
Admittedly, for all of Modern Warfare's significance, it did do some damage too. The excess of modern military shooters has only recently been quenched, and the following games in the franchise threw away quality gameplay and innovation for a formula which they knew would sell. Although these consequential action should not detract from how important the game was, and still is.
It paved the way for the FPS multiplayer experience, and while a dash of dedicated servers would've been nice, the addictive nature of the matches was something which we hadn't really seen before. Ignore the screaming kids, and you'd have yourself a blast with a fairly simple concept, which had yet to be done properly; run around and kill everyone. This was furthered preached by the growing focus on multiplayer, the almost necessary season passes, and even failed practices such as Call of Duty Elite, but then who remembers that? But despite how captivating the experience was, and how much time, effort and money was sunk into it, competitive online gameplay didn't quite trump the campaign mode, at least for me it didn't.
Picture this: A smooth, 60-frames shooter with competent graphical fidelity. Then take the fluid mechanics, put them into an authentic-feeling world, and utilise a story straight out of Hollywood. You've already then got a new, fresh product which people are almost immediately attracted to. Then get a very good story, with a handful of well-placed, unexpected plot changes, and you've got a campaign which sets the bar unfairly high for future games. I must remind you of my earlier spoiler warning as I quickly indulge into what made the campaign absolutely superb.
The main mission for me, would be 'Shock and Awe', which involves you, along with a large contingent of US forces going for the main palace of the ultra-nationalists. The tone gets serious from the off, as you're told that this is a chance to end the war, today. The sky is engulfed by a tint of red in a bit of foreshadowing which initially goes straight over your head, and as you fire a grenade launcher from a chopper, you do truly feel like part of the most powerful army in the world; what could possibly go wrong?
The mission itself can easily be done in about 10 minutes, and is often done quicker, as the tension and pace of the mission perfectly ramps up. Talk of a nuclear device get you on edge, talk of getting to the minimum safe distance gets you gripping the controller like you're right there, in the game. After reassuring yourself that you can, and you will make it, a supporting chopper is shot down. Being the good soldier that you are, you go and grab the pilot, despite the ominous threat of nuclear annihilation. You run, you grab the pilot within thirty seconds. You've done it. You take off, you've managed to complete the mission.
Then your commander comes over the radio. A confirmed nuclear threat at the palace. But you're already on your retreat, you'll be safe. A shock of sound and a piercing glow fill the sky, and the radio cuts out. The nuke has gone off, and worryingly close. The mushroom cloud rises, and along with it, you see the shock-wave advancing, engulfing everything. Choppers behind you are tossed aside, as all you can do now is accept the inevitable.
The chopper spins helplessly, another passenger flies out of the false safety of the tail-door. You descend, trying to desperately make sense of where you will crash. You meet the ground to a chorus of frantic beeps and building music, and cut to black.
As you make sense of what has just happened, your worst fears are confirmed. Radio chatter, smoke and fallout fly around the carcass of the chopper as you gasp frantically. You crawl to the outside of the wreckage and witness the destruction around you, as a mushroom cloud still stands prominently in the distance. A building crumbles a few blocks away, as you fall to the floor and perish from the effects of a nuclear warhead detonating. You die. The might of the army seems insignificant now, and it burdens you with new purpose as you continue the story as members of the SAS. But still, the harrowing scene is something which hasn't been replicated to the same effect, nothing else has left such an impression on so many gamers in quite a while. It's a commentary on the US forces, it's a reminder of the atrocities of war, but most significantly, it reminds you, a super-soldier with once regenerating health, that you are woefully mortal.
Despite the sadness of this scene, Modern Warfare managed to captivate players. It spawned an almost cinematic experience which people were instantly addicted to. Take one of the best FPS stories in recent memory, along with groundbreaking multiplayer, and you rightfully get a plethora of awards. Aggregate scoring systems gave the game at least a 92/100 on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, and the title achieved an array of nine and ten scores, five star ratings and recognition from the Spike VGAs, the Golden Joystick awards and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Rightfully so.
I'm not one to look at games like this from such a rose-tinted perspective, especially none of the following Call of Duty titles. But I, and many others, do believe that this particular iteration was truly something special, which will be nigh on impossible to recreate, no matter how big the budget, nor the team behind it.
Let's just keep Modern Warfare as it is, and appreciate it accordingly.
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