About the game
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a 2007 first-person shooter developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It is the fourth main game in the Call of Duty series and leaves the World War II setting of earlier games for modern times. It was developed over two years and released in November 2007 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows. A Wii port by Treyarch, subtitled Reflex Edition, followed in 2009.
It uses a modern military arsenal that includes flashbangs, night vision and suppressed weapons. You can stand, crouch or go prone, and health regenerates when you avoid further fire. The campaign is played from several viewpoints, including British Special Air Service and United States Marine Corps characters, and has 30 collectible pieces of enemy intel that unlock cheats and visual filters. Finishing it unlocks Mile High Club, a standalone epilogue mission aboard a hijacked aircraft.
Multiplayer has free-for-all and team modes on a set of maps. Players earn experience for kills and objectives, rank up, and unlock weapons, perks and custom class options. A custom class holds a primary weapon, sidearm, attachments, a special grenade and three perks. The console versions have a Prestige mode that resets rank and unlocks for a new insignia, repeatable up to ten times, and killstreak rewards such as a UAV scan, an airstrike and an attack helicopter.
The story starts in 2011, with a civil war in Russia between the government and Ultranationalists and a coup in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. A British SAS team led by Captain Price, with new recruit Sergeant John Soap MacTavish, and a United States Marine squad follow a trail that leads to the Ultranationalist leader Imran Zakhaev and a nuclear threat against the United States.
Infinity Ward made the game over roughly two years with a team of about 100 people. After Call of Duty 2 the studio wanted to move away from World War II and settled on a fictional modern conflict. The engine targets 60 frames per second. The score was written mainly by Stephen Barton, with a main theme by Harry Gregson-Williams, and orchestral parts were recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Before release there was an Xbox 360 multiplayer beta.
It came out in North America on 5 November 2007, in Australia on 7 November and in Europe on 9 November. A Limited Collector's Edition was made for Xbox 360 and Windows, with a hardcover art book and a bonus DVD about the SAS and the making of the game on Xbox 360. The Variety Map Pack came to Xbox 360 first, under a timed-exclusivity deal, with four maps: Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek and Killhouse.
The game received universal acclaim on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. In the United States the Xbox 360 version sold 1.57 million copies in November 2007 and the PlayStation 3 version sold 444,000. Activision said it was the best-selling game worldwide for 2007, and by November 2013 it had sold 15.7 million copies. Retrospective reviews rank it among the best in the series, and many credit its multiplayer with setting conventions used across the genre since, including experience levels, Prestige, create-a-class, perks and killstreaks.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 94 out of 100 (Xbox 360). Individual reviews: Eurogamer 9/10, Game Informer 10/10, GamePro 5/5, GameSpot 9/10, GameSpy 5/5, IGN 9.4/10, Official Xbox Magazine 10/10, X-Play 5/5.
Extra content
The Variety Map Pack came to Xbox 360 first. Microsoft stopped selling Xbox 360 add-ons on 29 July 2024.
- Variety Map Pack: Four multiplayer maps: Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek and Killhouse. It passed one million paid downloads on Xbox Live in its first nine days.
Good to know
- The Limited Collector's Edition with an art book and bonus DVD was made for Xbox 360 and Windows only.
- The Variety Map Pack reached 1 million paid downloads on Xbox Live in nine days, a record at the time.
- The Xbox 360 list has 37 achievements worth 1,000 gamerscore.
- Finishing the campaign unlocks Mile High Club, a short standalone mission.
- An Xbox 360 multiplayer beta ran before release.
- The rap song over the end credits was performed by Infinity Ward lead animator Mark Grigsby.
Made by
Director Jason West, Producer Mark Rubin, Writer Jesse Stern, Composer Stephen Barton, Main theme Harry Gregson-Williams, Designer Todd Alderman, Designer Steve Fukuda, Designer Mackey McCandlish, Designer Zied Rieke, Programmer Richard Baker.
