I've said some nasty things about Call Of Duty in the past. In my review of the Black Ops 3 Beta, I called the franchise "brain-corrupting filth" only redeemed by a mindless multi-player mode that's since become surpassed by every other multi-player game ever made. I've described this series as the lowest standard in gaming, and propagandistic filth.
But I've never played Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I've always been interested in this instalment since it marks the turning point, as the franchise went from World War 2 to modern day - bringing all the tropes with it, only now we're in a less black and white era. Also, as you could've probably told in my last review, I'm sick of pseudo-indie, barely interactive first person 'games.' At least here I'm doing something proactive. I'm killing people, which is something compared to sleepwalking through a really badly told narrative. You know it's a sad day when I'm playing Call Of Duty to cleanse my palette...
The world is gripped in terror by an Arabic revolutionary called Al-Asad (not to be confused with Assad, the genocidal Syrian dictator) who has taken over an unnamed Middle Eastern country, which is odd because all the other countries are clearly named. You play as the hilariously named 'Soap,' a nameless faceless voiceless protagonist who's recently joined the British SAS. Oh, but you also play as Jackson, a member of the US Marines. There's also a flashback section where you play as Captain Price. Whilst Asad's not really doing anything, Russia has also been overtaken by a revolutionary who's...not really doing anything either.
The plot is awful in that it's hardly there. The game opens with a surprisingly effective opening sequence as you're driven in a car through an unnamed Middle Eastern country on the brink of revolution. It's perfectly scripted and does an excellent job of making you feel alienated from society. You're trapped and eventually killed in this world that's turning against itself. My expectations were completely turned upside down upon sitting through this.
But no. The game stampedes through the plot before completely giving up. Any context is condensed into rushed dialogue fired off during the loading screen as flashing graphics jump and twist in front of you. And what remains of the plot is horrid. The main villain, Al-Asad, is built up fairly well. You see him in the excellent prologue and he occasionally appears in broadcasts as you gunfight. He's no Andrew Ryan, yet it's obvious he's the guy you're after...even though it's not really explained why. But then after a brief skirmish you capture him. He's killed in a fleeting scripted event without any fanfare. You think at that point the game's over...but no. Suddenly this other person we've never seen or heard of before takes over as the big bad guy. I had to Google . They might have mentioned him during the loading screens, but I always use loading screens to take a sip of my drink and relax for a few moments.
The racism isn't as bad as the later COD games, but it's still there. Aside from Asad executing the former president of not-Iran (because this scenario is clearly based on the 1979 Iranian revolution) and ordering the execution of...some people, then that's all we have. We don't know his motive or politics. We have almost no reason to assume Asad is evil, or a force that needs to be stopped via military intervention from America, who from what we can tell has absolutely nothing to do with Asad. In any other game Asad would probably be the hero as he takes control of a country by murdering his way through an army before triumphantly killing the final boss and saving the day. But he's black and he speaks in a weird language, so obviously he's a very bad man who we must blow to bits.
Both Asad and the Russian's only do evil things because America and the UK intervene. Asad detonates a nuclear device because America invades his country, the Russian nationals only launch the missiles because the SAS completely messed up the mission to infiltrate the Russian nationals. These are acts of self-defence, and we're not given any context as to why our attacks that provoke said defence are justified. We're supposed to hate Asad because he's black and therefore clearly a terrorist despite, as far as we're made aware, not committing any terrorist acts. We're supposed to hate the Russian nationalists because they're patriotic Russian's and therefore clearly plan to compromise the world's security. Not like the patriotic American's we're playing as. They're totally not evil as they burst into a country miles away and completely destroy its sovereignty.
Perhaps I'm just saying all this because, years later, Spec Ops: The Line came along to completely dissect the modern warfare shooter. It was a harsh critique of western interventionism, with Captain Walker clearly being the villain of the story despite also being the player character. It flipped the sides round and showed us just how despicable narratives like the one in Call Of Duty 4 actually are when you think about them. There's one set-piece from this game that Spec Ops masterfully satirises; where you take control of a helicopter with an infra-red scanner and bomb sentient blips whilst your companions compliment your shooting. Except in Spec Ops, you then step away from the infra-red scanner to see the damage you've caused. It's the most disturbing scene I've ever played in a video game, and the moment when I realised that Spec Ops is possibly the best game of the 2010's.
I suppose it doesn't really matter, because whoever you're supposed to hate somehow has access to an inexhaustible supply of the same two enemies. I actually expected the game to climax with you breaking into a cloning facility where you find out all the people you're shooting are just mass-produced replicants. It can also get really confusing considering how every battle you're in features a small army of A.I allies who look almost exactly like the people you're supposed to shoot - and it's not like countless other games where A.I companions are immune to your fire. The amount of times I accidentally sniped my own guys was humiliating...
The biggest problem with the game, and the reason why it can easily be perceived as xenophobic, is that it just doesn't stop. You charge from location to location, from gunfight to gunfight with hardly a seconds rest. During the fire-fights themselves there isn't any break for exposition or even scripted events. It's just run and shoot. Sometimes there's a section where you have to remain stealthy, but it's over before it begins. People scream in your headset to move, infinite numbers of enemies are thrown at you. There is absolutely no context. You have no idea who you're shooting, why you're shooting, and what it will achieve aside from increasing the number of local orphanages. The game's so terrified you'll lose interest even though it moves so fast that only people who don't care at all about the actual context won't mind - and these are the sort of people who skip the foreplay.
There's just one moment when the game finally slows down to breathe, and that's the excellently done flashback mission set in Chernobyl. You sneak around with a sniper rifle remaining undetected, and there's even a handful of moments where you walk through a series of rooms that don't have people you need to shoot in them. Suddenly: wow! I'm able to adsorb the atmosphere, and contemplate things. The exposition has finally been woven into the gameplay, meaning I feel a natural progression. I'm not just running through an arcade shooting everything that moves.
There's of course the only other moment people remember: when your player-character gets nuked and you get to play as him crawling about as he dies of radiation poisoning alone away from home. This is a powerful moment where, again, you can absorb what's happening. But these two events happen about halfway through the game. The rest of the time, your missions follow a similar structure: arrive just at the start of a fight, get in the fight, divert from the group to complete a side-objective, come back for a full assault, rendezvous at selected point. Occasionally you might have to use stealth, but if you botch it then everyone just opens fire and it's back to shooting with no repercussions. It's not like other stealth-shooters where using stealth lets you conserve resources
The game isn't exactly hard though. Since it uses health regeneration then you die in just a few hits but checkpoints are numerous so it never actually felt like I was doing badly because whenever I died I just popped back a few seconds later. I found the sniper rifles to all be the best weapons, since enemies aren't very accurate and you can kill people with body-shots. My tactic would be to simply stand far away, letting my A.I companions distract the enemy whilst I took pot-shots from a distance. None of the maps are that open though, so I also carried a machine gun everywhere.
You're almost always given the best weapon for the job when you start the level, and you're also given a ridiculously large amount of ammo for it. I hardly ever needed to swap weapons unless I wanted to snipe or unless the game told me to. None of the weapons really shift the gameplay about. In fact, I really didn't see a difference between any of the automatic weapons. I suppose this is the main problem with modern shooters. You can't exactly pick up a plasma rifle or bow and arrow. It's actual real weapons...even though Left 4 Dead had realistic weapons and it made sure each weapon had dramatically different stats in order to assure varied gameplay. There's no way I'm going to replay this game because I want to try out the AK-47 this time because they're all the same to me. Maybe I'm not the target audience, but for a game that clearly doesn't care about plot and just wants to shove you into gun battles - you'd think the gun battles would be better done.
Actually I lie. Despite being repetitive, the gunfights are very well done. The sound design creates a harmony of chaos, rag-dolls spectacularly get launched in the air, and bullets whizz dangerously past you. Once I stop asking questions about the plot, I was able to nicely absorb myself in the battles. Just like there is nothing more comfortable than sinking into a good book, sometimes I find solace in immersing myself in a highly choreographed world where everything has been designed especially for me. Enemies run at you just begging to be shot, and A.I companions run forward so they can nobly take a bullet for you and flip over dramatically. The battles, in short, feel like you're in a war movie.
But you're not the hero. Not only is there not enough context, but you just don't do enough in battle. Occasionally you're asked to go off and disable something, or to destroy a tank or lay a charge; but there's never a moment where you're by yourself. The people you play as are just blank slates for you to project yourself onto, which is fine but the game never goes beyond that. Gordon Freeman became a sort of enigma as well as a leader. Meanwhile, Soap is always Soap. He never changes his relationship with the characters, never elevates his position. You're nothing but an observer, watching other people change the world whilst you just shoot things.
Overall, I can't say I didn't have fun. I am a sucker for being pulled into an immaculately crafted action environment where I can let off some steam. It is probably the closest I ever want to come to being in a warzone - minus the part where I get shot in the pancreas five seconds in and spend three months in agony. But whilst the gameplay itself is solid and enjoyable, I ultimately dislike this game more for what it became than what it is. What it is is a sloppy, kind of racist, yet highly polished meathead shooter. What it became was the worst thing to happen to gaming.
