Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare set a new standard for competitive multiplayer functionality in a primarily console-focused First-Person Shooter. Its character progression was adopted my many of the shooters that followed it to market, though there remain numerous examples of shooters that hew closer to the classic design sensibilities. However, even though the first Modern Warfare was evolutionary it was not without its flaws.
First of all, let’s introduce the weapon add-ons. The process used to unlock the Red Dot Sight, Silencer and ACOG Scope, as well as the additional camouflage options for the primary weapons, is sound. It is bothersome to rack up the number of headshots required to unlock all the camouflage choices, though, and therefore this element of progression is in danger of being sped up by impatient fans. Another strange thing is that, when the Marksman Challenge for an individual gun has been completed, the user has to wait until after the current match to equip their Red Dot Sight. It’s important to prevent players from fiddling with their classes during a match in order to keep the focus on the current carnage, but Infinity Ward could easily have given users access to their Red Dot Sights immediately upon completion of the first Marksman Challenge, or during their next respawn period, through the use of a single additional screen.
Let’s move on to talking about the weapons themselves. The weapon modeling and design in Modern Warfare is superbly detailed. And many of them remain useful after the entire stock of guns has been unlocked, which is excellent. The character progression doesn’t prove as disastrous as it could be, with low-level players being given access to weapons that can compete with the high-level gear. Having said that, there are numerous occasions where high-level players have an unfair advantage, and this precedence isn’t always represented in terms of accuracy or damage dealt. Perks complicate matters, and that will be addressed later, but high-level players gain additional benefits from kills and headshots that low-level players are unable to receive. You can kill an enemy, take his gun and kill him with that gun, but you won’t earn proper credit for that kill unless you have unlocked that specific Challenge.
The Challenge system itself is a mess of unlocks and lacking rewards. The individual weapon Challenges have already been discussed, but there are a variety of Challenges that tie into the various game modes and the array of methods that can be employed to eliminate enemy players. These are split up into five categories: Boot Camp, Operations, Killer, Humiliation and Elite. What is irksome about the Challenge design is that, starting from the very beginning, the player doesn’t have access to the entire suite of Challenges available. Each category must be unlocked in groups. As you progress, you’ll unlock more and more of them, but you’ll soon realize that you are not being rewarded for certain actions because you haven’t yet unlocked the accompanying Challenge set. Infinity Ward used the Challenge sets as stopgaps in between the more satisfying weapon and Perk unlocks, and their experiment proved to be a black eye on Modern Warfare’s character progression.
The Perks system allows for some interesting and humorous custom classes. It’s easy to make a Stealth class by selecting Bomb Squad, UAV Jammer and Dead Silence, and the player can easily roll a Sniper by selecting Claymores x2, Stopping Power, and Iron Lungs. It’s also possible to design an incredibly useless Shotgun-exclusive class by selecting Bomb Squad, Overkill, and Extreme Conditioning. A few of the Perks offer multiple solutions to the same problem, such as Stopping Power, Juggernaut and Double Tap, all of which help to keep the player alive while he attempts to shoot his enemies dead. There are some inconsistencies in the design of the Perks system, such as Last Stand being in the third slot instead of the second one, but, overall, the system is well-designed and offers an assortment of options to players.
In terms of the mechanical systems that lie underneath all of this customization and unlocking, Modern Warfare is somewhat lacking. First of all, there is no host migration built into the netcode. When the host leaves the match you’ll be forced to return to the game lobby where a new host will be selected. That was a huge oversight on Infinity Ward’s part. In addition to this failure, it’s disappointing that Infinity Ward did not enable any kind of skill-based matchmaking for Modern Warfare. Players are collected just because they are currently looking for a match, not because they would be a good match for the other players. In addition to the unpredictable match quality, the size of the match itself is not foreseeable. Once the base number of players is in the lobby for the current playlist, the match will begin, with players being added to and leaving the game as it remains in progress. There are several problems with this design philosophy. First of all, Modern Warfare is still ridiculously popular, so it wouldn’t be difficult to wait until a full lobby was available before the game starts. Secondly, there appears to be no punishment dealt out to players who leave a game before it has been completed. Thirdly, as you are entering a match you are forced to hear your team’s voice chat. Xbox Live is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and it’s extremely annoying to have to hear a seven-year-old whispering into the microphone while a twenty-year-old man-child who is unable to utilize the mute function of Xbox Live or Modern Warfare tells the child to “shut the fuck up.” Here’s a useful tip: The best pre-match routine is to mute everyone in the lobby who has a mic. Do this as often as you can. Another annoyance in this regard is that, for team gametypes, you cannot view the Gamercard of anyone in the other team while you’re in the lobby. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Hopefully some of these flaws can be removed in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Despite the quality offered by the original Modern Warfare, it was, at times, a rough experience.