Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (PS4, 2016)
Since I finished Modern Warfare Remastered I've struggled with how to put together a write-up of it. In the end I've realised that I really want to cover two things - the game itself, and the differences between it and the original. I'll cover them in that order.
Originally released in 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare follows two separate stories and sets of characters. On the one hand you are Soap MacTavish, new recruit in the SAS. You're paired up with Captain Price, Captain Price's moustache, Captain Price's hat, Captain Price's cigars, a man named Gaz who carries a shotgun, and a few other men with intimidating accents. On the other hand you are Sergeant Paul Jackson, a US Marine who is part of an invading army in an unspecified Middle Eastern country when the president is executed on live television and an armed coup takes place.
Modern Warfare is a good game. It's old enough that its release meant something new in the FPS genre, with a focus on modern technology and politics that was fairly basic in its plot structure but still felt plausible as a result. The game is set in 2019 which makes me feel really, really old, but even playing it now, the content doesn't feel dated. I'm sure some of the weapons and technology have moved on but it doesn't feel like an anachronism, and I think that's down to the heavy sense of realism and overall tone of the game.
The dual storylines play an important role in keeping the player engaged. To start off you play a few missions as SAS, then as the Marines. The switch from sneaking around in the dark with silenced weapons and excessive close-up violence to yelling OO-RAH!, blowing up everything in sight while an electric guitar riff plays in the background is certainly noticeable. Even though the two campaigns don't last until the end of the game I know I would get bored of the Americans even if I was able to keep telling myself that they're not supposed to be taken at face value. The SAS campaign suffers slightly from this format though as it's hard to ever really quantify where they are or what they're doing. Even after all the times I've played this I can never quite follow how or why they go where they go. It feels as if the characters know more about what's going on than the player, and the disconnect is just enough to keep me from being completely engaged.
Since I was 11 when the Iraq War happened, I don't really know much about it. I'm sure I can remember watching footage on the news of when it started. I just remember a bunch of explosions somewhere during the night, with no idea what it meant or where it was. However, it's fairly obvious to see the comparisons between that era of international geopolitics and Modern Warfare's story. An American army going into a country in the Middle East to take down a violent and oppressive dictator with the looming threat of Russian involvement, and ongoing uncertainty over the existence of nuclear weapons there? A constant state of uncertainty and confusion based on faulty military intelligence? Yeah. If that wasn't enough there's a section where you're manning a mounted grenade launcher in a helicopter and you can shoot a big statue of a guy in a town square. No idea where the inspiration for that could have come from.
While Modern Warfare's campaign doesn't compare to the gold standard of modern military shooters - Spec Ops: The Line - there's a definite maturity and levity to this game which has stood the test of time, even allowing for the strange and horrible places the Call of Duty series went since its release. There are notable setpieces which reinforce this - I'm sure long enough has passed to avoid worrying about spoilers, but the end of the Marine campaign is as haunting now as ever - but playing the rest of the game right now the whole thing feels solid and coherent enough that although the protagonists are silent, I still have a sense of empathy for what they're experiencing. Having gone back and compared with the original I think this is partly down to the remake, but I'll come to that shortly.
In fact, I'll come to it right now. Although it's called Remastered this is effectively a Remake going by the other rereleased games with these titles. The sounds and dialogue are the same and all the content's the same, but effectively every physical asset has been remade. The result is genuinely strange. I've played remasters that were just ports of the original games with a bit of a graphical sheen. They still feel familiar. This doesn't. This feels like something familiar but still something new, and I was never really able to reconcile these two feelings. I'm doing things I recognise and I'm hearing things I recognise, but what I'm seeing is just a little bit off. This isn't a criticism of the game or to say it's bad, it isn't, but it was genuinely difficult at times to get used to what I was seeing.
From a technical perspective, the game has high points and low points. The sound in particular is an achievement, with a much greater depth and ferocity which makes gunfights and explosions feel much more real. As I was playing I could swear there was something different from what I remembered of the original, and when I checked, there was. In the American missions there was more background music. In MWR, there wasn't. It was just the sound of the fighting. If this was a deliberate choice then it was a good one, the result was an overwhelming sense of chaos which is probably a lot closer to what these situations would be like in real life. A good choice. After comparing with the original, the changes in this regard are a definite improvement. The shooting feels more impactful, and the overall sense of chaos in firefights is almost overwhelming at times, which it should be.
Elsewhere, the game wasn't perfect technically. One moment in particular from near the end of the game stands out. I'm looking for a man in my squad who's been separated from us. I step out of the first building and try to go into the next, but can't. I know it's where I should be going because I remember that and because there's only one other building to try, but there's something off. Confused but still feeling like I know where I should be going I try a different location to the right, nothing. I go back to the original building and all of a sudden a door opens to the right, a bunch of guys and a bunch of dogs all spawn at once. The game had a couple of moments like this where some enemies were in the wrong place or weren't quite reacting the way they should. This is why I speculated that the lack of background music might have been a choice. It felt like it might not have been deliberate. I'm surprised that for the amount of work that clearly went into this game, and for the size of the installation it takes (70GB+) that some technical issues exist, but there's nothing overly game-breaking.
One area where the game is faithful to history is the enemy AI. I remember when Modern Warfare 2 was being developed. A lot of fuss was made about how you wouldn't have to fight past invisible checkpoints anymore! There wasn't a finite supply of enemies waiting for you to do something! Well, a lot of years have passed since then and Modern Warfare Remastered's release, you might want to have paid attention. This is about the only thing that makes the game feel dated. Pretty much every aspect of the enemy AI is terrible but the never-ending supply of them is almost laughable in how dated it is. I also found some trouble with the weapons. Even on lower difficulties the enemies were bullet sponges, and grenades did virtually no damage at all. These problems weren't enough to spoil the experience, but if I'd tried playing on Veteran difficulty I don't think I would have enjoyed it.
Some other aspects are different. The intro movie is missing. Is it really Call of Duty 4 if it doesn't start with a man saying "fifty thousand people used to live here... now it's a ghost town"? The multiplayer obviously would never be like the original, but oh boy, the horror when I first went into the menu. Immediately I'm hit with random pointless cosmetic items and the encouragement to get more. Nope.
Call of Duty 4 is one of my all-time favourite games. It's the first game I played online regularly. It's probably the first FPS I played when old enough to properly appreciate what was going on. It was actually one of the games I got with my PS3 (Grand Theft Auto IV and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue the others) and it's a testament to how good it is that I can play it now and still appreciate the game on a technical and narrative level. Captain Price, Soap and Gaz will always be among my favourite gaming characters, no matter what else I play or how ridiculous they are. Modern Warfare Remastered is a good game in its own right and a worthy improvement on the original in several ways. Given where the Call of Duty franchise went after that original release in 2007, it's easy to forget the games once felt special. This reminds you.
