This week's edition of the regular Critical Reception column examines online reaction to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a present-day take on the Call of Duty series that some critics regard as both "the best entry yet in the highly successful franchise," and "one of the best war-based shooters ever."
Already facing competition from well-received recent releases like Halo 3 and BioShock, this year's entry in developer Infinity Ward's Call of Duty franchise shoulders an even greater risk, thanks to its shift in setting from World War II to modern-day warfare. Though this significant change could have potentially put the series' quality in jeopardy, the end result earns an average score of 95 out of 100 at Metacritic.com.
Thus far, no reviewer has scored Call of Duty 4 below 90 out of 100. There appears to be little question as to whether the title is a great experience in its own right, but critics also assert that as thematically different as it may be from its predecessors, Call of Duty 4 is a sequel worthy of the franchise.
MW 2019 is five years old at this point and on previous gen hardware, but it is still the best looking Call of Duty game to date.
MW was an excellent videogame. They messed up Spec Ops big time, but aside from this it was a huge step in the right direction initially. Most notably, at launch it seemed to come from a very cohesive creative vision that was felt across gameplay, to story to art style/visual direction. It was also very notably written by prominent ex-Naughty Dog guys that quit almost immediately before release.
That COMPLETELY dissolved through post-launch content and the full pivot to a "cross-mode" narrative that completely obliterated the cohesion in overall story direction. Warzone then "became" the new face of Call of Duty and the franchise completely removed itself from anything remotely creatively "good". It is a pure money machine, so I kinda get why they're doing it....but I personally completely lost interest.
I would love to see Infinity Ward move off CoD and get to make their own product with full control. They clearly have some massive talent in their ranks but it's perverted by Activision's corporate interests.
Call Of Duty is back with its yearly instalment, but is Modern Warfare 3 breaking new ground, or just a lazy cash grab? The answer may not surprise you in today's review from JDR.
The original Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 games have been drawing players back in
I really hope we get other activision games on GP soon. My dream would be Scarface but I know the license probably expired
None of those games had dedicated servers on console in the first place? Were always player hosted. Did something change?