Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Preview

E3 2007 Preview

The Call of Duty series has been well founded in the World War II theater of operations through three major franchise releases. That is about to change.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is something that Infinity Ward has “been working on for a long time.” Activision showed it off at a Pre-E3 media event in Santa Monica recently and GameZone’s Steven Hopper also had a chance to see the game.

The game involves global conflict with the villain being a Russian ultra-nationalist. The gameplay itself promises to be challenging as players take on a variety of roles, from soldier to manning a machinegun on a Cobra helicopter to clandestine operations.

CoD has always been a very accessible game and that won’t change with Modern Warfare. The game will have unlockables and one of those is the create-a-class, giving players the freedom to create a character from the ground up.

“We’re very excited about what we are doing with multiplayer,” an Infinity Ward rep stated. “Multiplayer will have depth. We feel it (CoD 4) is one of the best multiplayer first-person shooters to come out this year.”

The game has two main story arcs and while it would be easy to say that this is a brand new approach to the franchise, that would be wrong. The adage about ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ applies here with CoD4 having some classic CoD game mechanics as well as some new.

Players can use night vision and thermal targeting in the game, and while it has different looks, the overall graphical quality of the game is very high.

CoD4 was merely a demonstration at the event, but from the way this is shaping up, it looks to be a worthy successor to the vaunted franchise.

For All E3 2007 GZ Previews