I always find it to be BS how alot of these gaming sites and some gamers put this thought in people minds that COD4 got us out of the WW2 settings and into present time when in fact in was Battlefield 2. It did this in 2005 two years before COD4 was even out it also had weapon unlocks and a ranking system with medals. I can see if your a console player and never played BF2 on PC you would think this. I just think looking back at history Battlefield 2 never got the credit it deserved for taking us out of the WW2 setting. Who knows COD4 might of never of went modern if it wasn't for BF2.

That is an impressive thread title.

I feel like you're confusing people saying COD4 inspired the modern generation of shooters which all have classes, perks, and weapon modifications, rather than being responsible for FPS games having a modern military setting.

One word: mainstream.

I agree with you on the count that it was BF2 that was first in this regard but CoD4 simply had more reach, was more popular, and thus ends up being heralded as the first of its kind by many. It's wrong, I agree, but that's what happens when something goes "mainstream"

Honestly, I think that if you were to dig even deeper you would probably find that BF2 wasn't even the first of its kind. But it's not about being the first, it's about being the first to reach critical mass.

Also, one's a PC game, while one was a 60 fps console smash hit. BF2 sold somewhere over 2 million copies, while Modern Warfare sold close to 16 million.

Of course people are going to jump on the bandwagon when someone makes a game that sells 13 million units over a two year period.

If we're getting really picky here, Counter-Strike was the first big "modern" shooter...

Probably the same reason why Halo gets all the recognition for vehicles in shooters when Battlefield 1942 did it so much better.

It mashed all the progression things and the controls and some concepts (like regenerating health) together, and made a cool campaign to boot. That's what made it popular, that's why people think of this game, not BF2 or any other "modern military" game before COD4.

Shouldn't the credit you're giving go to one of my personal favorites of all time, battlefield Vietnam?

Yeah, @bollard got it right. The reason COD4 is lauded is becuase of the perks, challenges, that dumb guitar riff that plays when you level, and every other thing that adds reward to multiplayer outside of winning. There was always one more carrot on a stick just within reach, compelling you to keep playing. Other games might have had all of the pieces before (I don't remember battlefield 2 clearly enough tbh) but with COD4 it all came together.

Its the same reason people talk about Gears instead of kill.switch when talking about cover based shooters.

Battlefield 2 had loadouts and unlockables but the perks, killstreaks, and more it did not have. Also, the weapon customisation was nowhere the same.

blame console's and "expansive pc parts" quake 3 arena was my real MP revelation.

Also BF2 is a better game then COD 4

Rainbow Six.

Gotta say I totally disagree.1942 was not a solid game at all; it was a janky, buggy, laggy mess. It was still a lot of fun because of its seemingly unprecedented scope and the sheer chaos of it all (Starsiege: Tribes did it first and way better but had no recognition and even the vehicles in that game had major issues), but in no way was it a seamless, precision experience like Halo was. The only vehicles which didn't feel like wooden toy cars were the airplanes, and that's only because they were airborne.

DICE today is still known for shipping buggy, unpolished products and they've done nothing but greatly improve since those early halcyon days.

Battlefield 2 was a modern military shooter in the same way that Counterstrike years earlier was a modern military shooter.

When COD4 arrived it felt like a modern, modern military shooter.

@whiteforestparkrangr: Battlefield 1942 had a unique feeling to it. I agree some of it was janky but a lot of those vehicles had solid physics behind them. Piloting a plane took actual skill. Being able to do strafing runs and then land on the aircraft carrier to get more ammo was great. While it had some wonkyness from time to time I think it definitely was a very solid multiplayer experience. Tribes was comparable in scope but those maps were vast and empty specifically so that skiing was worth a damn. In comparison the 1942 maps felt better because they weren't huge skating rinks - although admittedly there weren't all that many great maps and people continued playing on Wake Island for a long time. Wake, Karkand 24hr rotation pretty much.

Generally, its because consoles and marketing campaigns.

The same thing happened with GoldenEye 64, which is lauded as the greatest FPS ever. Personally, it felt like walking in tar every time I played it.

Also why WoW is the measuring stick to which all newer MMOs are compared - people reading comments about it are likely to have played WoW, or understand what it is far more often than say, Final Fantasy XI.

Yeah, I'm not at all saying it was a bad game or not a novel experience. Just very, very rough around the edges. The merits of the experience were numerous enough to overlook its flaws and the aerial stuff was totally serviceable for a non-sim type game. It had fun factor in spades which made for a lot of hilarious antics.

For vehicles specifically though, I just think Halo really set a new FPS standard in terms of having this really organic feel with the physics interactions; vehicles having suspension and actually gripping terrain (or losing grip and flipping), seamless boarding/exiting transitions and analog player aiming/steering, being balanced so that the physics themselves limited vehicles from becoming too overpowered compared to on-foot, etc. Stuff like that.

Whereas before that (and some time after for many games) most vehicles in FPS games tended to have a very stiff, digital feel to them and there seemed to be this jarring disconnect of gameplay experience between on-foot and vehicle (each part feeling almost like two separate games) stuff that, in Halo, felt more like one cohesive whole. For me it's one of those things that's kinda hard to explain but your brain intuitively knows the difference.

And I'll leave at that I guess because this is kinda veering wildly off topic, heh!

I agree with the OP in a lot of ways and always thought that BF 2 was an underrated game as far as what it was doing (first to have that kind of progression at all).

However, 4 made great improvements of its own and everything about it was more influential. Things like how it handled melee, killstreaks, the way the progression was presented, the control layout. There is no doubt about that.

I really like the BF series and wish it was more influential overall and we saw more shooters like it but that's just how things go.

1942 is one of the best multiplayer games ever. It is fantastic. Can't disagree more with calling it anything near a mess. The scale and possible chaos and freedom was a breath of fresh air that really hooked me when that game came out. Acting like it was some broken game that felt like crap... get real.

I liked Tribes too but it was very different.

I was in college when COD4 came out and that's all anyone was playing. It sparked something that BF2 didn't from my experience.

Well COD4 probably gets that recognition because it introduced 'RPG Elephants' to the 1st person shooter genre (I can't think of another one that did?) and the sheer level of high polish that game had in both multiplayer and single player, it definitely raised the bar.

I think COD4's popularity is to credit here. It's not as though BF2 were the first "modern" shooter either, like Counterstrike came out 5 years before. It get's the recognition because of how popular it was and the other changes it brought to the genre. Also it has "modern" right there in the title.

Popularized /= being first

What TobbRobb said. Bringing something to popularity doesn't mean you did it first. It means you reached the most people with it and had the most successful version. MW started a trend. Battlefield 2 did not.

Popularity is a huge part of why it became so influential. It was not the first in many things, but it was the bar that set the standard in performance and features.

The same reason why people act like WoW is the first MMO, or Gears the first third person cover shooter, or Half Life the first narrative driven FPS, etc...

It perfected cheap hooks like guitarriffs and many numbers that go up and are persistant between games. It also threw all physics and realism out of the door and created an arcadeshooter in a realistic setting.

It hasnt anything to do with what era the game takes place in.

It's weird. I don't actually consider Call Of Duty to be an FPS game. I feel like it does it's own thing that I really want no part of. It's getting harder to ignore as games like Halo start making concessions to be more like COD. But if we're broadly talking about FPS games, there were fps games that took place in a modern setting since the days of Redneck Rampage. It seems weird to only talk about "the-first-game-to-introduce-a-modern-setting-to-an-arbitrary-subsection-of-games".

I'm probably not making sense.

Because it wrapped it in a better package that was much easier to show off to the mass audience. I like both games, but the presentation of CoD4 was really well done.

I think maybe it's partly due to the campaign as well? Battlefield 2 doesn't really have a campaign, does it? Without the characters yelling oscar mike, I don't think the setting has as much impact. It's just a different set of visual cues for a certain type of gameplay.

It probably has a lot to do with timing, as I feel like MW came out when games were really beginning to surge, as a popular form of entertainment.

I actually am unsure I've ever seen a single person praising Call of Duty 4 for taking FPS games out of the WW2 era and into the modern day.

It gets praised for totally different reasons, and rightfully so.

The first to do something is very rarely the one that creates the movement that makes whatever it did popular. Look at famous inventions throughout history like the PC which IBM didn't do first, but is commonly recognized as the first to do it successfully. Often the second or third iteration of something are what take-off, as they clearly had the benefit of seeing what the previous iterations did and can build off that, also the first iteration could be made by a minor or unknown company/person. COD4 DID take FPS games out of WW2, basically setting the entire tone for all future FPS games with its systems and choice of theme (modern). BF2 may of done it first, but first does not mean successful or well known aka recognition.

You answered your own question. There are a lot more console gamers than PC (especially back in 05-06) so the majority of CoD 4 players never played BF2.

Also, CoD 4 did more than take things to a modern setting. It was influential in popularizing the concept of perks and experience based progression, which is present in just about every online shooter now.

It's a shame though now I feel the battlefield series has lost it's magic when they started competing with COD and dumbed down there gameplay to appeal to the COD market. Then on top of that they annualized the series. But back to BF2 it was ahead of it's time with the ranking up achievements and unlocks I would love a remake of BF2 with the frostbite engine just don't change one thing about the original gameplay.

Since so many say BF2 was unknown to console players, I'll just say that Battlefield 2 on PS2 was pretty great, albeit a very different game from the PC version.

It's not the idea, it's the execution. This argument is the same as when people complain that the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. Correct, it wasn't the first, but it was the first that was executed at a quality that resulted in it being launched into mainstream success.

If you want to get into the argument of who did what first, Novalogic's Delta Force series was doing the modern military setting before Battlefield and Call of Duty even existed. I was playing Delta Force 2 in 2000 and that game was at least a year or two old at that point. I think the first Delta Force released in late '98.

@jec03: back then WW2 was a big thing and there was a high competition between COD and MoH. Where each franchise was trying to top the other with its new releases. As the time went by sales began to drop, which led Activision (or IF) to get out of the WW2 competition and carve a new path which brought us COD4.

EA have tried to respond to COD4 twice with a modern warfare MoH games but they weren't successful.

So COD4 didn't bring the modern warfare settings to competitive fps multiplayer games but instead only preceded MoH. By doing so it have brought many great mechanics to the genre that made most if not all the publishers mimic them in their multiplayer shooters.

Why does Mario 64 get all the credit for being the first 3D Platformer and not Bug!?

What's with all this Battlefield talk? A pale imitation of Codename: Eagle I tells ya!

Well probably because BUG sucked but BF2 didn't it was actually a billions times better then COD4 I know my COD hatred is deep not only did it ruin the battlefield series but it ruin alot great FPS franchises that I use to love. Also another fact that people might not even know PC games use to cost 50 bucks but Activision had the nerve to price call of duty modern warfare 2 at 60 bucks and that's when the change of 60 bucks started for PC gaming it makes no sense. The reason why consoles games cost 60 bucks is because the publisher fee aka Sony and Microsoft there is no such thing on PC but they decided to charge you for it anyway greedy pricks.

Fun fact, 50 dollars in 2005 money is 60 dollars today. Also you sound like a 12 year old complaining about how COD ruined stuff you used to love. Turns out those old games are still the same. Activision had "the nerve" to price a game at a price point where they thought it would sell? And it did? Turns out that's how the world works.

@jec03 said:

Whoa whoa whoa listen here buster, I know you're super nude and mad online right now, but I feel it's important for me to step in and correct your hilariously misguided opinions about Bug!. It's an established fact that Bug! actually owns. I will not sit here and listen to you badmouth Bug!.

I'll let Wikipedia do the talking:

Maybe check your facts next time before you start running your mouth.

Because it was the first game to really hit the big time with that particular MP model. This is nothing new, it happens all the time.
Just look at Apple, their success is mainly attributed to taking pre-existing ideas and selling it in a tightly-designed package that people just love.

@dukeofthebump said:

@jec03 said:

@dukeofthebump said:

Why does Mario 64 get all the credit for being the first 3D Platformer and not Bug!?

Well probably because BUG sucked

Whoa whoa whoa listen here buster, I know you're super nude and mad online right now, but I feel it's important for me to step in and correct your hilariously misguided opinions about Bug!. It's an established fact that Bug! actually owns. I will not sit here and listen to you badmouth Bug!.

I'll let Wikipedia do the talking:

Maybe check your facts next time before you start running your mouth.

LMAO I actually did look Bug up and I saw a bad rating I stand corrected then but everything else I said I meant my apologizes for Bug hell I rather play that then COD.

I think it's arguable that Battlefield 2 doesn't get the recognition it deserves these days, but even if Battlefield 2 was a quality game that had some of the same mechanics and setting as CoD 4, you still can't say it pioneered those things to anywhere near the degree that Modern Warfare did. CoD 4 may have been inspired to push in the direction it did partly because of Battlefield 2, but you can't really credit someone on the basis of a "who knows" and that doesn't make the progress it forged any less a reality.