What the hell kind of name is ‘Soap’, eh?

I honestly couldn’t tell you how many hours I’ve sunk into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare over the years. It’s one of the few PC games that I actually went out and bought in a store, I still have the box squirreled away in a drawer somewhere in my house with my original CD key and beat-to-hell cardboard cover. High school was a bit of a blur of working basically full-time in a poorly paying job, crushing beers and playing video games. Modern Warfare was one of my big hitters. The campaign is short at something like 4, maybe 5 hours, although it’s still one of the best Call of Duty stories out there. But damn, the online multiplayer truly was something else. To say I put hundreds of hours into it over the years might even be understating it. On release, I played that bad boy like it was the last game I was ever going to play. Those solid memories of ripping through Wet Work with a silenced P90, throwing out air strikes, helicopters and generally terrorising my opponents as best I could. I think the level progression really kept me coming back. Level up, unlock new gear, then level up that new gear for newer and more useful attachments. It’s a simple formula, but it always kept me coming back.

Over the years I’ve returned to it again and again. I’ve finished the campaign a few times, but I’m really in it for the multiplayer. Luckily, the online community pressed on and stayed active with the help of the fans. It’s a much smaller group than it used to be, but it’s still enough to get into a Team Deathmatch on demand. I vividly remember playing Modern Warfare on the PC I built myself in high school. My 8800GTS in all it’s glory humming away in my dodgy, beige computer swap-meet case. I also played on various gaming laptops and even my Mac laptops through the years until support was dropped. After support was dropped, I had to spin up a Windows Virtual Machine to press on. Now in 2025(or uh, 2017, when the remaster actually released) you can play a graphically updated version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on a portable, handheld PC. The campaign is still as fun as ever and I will absolutely be moving onto the second remastered campaign just as soon as I get around to buying it.

When it released 2007, Modern Warfare marked a sharp turn for the franchise. Gone is the usual World War 2 setting, now the warfare it includes is much more modern. I’ll ah, see myself out. But the story is absolutely solid. Modern Warfare is set during a fictional 2011 civil war in Russia where Ultranationalists are trying to revive the Soviet Union. We also have Warlord Khaled Al-Asad staging a coup by murdering a middle-eastern President on live TV, prompting an invasion by the United States. For the most part, you control British SAS rookie “Soap” MacTavish, who has joined the legendary Captain Price in the SAS 22nd Regiment. The main goal for the 22nd Regiment and their allies is to capture and/or eliminate Al-Asad and the Russian Ultranationalist leader, Imran Zakhaev. You also control Sgt. Paul Jackson of the United States Marine Corps for a portion of the story, although this is quite brief. It’s a fresh, modern story full of twists, turns and I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly over the last 10-15 years. I absolutely enjoyed the shit out of the remaster.

Official multiplayer for the remaster is basically dead, but the community have kept it alive with HorizonMW. This is a mod that restores and revamps multiplayer functionality and you can download it directly off their website. The mod is presented in the style of Modern Warfare 2 from 2009 but with a proper dedicated server list, fixing the old janky host issues. The mod runs fantastic on the Steam Deck with the occasional crash depending on which version of Proton you’re using. It’s been smooth for me on Proton GE 9-4, less so on 9-20. There is a fairly lengthy setup process and you may experience some issues with some files not initially downloading, so you’ll have to stick with it if you want your Call of Duty fix. At the end of the install, you can set the installer to re-download anything that was missed. But once you’re in, the nostalgia is real. Classic maps with modern polish and a healthy server list. It takes up a fair chunk of storage space, but it’s worth every single gigabyte. So, it’s worth the time to get running. Seventeen years on, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare remains one of my all-time favourite first-person shooters. The campaign is still unreal, the multiplayer is legendary and thanks to the fans, it’s still very much alive in 2025.