1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Speaking of compelling, there might be no better example of a game that convinced players to stay up for "just one more." Call of Duty 4 is a genuine landmark. It's place in gaming history is undeniable. For the first entry in the Call of Duty franchise to transplant the series into the modern day, developer Infinity Ward brought innovations that have drastically changed how multiplayer and single-player are made. The first of the Modern Warfare sub-series integrated RPG-like progression into a multiplayer component, which became a major draw for the first time in the series. This progression kept players coming back for more, more, and more. CoD 4 overtook Halo 3 on Xbox Live within two months of its release.
And aside from that groundbreaking multiplayer, the story mode packed a similarly enormous punch. Creative and thrilling set-pieces peppered throughout the game came before and after genuinely tense, slow-burn build up. There are still several missions from that game that remain among the top missions in any first-person shooter this generation: "All Ghillied Up" switches things up for a nerve-wrecking stealth mission, "Death From Above" is a detached experience of the mass destruction you can cause with modern tech, and "Aftermath" places you in the body of an American soldier dying from a nuclear bomb's radiation. Underlying the gleeful shooting gallery was a message that war is nothing to be jingoistic about in the days of such easy mass murder.
Sadly, that message has not been a primary influence; RPG-like progression and bombastic action moments have. And for a while, that was great. But they've both become oversaturated at this point. What was fresh for Call of Duty 4 has become cliche for Call of Duty: Ghosts.
And that's the problem with taking influences; you're not the only one taking the influence. That's why we're always looking for new ones and why the new generation of gaming will surely birth new innovations that will thrill us and enrich the medium. At least until they become a tired formula. But at that point, we'll just see new innovations and new ideas permeate the market. And the medium will grow yet again.
