I agree.

but people mainly love the game because of it's addicting online and prestige mode...Plus it's a FPS.

I loved it for it's single player. I found the training mission awesome how it mirrored the actual first mission, the marine missions were awesome, and the sniper mission was epic.

The 3 things that made me "Wow, THAT'S EPIC!" are when ...

SPOILER :

-When the you saw the big explosion while being sargeant jackson. That' was truly epic..you saw that dude who didn't succeed grabbing on and flys away from the plane.You get out of the plane and see everything devastated and while your controller is rumbling and hear jackson breathing his lungs out...

-Secondly is when you are in the sniping mission, when the helicopter crashed and saw the captain who had nearly died...

-Then at the last part of the game, when you saw your team dying when being Soap. Saw Griggs getting headshotted and your captain throwing you a pistol. THen it's all slow motion. Kill the 2 soldiers or the main antagonist? Truly epic.

END OF SPOILER

Those were truly epic moments. Hopefully there will be similar memorable moments like these in MW2.

I think you forgot one of the biggest reasons: It's easy for the casual player to pick up.

Compare to shooters like Warhawk/KZ2 which have a pretty steep learning curve - as soon as someone that doesn't game often picks up the controller, they'll be dying left and right nonstop. It'll eventually push them away from the game and make them stop playing. CoD4/5 are both very casual-friendly because of their game mechanics. You're not even punished for dying on some gametypes....you spawn instantly and if you're lucky, you'll have an enemy right in front of you already.

At the same time, the game is setup so that the more hardcore players can guarantee a win if they try hard enough.

Besides all that, I love CoD5. It has all the basic features a game needs and they're great for social gamers because they have good ways to party up and communicate. CoD4/5 both have features that most devs seem to leave out for no reason.

For #2 u can add that it has split screen multiplayer.

excellent online, still the best out there, thats why!

Yeah its a great game, the best fps this gen so far imo.

The first two didn't really apply. Sure, CoD existed before CoD4, but it wasn't very big or popular. If you said a CoD would come close to the sales of a GTA, you would have been laughed off the internet.

There wasn't much hype either. It sold 400k first week on PS3, or less than R2. On 360, it sold a million, but that was nothing compared to its LT sales...

It was word of mouth that stemmed from the pure quality of the game, that is the sole cause of its fantastic sales. It's easy to get into, enjoyable, keeps you playing, is never frustrating, controls brilliantly, doesn't lag, looks great and is accessible, with a short learning curve.

What does it have that other games don't? Basically, it does pretty much everything right. Nothing too innovative or ground-breaking, but it's polished.

Cod 4 is like the popular persons videogame, its kinda following the footsteps of halo.

In the americas, if you want to fit in with all the bros and cool people, you need to play cod 4. That being said, COD4 could be a much much worse game and still sell just as well. (Thankfully, it is a very good game.)

Still, the quote "Boiii lets go knock a few back and play xbox live boiii" I hear that a lot at university. and its usually associated with halo or cod 4, with cod 4 coming out on top. Also, if you're a young teenage boy, if you dont play call of duty you dont fit in at school.

Believe me, it isn't just America. It's pretty much everywhere.