Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Platform: PC (steam) MSRP: $49.95 Rating: Mature Time to Complete: 5-6 hours 
Its no surprise Infinity Ward wanted to take the Call of Duty franchise in a different direction. Four years of World War II games and expansions were getting old even though the graphics were improving with every release. Blowing up AA guns and tanks was not as much fun the third time around. So Infinity Ward took their ball and went home…to make one of the best looking tactical shooters ever.
Gameplay:
The great thing about Call of Duty 4 is it still feels like a Call of Duty game. You still have your compass in the bottom right hand corner of your screen letting you know where your next objective is and you still have your fellow soldiers talking to you as the game progresses. The game starts by running you through a training exercise so you can become familiar with the controls and then as usual, the game throws you right into combat. Call of Duty 4 will impress players with the wide variety of dialog the members of your attack team engage in, before during and after assaults.
You take the role of a few different people on a few different tactical teams. Firstly you play through some missions as a British SAS agent and then assume the role of a US Marine. Yes, you are needed to take out some more anti-aircraft guns and tanks, but at least they are modern weaponry. These two missions are just tiny examples of the many different modern warfare situations your character will be thrown into, hence the subtitle of the game: Modern Warfare. The situations are proposed and executed beautifully, giving players different missions, scenarios and environments to work in. This is a refreshing change from the repetitive ducking through old damaged European houses we experienced in the first three Call of Duty games.
The situations range from boarding an ocean liner in the middle of night in pouring rain to modern day Iraq street gun fights to sniper assassination missions to the bombarding of towns from 10,000 feet in the air through infrared night vision telescopes. Almost every type of modern warfare is included in the game which keeps players fresh and alert.
As smooth and flowing as the story unravels, there are a few bugs in the game that cause the gameplay to completely stop. It is very frustrating when this happens because you will be running around the game like a chicken with its head cut, off trying to get your fellow soldiers to react to the next objective. But sometimes they just stand there, motionless, because your character has not activated the next scripted sequence.
In addition to the game-stopping bugs, the single player campaign is surprisingly short, between six and seven hours on regular difficulty. The upside to this short single player campaign is the deep multiplayer modes.
It also seems that developer Infinity Ward is taking a poke at S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl. There is one campaign (one of the most fun missions) where your character dresses up in a brush-like ghillie suit in a deserted city to assassinate a terrorist. Is it a coincidence that Call of Duty 4 also has a level in this city? Or is IW making a statement by saying; “we can make it look better than you” to the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Either way it is odd that no one has done a game based in this city before, and in 2007 we see two games with scenes in Chernobyl.
Graphics and Sound:
It may seem after a few minutes of playing Call of Duty 4 that Infinity Ward cut corners with the graphics. Most of the environments that take place in night settings and dark areas look great, and a lot of shadows are used. This is definitely not to say the game does not look amazing, but it looks like Infinity Ward wrote the graphics engine around how the eye reacts to shadows in real life on objects. For example, instead of making a detailed image with shadows cast on the object, objects appear completely black with no detail. (see
screenshot) This makes it very hard to see enemies at times, especially in multiplayer mode when figures running across streets blend in with shrubbery or shadowy buildings. The graphics are far from flawless but still look great. At some points in the game, characters will be highlighted with a strange shimmer even inside a dark room which may be a graphical bug.
Multiplayer:
Competing with Battlefield 2, COD4 multiplayer mode supports up to 18 players on 16 different maps with 52 different kinds of weaponry. Call of Duty 4 gives players six different modes to choose from which include the typical deathmatch, and team deathmatch. The other four modes require objectives and are similar to the maps in Counterstrike where one team must plant explosives while the other team defends. There is also the capture control points mode which is predominant in Battlefield 2. There is a hardcore mode which allows server owners to change the damage each weapon inflicts to a more realistic approach like the counterstrike mod; INSURGENCY: Modern Infantry Combat, where no HUD or crosshairs appear on the screen. And lastly there is old-school mode which allows players to collect weapons on the ground like some older multiplayer games. The six game modes leave something for everyone when it comes to tactical shooters.
Every kind of multiplayer game has their unique features and Call of Duty 4 has its fair share as well. For example; killing three enemies in a row without dying gives the player the option of using an advanced radar option for 30 seconds that allows him to view his enemy positions. Five frags in a row gives players the option for an air-strike which means you can use both these features at the same time inflicting serious damage. This can be good and bad. Good for the players who are skilled enough to kill five enemies in a row and bad because the air-strike is undefendable. Why add this feature in and award only the people who are fraggin’ left and right?
The ranking system works just like any other team-based multiplayer by today’s standards. Players will earn experience points that will be applied to their rank. This is accomplished by getting frags, capturing control points, etc., which will give players different levels of “perks”. A perk is a preset package from which you choose from different kinds of achievements. Eventually as your reach the highest rank, you will have the opportunity to customize your own perk as well as your sidearm and primary weapons.
As for the in-game action; I refer to the
Yankeedeuce quote: "Too much spam, too much randomness." In an ideal game in an ideal world, after one dispatches four people in a hallway, that should be the last you hear from them. However, one perk players can assign themselves is “Last Stand”, which allows players who get gunned down one last chance at killing the person who shot him by pulling out his sidearm while he is lying on the ground. Martyrdom, which is a perk where after you die, your body releases an armed grenade that will detonate after a few seconds. In frantic servers it is impossible to keep track of all these perks, air strikes, helicopter attacks and still watch out for people trying to kill you. Add these frustrations with the dark shadowy enemies that loom in the shadows and a barely functional spray and pray option, multiplayer is one giant, chaotic mess.
In the steam version of the game, there is a loading problem with the multiplayer section that causes the game to crash when changing the resolution. This can be fixed by going into config_mp.cfg and manually changing the resolution.
Pros: Graphics look great, life-like sound effects and weaponry, single player campaign is very polished, moderate multiplayer replay value
Cons: Short single player campaign, Steam version buggy at times, multiplayer is spammy and annoying
Bottom Line: The single player campaign is fun but the lasting appeal to Call of Duty 4 will sit mostly on completing the multiplayer ranking system which can be accomplished with just a few hours of playing. The multiplayer can get very annoying and spammy at times with too much going on, especially in large servers. We will all be watching for Call of Duty 5 to make the next leap as the Battlefield franchise did with 2142; Futuristic Warfare.
Discussion here : E-mail: Dukefrukem[at]straferight.com Screenshots taken with BFG 7900 GTX: If you liked this game try: Battlefield 2,
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