Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

The Good
Call of Duty is back! After an awesome introduction with CoD 1, a nice addition with CoD 2, and a rather forgettable third installment that missed the PC platform altogether (makes ya think, doesn't it?), CoD is back with the fourth installment subtitled, "Modern Warfare".

Instead of the tried and true (some at this point calling it cliche) WW2 environment, we're treated to, you guessed it, modern warfare with a rather plausible story. For example, in the single player campaign, you play as a Brit Special Air Service commando and as a US marine involved in foiling a terrorist organization's plans to be terrorists. Hmm, do you think this could take place in real life? Truth be told, I appreciate themes that coincide or at least resemble real life events, especially events that are currently underway. This adds a nice level of immersion.

About that single player campaign; it is VERY well thought out. You get only a little bit of story for a lot of action, but those little bits are well executed. The environments are completely awesome, and blow any other CoD installment out of the water. Graphics on the PC are very nice, and run at light speed. I appreciate that the level of detail can be very high, without much sacrifice in speed, even with a moderate system. The action is just beautiful, environments engaging, and story just so good I want to cry with excitement. People, this is good stuff!

Now having completed the single player (haha, and without giving you spoilers as well), let's talk about the multiplayer action; it's fast, low latency, and best of all you get to build a character (or as they call it, "class").

You see, fighting online gives you experience that goes towards leveling up. There are various things you can do to earn this experience such as killing your enemy, but also by winning matches you can add to your character's progression. Furthermore, there are challenges such as killing X number of people while crouching, or shooting down a helicopter that will allow for class progression. This experience goes towards unlocking more features in the game such as certain weapons and better still; perks!

Perks allow your character special abilities. For example, you may choose "extreme conditioning" as a perk which allows you to run further. Or perhaps you might choose, "martyrdom" which will drop a live grenade when you are killed, so if your attacker is close he will likely be taken out with you. If you've ever played a game in the Fallout series, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Other unlockable features include special additions to certain weapons such as scopes and silencers. Completing various challenges and leveling up will open doors that allow you to design a fighter based on your playstyles and preferences. The result is that there is real incentive to play the game here. There are a plethora of full servers with players "grinding" to level themselves up. Even if you reach the maximum rank of level 55, there is still plenty to unlock in the way of weapon customizations. Never before has a first person shooter allowed for this MMORPG style character build up. One of the cool perks gives you added power for shootin through thin walls made of sheet metal and wooden fences.

The good thing is, even if you're just starting off, it will not be extraordinarily impossible to compete with the established players. Suffice it to say, the perks and customizations complement existing playstyles and add just a tiny advantage. They do not, as you might suspect, equate to a ridiculously unbalanced advantage that would occur when say, a level 55 warrior crushes a level 2 caster in an MMO. In other words, if you can aim straight and fire some bullets into your target, they're going to die regardless of their level.

Acquiring things like radar and airstrikes is based upon kill streaks i.e. number of enemies one can kill without dying. All in all, the multiplayer aspect is not only good mechanically speaking, but these are new concepts being implemented here, and with great success!

The Bad
Now comes the rants. There really isn't a big crippling flaw in the game, but there are a lot of little things that really piss me off. As good as it is, this game could have been better, and I personally believe that some of these "mistakes" were entirely intentional so that there is room for an expansion pack. Again, the practice of intentionally leaving out features to get to my wallet is happening, and this is seriously irritating.

For example, no vehicles and no CTF. WHY!? Why not allow server administrators or player votes decide if there were to be vehicles or not, and why not include CTF? I mean come on, other than deathmatch, CTF is the standard among FPS multiplayer options. The failure to include this could not simply have been oversight. This was on purpose!

Sound... ok the sound is decent, except for weapons sounds. The weapons all sound like little cap guns, it's disgusting. The heavier machine guns make decent noise but the rest are pathetic. The AK-47 sounds like a cork gun, and the M-16 sounds like those little snap pops that you get from the firework stand that "pop" when you throw them on a hard surface. Take an amazing story, throw in remarkable graphics, have the rumbling bass blow your windows out as bombs explode, and then put into the hand of our hero... a toy gun that makes cute little sounds. ARGH!!!!

No exclusive weapons. Any side can use any of the weapons, so it's hard to differentiate between unseen friend or foe based on weapon sounds (which seasoned players could do in the original CoD). Oh hey, that doesn't matter because now you can just use your radar to see where your team AND where your enemies are at (if they're firing)! This also means that all sides are identical and have no special traits! I mean, yeah we get to build our own class, but how about offer special strengths and weaknesses to the various teams? That isn't done here, so it doesn't matter if you play good guys or bad. Bummer.

Multiplayer environments are way too small and mostly look the same and not only that but extreme camping is rewarded and even REQUISITE for winning matches. The result is that you have these tiny maps with a million places to hide in them. Just as you've searched every nook and cranny for the enemy, you get gunned down from a position that looks impossible to hide in. Oh yeah, forgot to mention; the players blend in so well with the background that often times you can be looking square at an enemy and if they aren't moving, you can't see them. Because of this, it's just better to camp and look for movement.

In the cities, there is movement, sometimes in the form of a piece of paper, a newspaper, or some kind of trash that is blowing in the wind. I don't know exactly what it is, because it is a super low res. graphic imposed on a 3-d background. It's hard to explain, but imagine a Duke Nukem 3d sprite showing up in the middle of your high res, texture rich environment. WTF!?

There are a couple of technical issues as well. They haven't gotten the sound settings right (at least not for my rig, 7.1 might be ok, I don't know). For example, I have quadraphonic speakers. If I put the option to 4 speakers, sound only comes from the front two. If I set it to 5.1, I get sound on all speakers. One problem though; my speakers are not 5.1, and the voices echo and I'm missing sound on that setting. The answer? Set it to plain old "stereo", yep now I have sound on all four speakers, but it's not positional. Furthermore, the sounds are front heavy (loud in front, quiet in back). Boo.

I wasn't able to bind keys to the number pad. Sure, I can set certain functions to the number pad keys and I can get acknowledgment for doing so, but when hitting the bound keys in game, they are dead... regardless of the number lock position. Oh well.

Individual player skill comes down to who can hide/camp better. Often the result of a firefight favors who saw the other person first. In other words, luck is a major (perhaps the biggest) factor in multiplayer gaming.

Another think that irks me is that servers will randomly crash. First you think you're lagging or disconnecting, then a minute or so later you find out that the server went down. Happens everywhere. Do a /reconnect and you find that the server is empty. No, it's not you. Yes, it went down. Not to mention, sometimes servers that you regularly play on will simply not allow you to connect. Try 20 times in a row and watch it time out, then on try #21 you get in after 8 or 10 seconds of waiting, the whole while the server population being well below maximum. I believe this has something to do with punkbuster (and to date, PB has been such a pain in the ass for so many people that I think I speak for the majority when I say that us gamers would rather deal with the occasional cheater than deal with punkbuster).

Finally, the single player campaign is inexcusably short. It is, I'm sure, the shortest EVER for any FPS. Irritating to say the least.

The Bottom Line
Yes, CoD 4 is worth every penny, but it's not without flaw. Why can't I have cake AND ice cream? Removing good features to replace them with good features doesn't make sense, especially when the features in question can and should co-exist, but this is what happens when commercialism has its ugly hands in game design. Nevertheless, groundbreaking concepts being executed successfully are the shining points of this installment. It would behoove any FPS'er to show up for this one.

The Good
When I played Call of Duty for the first time, I felt like I was in the Second World War. Call of Duty 2 was more of the same. Infinity Ward made a good game, but they need several changes. Taking apart Call of Duty 3, the next Call of Duty was this one, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and it was the next step for Infinity Ward. They managed to develop a new game in a different context, the modern war, instead of the Second World War.

When the game was released many people was averse to that change. Purist players wanted more Second World War experience, but the Call of Duty series needed an evolution, and that's what Infinity Ward tried.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has better graphics than any other Call of Duty made before. The game has many different weapons and many different missions (including a hard final mission as a bonus once you've finished the game). All the previous features from other Call of Duty games like different difficulty levels are here too. To complete the game in the hardest level is something epic.

All the things that you could say about the previous games of the series are here, so, there are not bad things at all about the game itself, the problem is that what you're going to play was played before. You have different cutscenes and special parts during the game that looks good, and I really love the ending part that really works as a climax, but the rest of the game is not good enough to be considered a complete new and unique game.

When you die, you can still read once of those sentences to think about the war. I really love them from the first Call of Duty.

The Bad
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the same game as the others, with no important new features. It's just the same game in a different time and context, but I feel like I've been playing the same game since the first Call of Duty was released. They tried to make something new, but the didn't change the concept of the game, just the stage and nothing more.

I noticed some gameplay problems while I played the game. It's really difficult to avoid dogs, you have to be really fast and that's hard. Another big problem, your team members are sometimes your worst enemy, specially when you have to run for your life because some enemy threw a grenade or when you're under fire. You'll come up against them many times and you can't continue running because they're blocking your exit with their own bodies.

The game's as linear as always, you can only take some information from the enemy by finding some computers all over the game, but they're just bonus items. Sometimes it's like playing a shooter on the rail, going from point A to point B killing all the soldiers.

I really enjoyed the beginning and the end of the game, but in the middle the story is not attractive. The story is sometimes vague and it's like a brainwash for the player, you should enjoy this game as a fictional one, and not trying to understand what's happening in the world using this game as a reference.

The Bottom Line
A new Call of Duty in different context, with a different enemy and different weapons but still with the same structure as the previous games of the series. It could have been one of the best FPS in a long time, but the feeling is that it's the same game when you've played some hours. Anyway, it's one of the best games, a realistic war experience that should be played if you love that kind of games.

The Good
The Good: Almost everything. Call of Duty 4 delivers a thrilling war shooter experience, and its new setting and tone distance it enough from its predecessors to make it feel really fresh. The single player story line is better than it sounds. You’ll control two different men, one in the service of the British army, the other working for the US. The narrative hops back and forth between these two men, following them as they track down a few select (and dastardly) terrorists, mowing down armies of faceless Russians and Middle Easterners (the half of the game is set in a purposefully unnamed yet obviously Iraq-based Middle Eastern country) troopers.

Now normally this doesn’t do it for me, but the portrayal of the consequences of your actions (basically, fucking up when you shouldn’t, in various countries) is portrayed unflinchingly. Likewise, the storytelling and characterization of various comrades is detailed and adroit. This marks a big departure from most war shooters, as does the serious and tasteful depiction of extreme disasters (in one case, you experience the aftermath of an atomic explosion). The shooting mechanics are good, and while there’s no cover feature, the prone, sprinting, knife, grenade and scope options all combine to keep you interested throughout the campaign.

The multiplayer, simply put, blows the single-player away. Most of the multiplayer levels are condensed or modified versions of single-player ones, and almost all of them are great (and all of them are well-balanced). As you fight through ruined Russian and Middle Eastern locales, the options available to you are astounding. You can outfit yourself with multiple different weapons and explosives, but that’s only half of it. As you get kills, you level up, gaining experience.

Aside from kills, there are different achievements to be had. You get XP for using certain guns in certain ways, for shooting down helicopters, for doing almost anything, really. Along the way you’ll unlock “perks,” which are special abilities. You might unlock a perk that lets you sprint for longer, or one that steadies your aim. This makes it so that most character load-outs are unique. Some people might favor carrying two SMGs, and a full compliment of grenades, while others might want to silence all of their guns and make themselves invisible to radar. The options are endless, and since there are 50 levels of experience, which you can repeat once over to get a special medal, you can see just how much depth there is to the experience.

The Bad
Not much, except the aforementioned creepy neo-Imperialist feel. Sometimes, in multiplayer, grenade spamming can get crazy, but that’s about it. As is always the case with Call of Duty, every 100 feet your boys will halt, and wait for you to move up, just enough to trip an invisible wire and cause them to advance. If you don’t advance yourself, your comrades will hunker down and stay put, weathering the onslaught of an unending stream of bad guys. This can get annoying, to say the least.

The Bottom Line
COD4 is the best multiplayer game I have ever played. It is well-balanced, fast, entertaining, and constantly surprising. Every new perk unlocks a new strategy. When you get the Martyrdom perk (it drops a live grenade when you die), every battle will end with you rushing toward the opposition, hoping for that extra kill. Infinity Ward has announced that they’ll be releasing new maps soon. Call of Duty 4 is about to get a lot more exciting. For once in my life, I can recommend a war shooter to somebody. Go try it; you won’t want to stop, once you’ve gained that first level.