Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"A brutal, visceral masterpiece"

The intro is the hardest part of a review, and this being my first detailed review, I doubt I can make an intro paragraph as epic as the other parts, so I think I'm just going to skip to the meat of it this time. !SPOILER ALERT!: The game is awesome. (end spoiler)

GRAPHICS: 10/10

The previous Call of Duty, COD3, had excellent graphics. Call of Duty 4 does not. Rather, it has unbelievable graphics. In certain parts, this game looks REAL. Everything, from the skyboxes, to the shouting Russian revolutionaries, to the battered cities and highlands you will be fighting through, are gorgeously realized with excellent texures, stunningly realistic animations, and eerie lighting effects and filters used throughout. In short, if the point of graphics is to help immerse you in the game, then COD4 succeeds resoundingly well. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen until I was completely finished with the game.

SOUND: 10/10

Every Call of Duty has had excellent sound, and COD4 continues carrying the torch in that regard. The main meat of the sound, which would be the gunfire and the voiceovers, are perfect. Every character speaks with a modicum of valor, even the separatists and revolutionaries chanting curses on you. It's very hard not to empathize with these characters; many of them feel as if they could be real people. As for the gunfire, well, all the sound effects are recorded from real guns, and they sound FANTASTIC. Absolutely no complaints here.

And then there's the music. I was seriously let down by Call of Duty 3's bland musical score, but Infinity Ward has succeeded again after COD2 in making a stellar, moving soundtrack. The themes are tense, dark, and foreboding, featuring thrashing guitars, chanting choruses, and some region-specific instruments for that little extra bit of flair. The music provides stellar backing noise to a stellar game.

GAMEPLAY - CAMPAIGN: 10/10

Compared to its predecessors, Call of Duty 4 is a bit of an aberration. Rather than a straight up portrayal of actual past battles (COD2) or a highly fictionalized account of a single tactical action, broken down into its individual actions (COD3), COD4 is a fictional story set in the near future. Now, given the fact that modern Earth has precious little world-spanning conflict to go around, it would be easy to be skeptical of Infinity Ward's ability to write a coherent, plausible, and still exciting storyline. However, rest assured, they have definately succeded.

In terms of the action, its very hard to come away with any clear ideas about what makes it so great. From start to finish, the entire campaign is a raging whirlwind of explosions, automatic fire, blood, and terrifed men crying out in their respective languages. Every single level blazes with an almost desperate intensity; imagine watching Black Hawk Down, except you're actually living it. Reading an internet review, even watching a friend play just doesn't do the game justice. This game is not for the faint of heart; if you think you have what it takes, even if you don't have Xbox Live, you HAVE to play through this game at least once.

Let's talk about the story for a bit. I mentioned earlier that the story was good, and reasonably possible in the "real world." Here's a little primer, just so you know what's going on. Essentially, a Russian separatist party with rogue paramilitary forces has the dubious goal of returning Russia to the USSR. Opposing it are the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian government. Due to the overwhelming odds against it, the party's leader, Imran Zakhaev, funds a coup in a middle-eastern country to occupy the United States while Zakhaev stages his own coup. The ultranationalists get ahold of Russian nukes, and the world teeters on the brink of annhilation. Enter World War 3.

On your way to deposing Zakhaev, you play as two characters, with three different extra characters with one respective level each (although one of these is only a cinematic level told from the character's perspective). Under your control are Paul Jackson, a US marine with a penchant for killing middle-eastern revolutionaries, and "Soap" McTavish, a fresh-out-of-training SAS commando with nothing to prove. You'll battle your way through middle-eastern cities, frigid Russian mountains, and desolate ghost towns, all the way facing Call of Duty's most dangerous, intelligent, and well-equipped enemies yet. Their weapons range from the ubiquitous AK-47, to the ubiquitous RPG launcher (it seems as though almost one in five enemies has one) and the later ubiquitous Attack Dogs, who provide you with one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable. The campaign is quite long, and there are enough curveballs that about halfway through you will start thinking the next level is the last level, and every time you are proven wrong. Once you finally get to the end, however, all of your blood, sweat, and tears are made worth it by one of the best conceived video game endings I have ever seen. I'd like to gush some more, but I really can't without spoiling some of the awesome miscellanea that pepper the game's story. Suffice to say, the cost of the game is worth the campaign alone. It's that good.

GAMEPLAY - MULTIPLAYER: 9/10

After you've beaten campaign, you get to the "real" part of the game - online multiplayer. Just like campaign mode, the multiplayer is SO GOOD that even if the game was multiplayer-only, without a single player component, it would STILL be worth your 60 bucks. COD4 has brought some revolutionary concepts to the table here, and I suspect people will be playing it online for a long, long time.

Unlike COD2, which was a smooth and entertaining, but simple, online game where you picked a weapon and proceeded to kill people, or COD3, which used an interesting but very poorly-balanced class system, COD4 is all about customization and improvement. Despite being a first-person shooter, COD4's multiplayer plays more like a long-term, multiple session RPG than a knee-jerk shoot 'em up. Essentially, you are given five slots to fill with your own classes, which are armed with whatever you want. The main weapon, the pistol, the grenade type, and all the special abilities are all chosen by you, and are all unlocked by doing something notable in multiplayer. What's more, your favorite weapons can be upgraded when used enough; these upgrades can range from a simple paint-job to earn you style points to laser dots for aiming, better scopes, or underslung grenade launchers. This system is so great in that there are so many options available that you can truly create a type of soldier that fits YOUR playing style, not a preconceived idea by the game developers.

But all that customization is pointless if the combat isn't fun. Thankfully, the online gameplay is the smoothest, most precise, and most brutal it has ever been. Every gun is reasonably powerful, but it takes a great deal of skill to go on a rampage. Once you do, however, you are rewarded with treats like radar scans and airstrikes. Formerly imbalanced or cheap abilities like grenade-whoring or hiding behind a thin piece of scenery to maje yourself invincible have been utterly nullified; grenades can be thrown back, cover can be shot through to kill its user, and people who use cheap weapons like the semi-auto sniper rifle or the shotgun can be taught a harsh lessen by a decent marksman with a generic rifle. The action is fast paced and well balanced, and the customization factor ensures that each battle is a little different.

Now comes the bad part. As unbelievably awesome as multiplayer is, there is still lag, a problem which caused unprecendented frustration with the last two Call of Dutys. There are times when you can empty a whole clip into someone without killing them, or be killed by a grenade 30 feet away. Thankfully, the lag is much better than it was in COD3, and usually it isn't enough to be frustrating. Overall, multiplayer is largely untarnished by this flaw; it is so well-thought out and so well executed that you will have a blast no matter what.

OVERALL: 10/10

This game is flawless on so many levels that it's hard to write an unbiased review. I hope I've done a decent enough job of that endeavor, but if I didn't, I'm certainly not ashamed. If you own an Xbox and you like action games of any kind, you owe it to yourself to own this game.

Rent or Buy?

If you have 62.99 or whatever it comes to after tax, and the stores aren't closed, I suggest buying Call of Duty 4 right now. Trust me on this.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/26/07

Game Release: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (US, 11/05/07)