Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"An Immersive, Amazing experience of a first person shooter."

Before I start, I'd like to note that my experience with the Call of Duty franchise is somewhat limited. I've played a bit of the multiplayer, and a tiny bit of the single player campaign in the series' first game. I did not play Call of Duty 2. (aside from the demo.) I didn't play CoD 3 at all. Don't expect me to compare or contrast this game with the earlier titles. But this isn't a biography, let me start.

The game begins with you, John “Soap” MacTavish, meeting your squad in the 22nd SAS regiment. You go through the generic FPS calibration sequence of shooting targets and the game pointing out any unique portions of the controls that vary from the standard dual-analog Halo controls we all know and love.

Your mission is to stop Imran Zakhaev, a Russian ultranationalist attempting to restore the Soviet Union. He has captured a Russian nuclear weapons stockpile. Zakhaev has several rogue Russian army divisions under his control. Unfortunately, Zakhaev is funding an uprising in “an unnamed part of the Middle East” to draw attention from the U.S. And U.K. away from him. This rebellion is lead by Khaled Al-Assad. In most of the segments in the game where you are fighting the conflict in the Mideast, you play as Sergeant Paul Jackson, a soldier in the USMC 1st Force Recon. Soap is clearly the protagonist, but I don't wish to spoil the story and say why.

None of the environments stick out much to me. They vary about as much as they can without being a huge, unbelievable, stretch. The difference between missions that take place during the night, and misssions that take place during the day is very noticeable.

The graphics are incredible. Everything is very detailed, the lighting and shadows are very nice. Best of all, the game runs at a silky-smooth 60 frames-per-second. It is hard to go back to other games after playing CoD 4 because of how fast it is. However, 60 FPS comes at a cost. If you're a pixel-counter with an amazing high-definition setup, the game apparently runs at 600p. The game looks great on an SDTV and even better on an HDTV.

The sound is amazing too. I honestly cannot say exactly how good it is, as I do not have 7.1 surround sound speaker setup, but my friend does. I'll tell you that the game sounded great with my TV's built in speakers, but it is obviously not optimal.. When I played on my friend's expensive setup, it is truly amazing. Hearing the dopplar effect as planes rush overhead, and being able to estimate almost exactly where a grenade landed, and how far away it was from me, judging with the distinctive clinking noise the frag grenades make when they bounce off of things. The voice acting is superb for a video game. The characters feel like they have emotion when they're yelling at you for help, or screaming a warning you about a grenade that you missed.

A problem I had with the game, especially on harder difficulties settings, is the fact that enemies in certain “chokepoints” will keep respawning, or respawn for a very long time, if you don't move forward. It feels very, very, scripted and your experience will be ruined if you don't play the game as the developers intended. Because of this, combined with how fast you die, I don't recommend playing through the game on Hardened or Veteran during your first playthrough. Plus, it adds replay value if you don't blast through the hardest difficulty and get most of the achievements on your first try. It's a great game.

Of course, a great game like this would have to have a great multiplayer component to really be considered great, wouldn't it? The multiplayer is great, and it's long lasting, and will last longer than the campaign if you want it to.

The online portion of the game manages to give an MMORPG-esque grind and level-up system that's fairly addictive without giving players who've had the game longer too much of an advantage. Your rank increases as you get kills ingame. After you reach a certain point early on, you unlock “Create a Class”. In “Create a Class”, you outfit and customize your character's weapons and perks.

Perks are like special skills you earn for ranking up. Effects of these perks include: increased damage, increased health, being able to sprint a further distance than normal, and having your bullets pierce thicker walls, etc.

There are three classes of perks. Each perk is specified to be in one of the classes. To keep the game balanced, you can only equip one perk from each of the three classes.

The online portion has little goals call “challenges” that are similair to achievements. They give you bonus experience in large sums, and sometimes even unlock new equipment suck as scopes and finishes for your guns. The challenges generally consist of “kill 'x' number of people with 'y' or while doing 'z'.” More challenges are unlocked as you rank up.

When you reach the level of 55, you choose to either stay there, or you can start over with a special emblem for your rank.This is called Prestige Mode. There are no apparent advantages. Unless you like leveling up that much, or the ranking system is one of your major incentives to play, I don't recommend it.

All the maps are nice. In the lobby before a game, you can choose to vote to skip a map if you don't like it for whatever reason you have.

The matchmaking system is very fast. My only complaint is that it will sometimes bring you into a game that's in progress, and drop you on the side that is losing horribly. That game will go on your record as a loss, even though you really had no say in the outcome of the match.

The lobby system is good. You play with the same people as matches pass by. People drop out and join in as it goes. Your friends can join in with you during ranked matches.

The game is fairly populated as of December 2007. It seems like the community will stick. The community is as good as it'll get in an Xbox 360 game. In a lot of matches I've played, no one has been talking aside from the occasional curse of frustration. This also means there aren't many of those kids whose accents are different from yours with high-pitched voices singing (or worse, rapping) straight into your ear.

Splitscreen multiplayer is disappointing. You can't go online with guests or another account in splitscreen. A limited number of maps are available. The “Create a Class” system and it's detailed customization options aren't present in splitscreen. Instead, you get a fairly large number of premade classes to choose from.

There is no cooperative play mode. I don't think anyone really expected it, especially if you've played the campaign mode. They would have to make the game twice to get the pacing perfect for two people like it is with one person.

Call of Duty 4 is an amazing game that immerses you much more than you would think for this seemingly generic FPS with it's generic name. The story is a tad generic, but is in no way boring, and it has a few interesting twists. The graphics are great, the sound is great, the game runs at 60 frames-per-second, and it plays and feels great.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/07

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