Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"Best game ever? No. Best mulitplayer experience? Definitely."

I only played this game online for about half a year, but I plan on playing it for at least another year or two...or three. Why? To put it short, it has the best mulitplayer mode I ever played in a video game. That doesn't necessarily mean that the community is good (It's not), but it is by far way better than any other multiplayer game available for the X-Box.

MULTIPLAYER: 6/10

FIrst of all, yes, there's a level up system in the game. That does not mean that it's an RPG (Trust me, it's a shooter), but it does feel RPG-ish. Whenever you get a certain amount of experience points, you level up. This can be done 55 times to reach the level cap. After that you can choose to enter Prestige Mode, more on that later. Whenever you reach a certain level, a new Perk or Gun will be available for you to use. In comes the first wave of problems.

Let's start with perks. Think of them as abilities you can assign to your class to use when fighting other players. There are three sets of perks, each of which you can choose an ability you want. These include useful abilities such as Last Stand (which lets you use you pistol as your about to die) and others. Then there's useless perks that no one uses, and finally there's the cheap perks, most of which EVERYONE uses. These perks almost make you want to throw your controller at the screen when you encounter someone else that uses them. I'm not going into depth about the infamous Martyrdom, as there are other bad ones as well. The worst, aside from martyrdom, is juggernaut and 2 x RPG. Almost everyone that is under the age of 15 uses these, which accounts for half of the online community. Let me just say that Snipers hate juggernaut the most and 2 x RPG is just a cheap way to get a quick kill.

Next, there's the whole gun system. You gain more powerful guns when you level up, which makes sense. You can pick up other players guns that they were holding when they die, which you will be doing a lot when your low-levelled. So the system balances out.

When you reach level 55, you can choose to enter prestige mode, which resets your level and grants you a new symbol. That's it. It's just to add to the re-playability of online play and nothing else.

Now for the worst, the community. As I mentioned before, be prepared to play with whining 10 year olds in almost every match you play. They're unavoidable, annoying, and worst of all, they love to brag. I can't tell you how many times I played with a 10th prestige 6 year old that just camps in a corner, racking up kills and claiming how good he is. Then there's the kid without a headset that end up with 20 deaths. There's chatty ones that talk nonstop for the entire match, even though no one is responding to them. Finally, there's the newbies that question everything like, "Where do I get that symbol from?" If you manage to find some normal players or if you play with your friends, the experience will be very enjoyable.

SINGLE PLAYER: 9/10

It's the best single player shooter ever. Period. That does not mean that it's without flaws.

The game is divided into acts, and in each act there are missions. You play as more than one character throughout the game. Each mission has a "get from point A to point B" objective in it along with a few others. For some reason though, this does not get repetitive. Maybe it's the atmosphere, or the shooting gameplay.

The graphics are gorgeous and the game looks very photo-realistic, just like it says on the box. Everything is well-crafted and are animated with great precision.

The gameplay has got to be the best part about the game. The controls are great and easy to learn, there are varying difficulty levels for everyone, and the guns are fun to use. There are aiming sights on nearly every gun which makes aiming extremely easy and accurate. There is also a large variety of guns to use: from sniper rifles to assault rifles to LMG's to SMG's to shotguns. So you should be able to adapt to at least one gun while playing.

The story is meh, but you'll get over it due to the great gameplay mechanics.

OVERALL: 7/10

If you're looking for a great online shooter to waste away your life into, you'll definitely want to check out this game. It's better than Halo 3 in terms of multiplayer and single player, so if you already own Halo and are looking for something else to play, you might want to buy this game immediately. If you're not interested in online play, than you might want to rent it instead. It's got a great single player mode, but nothing that you'll want to play forever. Overall, it's one of the best shooters out there.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/09

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