Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"If this game was sold because of quality, then it probably would've sold awfully!"

The top selling FPS, the game that a lot of people just love to praise, and people still play
it today, even over a year of release. I'm happen to be one of those people who really doesn't see why.

After winning a gift card, I went to GameXchange(the only decent game store anymore) and I saw this game for 45$. Pretty cool, since this game happens to be 60$ everywhere else, and my gift card happen to have 45$ to, so I knew which game I was getting. I was excited to finally have CoD 4, the game that was pretty much going to kill all my other games. So you could see that I thought this game was going to be great, considering how all my friends were talking about it and all the reviews it has been getting. Playing it on the first couple of days, I actually put this game on my top ten. A couple of days later, I started to find that this game was wearing thin, but it still seemed great. After just a week later, I grew disgusted with the game. I seriously did. Most games have flaws that are obviously apparent but don't drag down the gameplay, but in this game, the flaws dragged it way down.

In the game, the story happens to be terrorists happening to be having some weapons that they shouldn't have fallen into their hands, so they plan to blow places with it. It's pretty much the same plot in every other modern day FPS. But this one happens to be different. This game takes the more serious side of war, the more darker side. I guess this seemed to affect everyone and pulled pretty much everyone into the main story because of all the stuff that was happening in the game, but I guess I didn't get pulled in as easily. Whenever some big event happen, I really didn't care and was just waiting for the next part to finally come around in the game. I guess this shows I'm not really big on stories in a game.

One thing I am big on though, is gameplay, and the singleplayer does offer a little bit of it. What I've always liked about the CoD games, is that in the campaign, you have to make good use of your cover. You wouldn't last long if you weren't taking cover in a heavy fire fight. The only thing is, is that I actually lost interest in the campaign rather quickly. The game is only about five hours long, and I just stopped playing it half way through the game. But I finally got around to finishing it after a couple of months later.

One of the problems, is that the game relies heavily on scripted events. This may not be a bad thing to some people because it can actually make the game more intense, but I don't really called scripted events intense things unless you really care about you or other characters dying. What I like to call intense is when it's during gameplay, and they're a chance where you may die and a chance where you may survive with. Like I said, I like it when it's during gameplay, because I find games to be a lot more fun that way. The game actually does offers those moments, but it's just to reliant on the scripted events though, and I really don't like that. One of the other things is that most levels feel like a direct copy and paste from previous CoD games. The last level in the game feels exactly like one of the levels from the first CoD. The major difference is that there's a helicopter chasing you down and at the end there's a big fire fight, but other than that, it feels really identical.

With that said, the campaign is still fun while it lasts, but the biggest problem I had was that this game doesn't do anything that's been done already and even done better in other FPSs. The only thing that it does differently is how serious the story is in the game, but like I said, I wasn't pulled into it like most people were. There's this one point in the game where this one big event happen, that even this one website said if you didn't feel anything for it, you have no soul. Well, I guess I don't have a soul. Well, I guess I felt for characters in a couple of movies, but then again, those were movies.

The one big thing that really got people crazy about this game was it's multiplayer, but I felt that the multiplayer was absolutely horrendous. But I guess I can talk about the one good thing about the multiplayer. Perks. These things are some add-ons you make when customizing your character. You make a couple of customs, each with it's own weapons and perks. The perks are things that give your character give your play some certain things that can make your character a bit stronger. Like, one of the things is called “Sleight of Hand” where it can make your character reload faster. One of the other things is called “Martyrdom”, a perk that makes your character drop a live grenade every time he dies. A lot of people seem to hate this perk, and I don't blame them. The fact that this perk gives you the potential of a kill for dying is just plain stupid. That pretty much means you can have this perk and just wait for the match to be over without even touching your controller(assuming that you don't get kicked for being afk) and you'll still get a couple of kills. I actually don't really have that much of a problem with this perk, because it's actually easily avoidable, unless under a couple of circumstances, but I'll get to that later.

The biggest problem I have with the multiplayer in this game is that it takes no skill at all. Seriously. Most of the kills com from randomly firing, people who camp in narrow ways where they're definitely going to kill who comes across that way, and people randomly throwing grenades across the map. One of the first matches I played, My friend and I was playing it, and we just decided to see what happens when we just randomly tossed a grenade on the other side of the map, and we got a kill. We did it again, another kill. After seeing that, I found myself not doing it anymore, because I'm not one of those idiots who tries to find every cheap way to try to get a kill. But apparently everyone else seems to be. There is not one game where I found my self not getting killed by something like that.

Camping is also a pretty big issue too. You might say, “Well, just find a way to kill him, like toss a flash grenade and kill him like that”, but even if I did throw a flash grenade their, even if I do get him where his movement is going to be slowed down, he can still kill me, because chances are he's still aiming at that pathway. When a flash grenade goes off, that sends a message into the guys that he needs to start firing randomly. Which means even if I did try to charge in like that, he is still going to kill me. I guess I could flush him out with a grenade, but that puts me in range of his sight, which means, he's still going to kill me. It's seriously pathetic on how easy it is to die in this game.

The multiplayer is really just a spray and pray type of game. The farthest the strategy is just running around and hope that you catch the enemy first before he sees you. I think that most of the problems would be solved if the maps were bigger. Most of the maps can barely support up to 10 players without it being a complete mess. When it actually does get to a lower player rate though, the game is a little bit funner. Most of the random grenade throwing and camping is gone. It's still there, but not much of it. It still pretty pathetic to see how easily you're character can die in this game though. It still revolves around just running around a shooting at anything that moves. Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of gameplay, but if a little more thought was involved in it though, it would've been a whole lot more fun!


The game isn't bad, well, at least singleplayer wise, but like I said, most of the stuff that goes through the game has already been done in other FPSs and has already been done better. The multiplayer is just what gets me though. Everyone plays this game for it, and it kind of puzzles me. But then again, this game is really good at hiding it's faults, but once I've discovered them, it's hard not to let the gameplay go down once they have been discovered. Not taking down those people who do still play the game, because if you like this game, then keep playing it, I'm not stopping you. But if you haven't played this game yet, I would recommend renting it first before considering buying it, just to see if it's your type of game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/09, Updated 06/10/09

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