Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

"A painfully short campaign and lack of replay value make this game not worth buying"

First person shooters are arguably the most popular genre on the market today -- “hardcore” consoles Xbox 360 and PS3 have plenty of them. Nintendo's own systems seem to be a bit lacking, which isn't all that surprising when you consider the more family-friendly approach that is one of the trademarks of the Nintendo Wii. The DS in particular has very few, if any, good shooters: Metroid Prime Hunters was disappointing, and the only other decent FPS of note is Brothers in Arms DS. The most recent attempt at a solid FPS on the handheld is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. But does it even come close to the console iteration's goodness? And more importantly, is it a must-have for shooter fans?

Essentially, Call of Duty 4 DS attempts to emulate its console brethren -- and in some areas, it actually does a surprisingly good job. I've not played the console version much at all so I'm unaware of the story of the game, but from what I understand the DS version is essentially supposed to fill in any holes in the plot of the original game. Naturally, story doesn't play a big role here -- there are plenty of characters but they're all very forgettable. There was some real potential here for some scripted scenes and conversations between you and your squad, but there was no such effort on the part of the developer and you'll look on apathetically when one of your soldiers is gunned down by some terrorists.

Where the game partially succeeds is in the gameplay. At first, this game really is a lot of fun -- you take the roll of a modern soldier (hence the game's subtitle) and go through a variety of missions that all involve killing terrorists. Very little background is given, but at the same time not much is really needed for a game like this to be fun. It's a fairly traditional FPS with controls that any player of Metroid Prime Hunters or Brothers in Arms DS will easily get a hold of. You use the stylus to aim, the shoulder buttons to shoot, and the d-pad or face buttons (depending on whether you're right- or left-handed) control movement. It's nothing new for the DS, but that's largely because this basic control scheme works quite well.

Call of Duty 4 DS also throws in some more innovative controls and this is where the game runs into a touch of trouble. For example, to enter zoom mode where you'll aim down the barrel of your gun, you've got to double-tap the touch screen. The problem is, this actions can very easily be misinterpreted by the game. For example, even if you're just glancing around and you accidentally take the stylus up off the screen very minimally, there's a good chance you'll randomly enter zoom mode when you place it back down. Crouching is rather intuitively mapped to a quick downward stroke of the stylus, and this tends to work quite well. The aim function, however, really is a problem -- too often you'll enter it when you didn't want to, and sometimes when you try and activate it you won't be able to the first time.

Where the game manages to be fun, though, is in the intense, exciting, straight-up shooting segments and in the relative mission variety that will catch your notice at the start of the game. The game sports a variety of different weapons -- sadly, however, this variety is pretty much negated by the fact that the default weapon tends to be the best, so it's not worth picking up fallen enemies' weapons anyway. Still, the shooting component of the game is intuitive and works quite well, and it's a lot of fun to find cover and go head-to-head against a group of terrorists. The missions which you'll play are also fairly various at first -- after a short training segment, you'll take control of the machine gun atop a humvee and gun down terrorists as you hurry to the rendezvous point. Afterwards, you'll get back on foot and make your way through a terrorist-infested metropolis.

One significant gripe with the missions, however, is that very soon they begin to feel fetch-questy. For example, as you make your way to the rendezvous, the game will constantly be throwing these stupid little sub-objectives at you: rid this building of terrorists, kill the sniper, then rid another building of terrorists. Rinse and repeat a few times, and you'll finally have completely a level. But rather than feeling somehow authentic, it just starts to get really annoying. Even worse is the fact that you can't skip over these -- you'll have to go out of your way and complete this boring tasks to finish the mission. The reason for this is the fact that every once in a while, there'll be an impassable blockade -- usually a door. And sadly, only one of your companions can kick it down. And yep -- you guessed it -- they'll only kick it down once you've completed the latest sub-mission.

One other way in which the gameplay is significantly disappointing is that it's lacking the tactical aspect of play that was so prevalent in the console version. The game is quite easy, even on the hard difficulty setting, and you can take a lot of hits in a row before finally dying. And even if you're close to death, you can just get behind some cover or out of the way of the fire fight, wait a few seconds, and you'll be back to full health. You can run into a room with guns a-blazing, and you can take out hundreds of terrorists on your own (which is a good thing, because the ally AI is terrible and your squad members will often just stand around waiting for you to get things done). The AI for the enemies tends to be decent -- they'll usually find cover and work together, although every once in a while they act really stupid and just stand around waiting for you to kill them. The game lacks difficulty aside from the fact that enemies are constantly respawning and they're so freaking similar that it's annoying.

In terms of both graphics and sound, however, Call of Duty 4 DS is quite impressive. This is definitely one of the better-looking games on the DS, and the variety of 3D environment in which you'll fight look good and move smoothly. Character models look pretty bad up close, but aside from that the game looks pretty nice. The buildings are really cool and quite complex, and it's neat to see a bunch of enemies scurry out onto the balconies in front of you. Of course, at the same time, this visual impressiveness is rather ruined by the situations when enemy soldiers will magically respawn right in front of you.

One final way in which Call of Duty 4 DS suffers is the lack of much play value. Admittedly, the game is pretty fun and pretty intense. The problem is, it's an experience that just doesn't last very long. The game can be beaten in around 6 hours, and the different difficulty levels don't provide much reason to replay the game -- especially if you played on hard, like myself, and still found it annoyingly easy. Online play could have seriously revived this game and made it a strong candidate for the newest addition to your library -- sadly, this was omitted by the dev team and instead you'll have to satisfy yourself with the short campaign. There is local multiplayer, including download play, and while it offers depth and variety there's not much of a lifespan to playing the same mode over and over again with friends without a copy of the game. And let's be frank: I doubt you'll manage to convince three -- or even one, for that matter -- of your buds to pick up this game to play with you. Online play could have seriously rectified this problem and made Call of Duty 4 DS a great value; it's a real shame that it was admitted.

So, I guess it's time to come back to the question I posed at the beginning of this review: is it worth your time and money to pick up a copy of Call of Duty 4 DS? If you're a hardcore fan of FPSs and really feel the need for a shooter on the DS, you could perhaps consider getting it. However, renting it is certainly the best idea for playing this game, as I'm fairly certain you'll find yourself regretting this 30 dollar purchase after you've blown through the campaign. For anybody else, it's best to stick to console shooters, or just appreciate the DS for what it's really good at -- which, as you have probably concluded for yourself -- is certainly not first person shooters.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/08/08

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