Kantor

User Score
9.5

Presentation - 9.5
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 10

Call of Duty 4 is something of a legend. No FPS can be discussed without it coming up. Resistance 2? Compared to CoD4. Haze? Compared to CoD4. Killzone 2? Compared to CoD4 (although it's actually very different, but equally brilliant.)

Why?

First person shooters were once traditionally a PC-only genre. The first blow against that was Goldeneye 007 for the N64, but it was with Halo: Combat Evolved on the Xbox that first person shooters on a console actually became popular. Many people still say that the best FPS experience is found on a PC, but you will rarely find somebody who claims that a console is incapable of playing an FPS.

Call of Duty 4 doesn't revolutionise the genre, in the way that System Shock or Half Life did. It is actually, when you look at it, pretty standard. But the execution is so phenomenal that the obvious lack of innovation becomes unimportant.

And now, I'll move onto the game.

I might as well begin with controls, as controls in an FPS have caused quite an argument, recently. One side claiming that Killzone 2's (I swear, that's the last time I'll mention it) controls work fine, with the other side basically stating that they aren't enough like Call of Duty. I was always part of the former, but as I said, they are very different games. Call of Duty takes a faster approach, while Killzone 2 attempts to be more heavy and stealthy, almost. The controls and control schemes suit their respective games, and I wouldn't swap either one for the other.

Modern Warfare is not a run and gun. There are definitely some tactical aspects to it. You can't jump five metres in the air, like in Halo. You'll need to take each corner carefully, and never let your attention wander.

Now that that's over and done with, enough with the comparisons, and onto the review.

Unlike its predecessors (and sequel), set in the now rather boring World War II, with its outdated weapons and America constantly having to go into Europe to help Britain (>.>), Call of Duty 4, as the sub-title, Modern Warfare, would suggest, is set in the increasingly common 2009-2012 Middle East/Eastern Europe. Like other Call of Duty games (well, like CoD3 and World at War, never played the first two), you are in control of two different (allied) forces, in this case the British SAS and the American Marines.

While the Americans are off in Unnamed Middle Eastern Country (whose economy was previously destroyed by 50 Cent- watch Zero Punctuation if you didn't get that last one) chasing Al-Asad, a terrorist (or something), the Brits are in Russia, looking for Imran Zakhaev, who is funding said terrorist.The story is a very good concept, but it can certainly be quite confusing at times. However, it remains some of the best storytelling in a standard FPS (mostly because in most first person shooters, story is an afterthought.)

The five hour campaign first puts you in the shoes of Sergeant Soap MacTavish, a new recruit to the Secret Air Service, who for some reason needs to learn how to fire a gun. After a rather interesting training course, you choose your difficulty and are dropped down onto a metal tanker, carrying a nuclear device. The first American mission puts you in the shoes of Sergeant Paul Jackson, in some sort of Middle Eastern town. You will notice that the Marines and SAS have very different styles: The SAS will inspect every corner and doorway, either saying "Clear" or saying how many hostiles there are. The Marines, in the meanwhile, charge around every corner, shooting everything that moves (while the SAS shoot sleeping people, as well.) Ah well, it was get shot or die on a sinking ship...

As I mentioned, the campaign is rather short, even for a game in Call of Duty's genre. You could play through it again, but I really felt no desire to. Sure, it was very good, it was great fun, but it was nothing memorable (with the exception of a few sequences: when you see a mission playing in black and white, you are in for a treat, as that is the best mission in the entire game.) I felt, at this point, that the game was somewhat overrated. But you shouldn't judge an FPS by its campaign, and CoD4 shows us why.

Because the multiplayer is phenomenal. Where the single player was above average, the online is one of the best in any shooter I have ever played. The only game that could possibly match up to it in quality is Halo 3. It appears that this is where the majority of Infinity Ward's time was spent.

The community is still going strong, even after two and a half years, for obvious reasons: 4.17 million sales! You'll never have to wait more than ten seconds between clicking "find game" and finding yourself in a list of players.

In this list, you will see a number, an icon, and a PSN ID.

You begin at level 1, and work your way up to 55 by getting kills, assists and headshots, as well as by completing challenges (I'll get to those later.) Each rank has a name, and an icon to go along with it. However, you will see that not everybody has a standard icon, and you might see a level 14 and a level 52 with the same icon. This is a rather ingenious, but extremely simple, feature named Prestige.

Once you have reached level 55, and you have unlocked every weapon and every perk, completed every challenge, etc, you may find yourself becoming a little bored with the online, you're not levelling up or anything. And you're sick of your boring little five gold star icon. You want a new one. So you select Prestige Mode.

You lose all of your weapons, all perks, and all challenges (I believe) are reset. All you have is what you started the game with. You are now level 1 again...but you have an awesome icon!

You can do this up to ten times. There are different icons for the number of times you have worked your way up and chosen the option.

[img]http://www.product-reviews.net/wp-content/userimages/2007/12/10-prestige-levels.jpg[/img]

Now, there's more to CoD4's online than levelling up and restarting...and this is where unlockables come in.

Every level you go up unlocks something, be it a weapon, a perk (I'll get to those), a set of challenges (for example, call in a UAV Recon 3 times (shit, I need to get to that as well! The game's a lot deeper than you would think.)) or even a game mode. You are not limited to Team Deathmatch, there is Search and Destroy, Free For All, Headquarters, and two variations called Hardcore and Old School. I won't go into too much detail on those, they're pretty self explanatory. All I'll say is this: In hardcore, you have no HUD. In Old School, you have no classes. What are classes?

A class is a configuration of a player character. You choose your class at the beginning of each game. You choose a primary weapon, three perks (again, I'll get to those) and a sidearm. To begin with, you can only use premade classes, but at a very early stage (I believe it was level 3), you gain the ability to customise a class and name it.

A challenge is a specific goal which you complete to gain extra experience. These are divided into weapon specific (kills and headshots with each weapon) and general, such as blowing up a helicopter, or calling in five UAV recons.

A perk is a special ability your player has. There are three different categories (with names that I can't remember), with different perks. The first one is to do with your weapons (you can get extra flash bangs, two RPGs, a grenade launcher for your weapon, things like that), the second one is...shooting, I suppose (Steadying your hip fire aim, increasing bullet damage), and the third is Miscellaneous, I guess (Last Stand where when you die, you first lie on the ground with a pistol for something like ten seconds, or Martyrdom where when you die, you drop a live grenade.)

[img]http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/811/811393/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare-20070807114552486_640w.jpg[/img]

Call of Duty 4 rewards you for killing streaks. To begin with, you can only see your allies and enemies who have recently fired on your radar. Three consecutive kills, without dying, will allow you to call in a UAV (Unmanned Army Vehicle or something) which will scout out the position of every single enemy on the map, for 30 seconds. This can really turn the tide of a game. Two more kills (in the same life), bringing you to a 5 kill streak, will allow you to call in an air strike on a small area. These aren't very practical, as they kill everybody, and can be easily avoided by running into a building whenever you hear aeroplanes. However, they get you experience, and points, and you gain extra points for each enemy the airstrike kills (no penalties for killing an ally, in fact, you can't kill them with a gun.)

Finally, two more kills (a seven kill streak, these are rare, perhaps one per game) will net you the ability to call in a helicopter to randomly fly around the map, shooting all hostiles it sees. Again, you will get points and experience for each helicopter kill. You can also get a ten kill streak, but this achieves nothing.

There, that's everything (I hope, let me know if I left something out). Now, to move on to the technical aspects of Call of Duty 4.

CoD4 looks fantastic, especially taking into consideration that it was released in November 2007. The character models are detailed, the textures are excellent (for the most part), and the game runs at 60 fps, though it does very occasionally lag while online. The game has never crashed on me. However, I have had a couple of issues with disconnecting from online matches, but these are few and far between, and nothing more than a mild annoyance. They were mostly fixed when I went from wireless to wired, but don't worry if you have wireless, it works fine. Just wired is better.

For most of the game, there will be no music playing. But this is actually a good thing, it lets you hear the bullet effects (you can tell where the bullet is coming from just from that sound, I swear), the random cries of your teammates and enemies (sometimes useful, like GRENADE!, and sometimes kind of random, like ALLAH AKBAR!). The voice acting is very well done, especially for an FPS. The Russian guys sound Russian, the Middle Eastern guys sound Middle Eastern (I'm looking at you, Altair.)

The story is reasonably good, for what it is. Character performance, which goes hand in hand with voice acting, I suppose, is top notch throughout (they have this funny thing called emotion.)

The aiming is forgiving. Perhaps a little too forgiving, particularly when you snipe. This can get aggravating, because when you watch the Killcam, you think "What the hell? He didn't aim anywhere near me!". Similarly, when somebody kills you from 200m away with a dot sight, you get a little pissed. But you get used to it, and you do it yourself, it's just a flaw that happens to be there. Oh also Martyrdom is the most broken concept in FPS history, but that's just me ranting ;-)

There is no character customisation in the multiplayer sadly, but it would just be a cool feature, it doesn't take away from your enjoyment of the game, similarly to destructible environments, although to be fair, those weren't around much in 2007. The campaign is a little bit short, and the story could have been told more clearly. But these are mostly just trivial flaws in an excellent game. I wouldn't hesitate to call it one of the best first person shooters ever made. Whether on PS3, 360 or PC, anybody with even a slight interest in first person shooters needs this game.