VGM Fusion

Review: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)

For years and years we fought World War II with no end in sight. The Germans were strong, but we were winning successive victories again and again, but still they kept coming. There was no end in sight with more Germans pouring over every ridge, saturating every besieged town. Then, over the horizon… Was it air support? Was it a tank squadron? No, it’s Activision, finally making a non-WWII combat game. Finally, for the love of God finally. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – what a nice ring it has to it, no? Modern.

Yep, it finally happened, and lo and behold, the results didn’t completely ruin the game… it seems modern warfare, and modern scenarios can be just as intriguing!

COD4 takes place in modern day time, perhaps a few years in the future… The Russians are pissed that their homeland has be “robbed” from them, and the Middle-Easterns are up to their old trouble causing ways (as the media, Hollywood, and books by Tom Clancy would have me believe). You take the role as both a member of Britain’s elite fighting force, the S.A.S. or a soldier in the Marines. The stories intertwine nicely, and there are even some shocking moments that may surprise you in the story telling.

The single player story line, and campaign is probably one of the best I’ve ever played in an FPS – it was exciting, not too drawn out, involving and paced very well. Some say it’s too short, but come on, we don’t need 25 hours of plodding through the streets of some war torn city… 10 will do just fine.

The Multiplayer is where the bulk of the gameplay is to be had though, and the experience is pretty rock solid, and has tons of replay value. If you’re a big team-play kinda person when it comes to FPS’s this is one of the better experiences out there.

Call of Duty 4 as a whole, beside the gameplay and the story, has some of the best graphics I’ve seen in a next-gen game so far. My gripes and complaints from last year are finally being satiated. The experience is very cinematic, and it really pulls you into the game.

What, on the other hand, pulls you RIGHT out of the game is the AI. There are two circumstances in particular which drove me bat-shit crazy in the game. And these did just enough crazy-causing on my part to make me think that this isn’t worth a full 5/5 – now bare with me.

The single-player campaign are where they both fall (multiplayer is pretty much spot on, so no complaints there… but this isn’t “Call of Duty 4: Multiplayer Edition” it’s a full game, with both components).

The biggest complaint about the AI is the fact that it’s constantly respawnable. If you want to take your time down that alley, taking that house, or rooftop… the game will damn well let you take your time… forever. That’s right. You can sit back and snipe all you want, but unless you charge superhero style headlong into that next room your guys aren’t going to do it, and the enemy isn’t just going to dry up. I can’t tell you how many times I was stuck being shot at from all directions and thinking I’ll just take a few guys out then move up a little bit, only to have more take their place immediately. One of the biggest offenders (as far as situations go) is taking the TV studio. You better run like a muthaf*** to the back of that room if you don’t want to be playing it for an hour.

The second big gripe I had was with the ghillie suit level. It’s brilliant… it’s stealth, it’s fun! But seriously? The bad guys are literally walking centimeters away from me… Anyone could see someone on the ground crawling (you don’t even have to lie still) right beside them, covered in grass or not! Grass doesn’t crawl! Like I said, it’s fun, but it’s just preposterous! In a game that tries to be as simulation-ish as possible, this is just so lame that it made me want to turn it off.

Am I being hard? Sure, probably… but the rest of the game is so polished, so great looking and sounding that having AI that do things like that is inexcusable. What happened to these next-gen systems having their multiple cores being put to use by ramping up the AI (something that is pretty much the most CPU intensive thing you can do)? Oh well /rant complete.

Besides me being Dick Edition about the AI, the game is very, very good. If you’re in the market for a new FPS since you’ve got Halo-fatigue, or if you just have to play every single Call of Duty iteration out there, then don’t hesitate. This game is good, it’ll make you feel satisfied after playing it, and you can annoy your significant other with gunshots and explosions for at least 10 hours. And of course, that’s the whole point of these games.

Game Details:
Available: November 5, 2007
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Infinity Ward
Genre: FPS
ESRB: Mature 17+
VGM Rating: 4/5