Call of Duty 4 – FPS at it’s best

By DarkArmada

The rattle of gunfire echoes in the distance, static from the radio at your side buzzes quietly, it’s pitch black and you hear footsteps come to the door. With a flick of your wrist, your vision turns green, silently lighting up your target and with a squeeze of the trigger his hapless corpse lies still. It’s the same old game you’ve come to love but it’s not WWII anymore…

Infininty Ward & Activision’s Call of Duty 4 ticks all the boxes with the latest title from the series. Thankfully moving away from the overdone WWII genre, they step into the “war of the future”, coming not from dictatorships but from terrorist cells, launching invisible attacks on unknown targets at a moments notice. But even with a change of time and location, playing Call of Duty 4 is just as familiar as it ever was.

The beginning of the single player campaign – as with the previous titles, you run through a general training mission, allowing you to map the controls in your head and get a feel for the gameplay. Once you completed said training, the game recommends a difficulty level based on your results. If you’ve played Call of Duty before, I’d recommend starting on Hardened as anything less would feel too easy.

From the get-go, you’re thrown right into the thick of battle. As the story progresses, you take control of either Paul Jackson (US Marine) or “Soap” MacTavish (SAS) and each character brings with it the various equipment, weapons and character traits partnered with each military unit. On top of this, you get to control other characters throughout the game, placing you in a wide variety of situations outside of the regular infantry role.

I just can’t push it enough, picking up the controls you will become instantly familiar, it’s like riding a bike. The weapons respond just like you would expect them to, the walk/run speed is spot on and the movements of your character during crouch and prone manoeuvres have COD written all over them. But that’s what makes Call of Duty 4 so enticing as there is no learning curve, you can just jump straight into the action.

The addition of “penetrable walls” make for some interesting gameplay. Depending on the power of your weapon and the thickness of the cover your target is currently hiding behind, it may be susceptible to your gunfire and suddenly there is “nowhere to hide”. This is in both single and multiplayer, adding a very important dynamic to gameplay. My only gripe here would be the lack of a cover system, with games like Rainbow 6 applying this feature flawlessly, I don’t see why this was missing from what most would consider a fairly tactical game.

This familiarity translates directly to the multiplayer aspect fluently. Online play was always the strong point of Call of Duty 2 (as it is still such a popular game online, now 2 titles on) and it doesn’t stop with number four. Infinity Ward has pulled out every stop and created one of, if not the best multiplayer experience available on this-generation hardware.

You start with 5 default classes, plus the ability to create 5 custom classes where you can assign your own weapons and perks to each class. Perks are special abilities that give you a specific advantage over other players, such as more powerful ammunition, dropping a grenade when you die or even to get a last dying stand with your pistol in the hopes of taking down your attacker.

These perks, as well as additional weapons and game types can be unlocked through promotions. With experience (XP) earned for kills and scoring objectives, players will eventually “rank up”, giving them access to better weapons and more advanced game types to play with online. Also – upgrades are awarded for meeting kill criteria (kills / headshots) for each weapon, also awarding you with additional XP.

The online experience is nothing short of amazing with Infinity Ward hitting the nail right on the head. Players who, after finishing the SP, will continue coming back again and again to get themselves engrossed in the deep online play, with the usual game types (Free-for-all / Team Deathmatch) to the more unique and strategic modes (Search and Destroy / Domination and Sabotage).

The only way that the online MP could have been improved, would have been the addition of a more Bungie style “lobby/party system”, making it easy to move your party around games both online and over system link. On top of this, I’m surprised that an online splitscreen mode was not included, meaning that 2 players can not both head online on the same console. With Halo 3 having already set the bar with online play, I would have thought these features be a standard option…

Visually – Call of Duty 4 is exactly what we’ve come to expect from this generation of gaming. Clean and crisp visuals, character models are lifelike and the weapons are well detailed – in fact, the weapons look amazing and are a big step from those found in both COD2 and COD3. Each bullet impact is accompanied with a satisfying burst of red as well as varied death animations from your enemy. Ricochets are just as stunning, each burst of fire aimed at an enemy hiding behind a vehicle results in bright spark flashes – so Hollywood but so awesome.

Not only does Call of Duty 4 look amazing, but it’s backed up by equally amazing audio. Each voice is well recorded and realistic. Each gunfire sound distinctive and individual and not sounding out of place. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the franchise and anything less would be a disappointment.

All the achievements are single player based and although these are well thought out, one would expect more online achievements for such a multiplayer based title. Call of Duty 4 may very well be a good contender for game of the year, expanding on the already successful IP and giving gamers the deep multiplayer experience they’ve come to crave from this generation. Whether you are a Call of Duty veteran or not, this is a must buy title.

© 2007-8 Lee Edgerton

The new FPS benchmark – 9.7/10