Excellant Game
The talented developers out of Encino , Infinity Ward are back with a bang and this bang comes in the form of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Finally the developers took this fantastic series out of the 1940’s and killing Nazis with the M1 Garand and shooting its way into the 21 century fighting global terror with an Mp5. But trust me there is a lot more to the new Call of Duty other than just the new time period. The single player is great, and amazing multiplayer options and stunning visuals make it standout above the rest as the best shooter of 2007. The only disappointment that I have about this game is the length of the single player campaign you can probably blast your way through it in about 5-6 hours depending on the difficulty. Also to note all of you Call of Duty veterans out there the veteran difficulty is still punishing as the previous games. Although the single player is lacking in quantity it makes up for it with quality. The game tells its story through the eyes of two soldiers, one a new recruit of the elite British SAS, another as a badass soldier in the elite Marine Recon unit. The story in Call of Duty 4 is absolutely fantastic and very applicable to today’s modern events. You have two essential antagonists one is a Saudi Arabian General named Al-Assad who is out to overthrow the newly instated democracy after the overthrow of the monarchy and change it to a military dictatorship, there seems to be strange parallels between Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein. The other is a Russian idealist named Zakhaev out to destroy the current Russian government and set up an ultra-nationalist regime in its place. The campaign’s first level is fast and furious it starts as you and your SAS team try to infiltrate a cargo tanker in the Bearing Sea the is transporting a Russian made nuclear device supplied by Zakhaev to Al-Assad.
Over all the action in the campaign is very straight forward, you have a compass telling you where to go at all times, but it really is not as simple as just point from point A to point B. For you will be conducting full scale invasions in the involving house by house and street by street raids. You will also get the opportunity to blast your way through Russian villages in search of terrorists and intelligence. So as you can see Call of Duty 4 may be straight forward but ounce you take the time to appreciate the so real feeling tactics of the game you really start to learn how special this game really is. The final 2 aspects of the campaign just have to be the stunning visuals and life like sounds. Throughout the single player you will notice some of the expertly designed cities, villages, and environments. Whether it be from the realistic reincarnation of a Muslim metropolis, or the rustic feel of the Russian Countryside both are expertly developed and all make you lose yourself in the utter beauty other cultures have. As I said above the sound quality in this game is absolutely brilliant sound, whether it’s the cackling burst fire sound of an M-16 rifle, the bruising sound of an A1 Abrams tank crushing through buildings, or the sound of a Black Hawk Helicopters rotors spinning you can obviously tell the developers put a lot of time in the sound quality of this game.
Of course if you are looking for the lasting factor of Call of Duty 4 look no further than the absolutely addicting and utter frag fest that is the multiplayer. Up to 18 players can play online on any one of 16 different maps. Many of the maps you can tell are exact clones of their single player counterparts and offer a good mix of wide open sniping and its fair share of close combat chaos. There are 6 game modes offered the old fashion game modes, team deathmatch, and a free-for-all deathmatch are all there. The other modes are more objective-oriented, and a couple of those have you carrying bombs across the map to blow up enemy points, or preventing the enemy from blowing up your base. Others have you capturing control points (similar to that of king of the hill). Lastly, you can change up the game rules with a hardcore setting that makes weapons more realistically damaging or an old-school mode that puts weapons as pickups and gets rid of all aspects of the realism of Call of Duty 4. In addition to using weapons and grenades there is a bit of a tactical twist and this is in the form of air support. The air support is based around how many kills you earn in a streak, for every 3 kill streak you will get a UAV drone that displays enemy positions on your mini-map. For a 5 kill streak you earn the ability to call in F16’s to barrage an area with a bombe raid. And at 7 you call in you very own apache gunship helicopter which essentially hovers over the map firing with two types of armament in the forms of 50 caliber gunfire and hellfire missiles. Another great feature of the multiplayer is the level up system that is tied to the class based weapon choosing. Each player will gain a preset amount of experience based on the performance in the match, by accumulating this experience your player will gain access to the ability to fully customizable classes other than the preset ones and the ability to unlock new weapons to further deal you deadly skills, and to unlock new perks.
Now the perks are what set Call of Duty’s Multiplayer above that of other class based shooters such as Rainbow Six. Imagine the perks as special abilities which are split up into sections containing similar perks some examples are the ability to carry more starting ammunition, the ability to carry a RPG, having more health, or having your gun fire at a faster rate just to name a few. The beauty in the design of these is that Infinity Ward did a great job of balancing the perks so there is not one super set of these, and one of the greatest parts of the perk system is finding the perks that best fit your style of gameplay. So as you can see Call of Duty 4 is a fantastic first person shooter package and any fan of the genre should immediately look into it. Between the amazing single player, the addicting almost role playing multiplayer, and stunning visuals and sound; it is absolutely not only one of the best shooters of 2007 but also one of the best games.
Review by: Nate Hamill
Over all the action in the campaign is very straight forward, you have a compass telling you where to go at all times, but it really is not as simple as just point from point A to point B. For you will be conducting full scale invasions in the involving house by house and street by street raids. You will also get the opportunity to blast your way through Russian villages in search of terrorists and intelligence. So as you can see Call of Duty 4 may be straight forward but ounce you take the time to appreciate the so real feeling tactics of the game you really start to learn how special this game really is. The final 2 aspects of the campaign just have to be the stunning visuals and life like sounds. Throughout the single player you will notice some of the expertly designed cities, villages, and environments. Whether it be from the realistic reincarnation of a Muslim metropolis, or the rustic feel of the Russian Countryside both are expertly developed and all make you lose yourself in the utter beauty other cultures have. As I said above the sound quality in this game is absolutely brilliant sound, whether it’s the cackling burst fire sound of an M-16 rifle, the bruising sound of an A1 Abrams tank crushing through buildings, or the sound of a Black Hawk Helicopters rotors spinning you can obviously tell the developers put a lot of time in the sound quality of this game.
Of course if you are looking for the lasting factor of Call of Duty 4 look no further than the absolutely addicting and utter frag fest that is the multiplayer. Up to 18 players can play online on any one of 16 different maps. Many of the maps you can tell are exact clones of their single player counterparts and offer a good mix of wide open sniping and its fair share of close combat chaos. There are 6 game modes offered the old fashion game modes, team deathmatch, and a free-for-all deathmatch are all there. The other modes are more objective-oriented, and a couple of those have you carrying bombs across the map to blow up enemy points, or preventing the enemy from blowing up your base. Others have you capturing control points (similar to that of king of the hill). Lastly, you can change up the game rules with a hardcore setting that makes weapons more realistically damaging or an old-school mode that puts weapons as pickups and gets rid of all aspects of the realism of Call of Duty 4. In addition to using weapons and grenades there is a bit of a tactical twist and this is in the form of air support. The air support is based around how many kills you earn in a streak, for every 3 kill streak you will get a UAV drone that displays enemy positions on your mini-map. For a 5 kill streak you earn the ability to call in F16’s to barrage an area with a bombe raid. And at 7 you call in you very own apache gunship helicopter which essentially hovers over the map firing with two types of armament in the forms of 50 caliber gunfire and hellfire missiles. Another great feature of the multiplayer is the level up system that is tied to the class based weapon choosing. Each player will gain a preset amount of experience based on the performance in the match, by accumulating this experience your player will gain access to the ability to fully customizable classes other than the preset ones and the ability to unlock new weapons to further deal you deadly skills, and to unlock new perks.
Now the perks are what set Call of Duty’s Multiplayer above that of other class based shooters such as Rainbow Six. Imagine the perks as special abilities which are split up into sections containing similar perks some examples are the ability to carry more starting ammunition, the ability to carry a RPG, having more health, or having your gun fire at a faster rate just to name a few. The beauty in the design of these is that Infinity Ward did a great job of balancing the perks so there is not one super set of these, and one of the greatest parts of the perk system is finding the perks that best fit your style of gameplay. So as you can see Call of Duty 4 is a fantastic first person shooter package and any fan of the genre should immediately look into it. Between the amazing single player, the addicting almost role playing multiplayer, and stunning visuals and sound; it is absolutely not only one of the best shooters of 2007 but also one of the best games.
Review by: Nate Hamill
