
Call Of Duty 4 Review
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.
The World War II first-person shooter genre is officially dead and buried. So sayeth the folks at Infinity Ward, developers of the celebrated Call of Duty series. This is the franchise (along with EA’s Medal of Honor series) that brought the genre to a new level of immersion and intensity that we had never seen before. However, thanks to a glut of imitators (some quite good, some terrible), gamers quickly tired of the WWII shooter, especially ones that didn’t offer any new gameplay mechanics or innovations. Now, with the upcoming release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, they’re about to relegate the WWII shooter to history’s dustbin. Infinity Ward has succeeded in creating a masterpiece of the first-person shooter genre, adeptly blending an intense, story-driven single-player campaign with an addictive multiplayer mode.
Modern Warfare kicks off with a brief tutorial designed to teach the player about the game’s controls, followed by a trip through a testing area. Though this was created to determine which difficulty level the player should attempt, this editor highly recommends that hardcore shooter fans play on the Hardened difficultly level. Like Halo 3, the normal level is just a bit too easy, and most players will be able to get through it without too much trouble. There have been a lot of people questioning how long Call of Duty 4 is, and the answer depends mainly on how you want to experience the game. Personally, I found that 8-10 extremely intense hours on Hardened was more fun than 6-7 very intense hours on Regular. As you might have gathered, this is one hell of an intense ride no matter what difficultly you play on.
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While the previous Call of Duty games simply followed characters through their particular WWII campaigns, Infinity Ward decided to scrap that approach in favor of a tight narrative structure. The plot is seemingly ripped right out of the headlines, touching on everything from Islamic fundamentalism to missing Soviet-era warheads, as well as a number of other hot-button issues. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting too much from the story, as I’ve seen all of this Tom Clancyesque stuff before. However, I’m happy to say that I was blown away by just how engaging and immersive it was. Modern Warfare features a number of stunning plot-driven sequences, and the fact that many of these scenes are shown from the first-person perspective only makes them that much more gripping.
Part of what makes the story so great is the fact that you’ll actually feel an emotional attachment to the soldiers fighting alongside you. These aren’t just a bunch of random dudes who run into battle with you, although there are a few of them here and there. Instead, you’ll spend the majority of your time watching their backs as they watch yours, and you’ll likely come to enjoy the interplay between your teammates. The British S.A.S. squad is particularly memorable, and we’re sure that Capt. Price and Gaz will go down as two of the most beloved supporting characters in the history of the Xbox 360. To say that Capt. Price is one of gaming’s biggest badasses is an understatement, and we really hope that he gets a spin-off of his very own in the future.
Although some people out there might gripe that they can’t give orders to their teammates or some such nonsense, we found that not only could our squadmates hold their own in battle, they were actually too good at times.
Overall Rating- 10 out of 10
Review ID: 10000000006685881

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