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Monday 26 May 2008
Recently my colleagues have been focusing on looking at upcoming games, so I thought I'd have a look at what was, for me, the most engrossing game of last year: Call Of Duty 4.
Now, if I had written this article a few months ago, I would have come off as a rabid fanboy, In fact, it took Rainbow Six Vegas 2 to break the spell of this game, where I would regularly play from 10pm when I got home from work, until the sun came up and my team and I grudgingly dragged ourselves to bed.
On the PC market, the game seems to share the success of its Console counterparts, with Xfire stating that 6,909,213 minutes of the multiplayer game have been played today, second only to the online behemoth that is WoW.
I'll start with the bad. The often forgotten Single Player campaign is, after a promising start, a pretty standard "Spec Ops" FPS fare, with the slightly familiar scenario's of "America waging a war on a Middle eastern country" as mirrored by the incredibly popular "Real Life" and the classic "Russians as the enemy", however cliched these may be, thats not to say they d
on't do them well, but more on that later. It also suffers from the classic CoD problem of having to literally slog through hundreds of generic terrorists who respawn endlessly until you reach the waypoint, there is no way to stay back and play it cautiously, you just end up wasting your ammo, and enraging yourself.
on't do them well, but more on that later. It also suffers from the classic CoD problem of having to literally slog through hundreds of generic terrorists who respawn endlessly until you reach the waypoint, there is no way to stay back and play it cautiously, you just end up wasting your ammo, and enraging yourself.The multiplayer suffers from other flaws, Some of the perks are either ridiculously useless [Eavesdrop] or ridiculously overpowered/cheap [Grenade launcher/Matyrdom] and, while they are well thought out, popular use of them has cheapened the COD4 multiplayer experience heavily. It's a great testimonial to the game when I can only find a single big flaw with its multiplayer experience, and I stand by the fact that it is the best multiplayer game of 2007.
On the positive side, and its certainly a big ol' positive side, the campain is well thought out and is full of awesome set pieces, including a particularly tense firefight in a TV station, and a highly commended level that has you crawling through Cherynobl, you really do have to play the campaign to get the true feel for it.
The same is true of the multiplayer, The engine itself is very simple, there's no cover system, no character customisation, and is pretty standard multiplayer shooter fare. A visitor for example could play a few rounds and enjoy it, without knowing too much about the game. However, it shows a level of depth totally unheard of in an FPS game, with a healthy amount of weapon customisation, and a frankly stunning level design. I have never played maps as fine as Call of Duty 4's, which have been amazing people hunting for tricks and tips since the games release. I think it's the depth of the maps that have really ensured CoD4's continued dominance.
In retrospect, I dont play Call of Duty 4 anymore, because I took it far too seriously, going down the gamebattles route and playing in clan matches until I "burnt out" on the game, but I think it still holds up. It's a masterpiece of what can be achieved, and its technically impressive too. It stands among Team Fortress 2 and Halo3 as the greatest Xbox live has to offer.
Labels: Call of Duty 4, FPS, Looking Back, PC, PS3, Xbox360
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Damn, another great article DW. Hopefully once school is out for me and pirate we can focus more on making quality posts.
Also, submitted to N4G.
Absolutely loved this game when it came out. I think they took too long to bring new maps out, otherwise I'd still be playing it.
Haha, i should thank you Reload, Your relentless N4G submissions are generating a ton of Page hits :P
im tired of people complaining about the grenade launcher/Martydom.especially because of juggernaut (which I find the complainers often use) I mean how realistic is surviving 4 headshots from an m16.thats why i will always have these 2 perks in my arsenal and refuse to use juggernaut.I mean i find ways of avoiding getting smoked by tubes.its the endless grenades fired blindly that get me killed,but i understand its a game, if you cant stand the heat play one of the other 10000 fps titles available meanwhile my m16/grenade launcher/Martydom combo will continue to hunt and kill all juggernauts.BTW before people start losing their brains at me this is not my only class i do like to mix it up .
I Like Gaming.