Call of Duty 4 is breaking new ground for the long running Infinity Ward series. This is the first time Call of Duty 4 has been brought into the modern realm. Infinity Ward’s portrayal on the modern world is refreshing; Even though many games take place in this setting, Call of Duty 4 still remains unique.
The single player portion of the Call of Duty games has always been very directed and cinematic and this game stays true to that tradition. The campaign tracks two separate soldiers as they wage war against none other than Muslim extremists and Russian terrorists. The two ongoing fights offer different game play methods. The British S.A.S focuses more on stealth, and the US Marines focus on going in guns blazing. While the story of most First Person Shooters end with the world saved and everyone living happily ever after, Call of Duty 4 is much darker. The events that go down are way darker and grittier than other shooter story lines. For example at one point you take a first person perspective of a marine slowly dying of radiation poisoning after the mission goes horribly wrong. This also brought something up to me, I cared about the characters. By the end of the story you will form a small liking to those A.I. controlled bullet magnets. That’s what makes the end so bad; I won’t spoil that here. The only problem with the single player is that it is short. On the Recruit and Normal difficulties you can easily beat in four to five hours. However playing on Veteran difficulty made the one problem with the campaign readily apparent, infinite spawns. If you don’t advance during a fire fight then the enemies will perpetually spawn. This really clashed to my more slow calculated play style and forced me to run right in and fight.
With any First Person Shooter nowadays the main attraction is the multiplayer. Call of Duty 4 adds a few light RPG-esque elements in with the normal shooter game play. Everything you do whether it’s capturing a flag or shooting a person contributes XP to your level. As you gain experience you acquire guns and perks. You slowly build up a nice armory of weapons those suites many different styles of play. Perks are the other important part of Call of Duty 4, these are special abilities that cover a wide range. They can range from simple things like extra ammunition to dropping a live grenade after death. While higher level players do have more access to more weapons and perks, they do not have much of a competitive advantage. Every weapon is extremely deadly and as powerful as any other gun. While the perks seems like a big advantage they just serve as little bonuses that simply flesh out your game play style. At some point you will hit level fifty-five and will hit a tough choice. At fifty five you have the option to enter Prestige Mode. This resets all of your weapons, perks, level, and rank are taken away in favor of a new shiny emblem. You can repeat this up to ten times at which point you have seen basically every time. However this will take so much time and dedication that you are likely to quit playing by then. For a long time I thought that the multi player was very complete with a good variety of modes and options until I played at a friend’s house. We each wanted to play on our own profiles on the same T.V. while playing some online play; That’s apparently impossible. We could not find any way to make this possible. While there may be some way to do it, it certainly says something to how this was not taken into much consideration. That is the one flaw I can see in the multiplayer segment of Call of Duty 4.
Call of Duty 4 is a cinematic single player game as well as a exciting multiplayer that any shooter fan should own.