Monday, November 19, 2007

Call of Duty 4: A great game, or the greatest game?

Call of Duty finally moves away from the old overdone WWII setting and moves into Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 4 does this with flying colors. This is definately one of the best games I have played in a long time.

The single player campaign is just great, the action is very intense and the variety of levels is amazing, each and every level is large and very well designed. They range from levels expansive desert maps to insane firefights inside a boat. The story is told from two perspectives, an S.A.S. officer and an American Marine and their stories eventually come together, the story is very well done and draws you in. You basically have to save the world from impending Nuclear doom; I know, Fun right? There story in COD4 just has many, many completely jaw-dropping moments that really draw you in and it has an incredibly realistic cinematic feel to it. The story was so well done, but one major caveat is it is ridiculously short compared to most games of the type and leaves you wanting more, and experienced gamer should cruise through single player in no time, but this game definitely has lasting power with it's multiplayer.

The multiplayer in COD4 is just friggin' awesome, intense action and a variety of game modes. There is just so much to like about it. The ranking system in multiplayer is great, after a couple ranks which you should rise through very quickly you gain the ability to make you own class instead of just using the predisigned classes and weapon kits, this is a great ad on to the multiplayer, you can customize what weapons you use and make it fit your needs, you can also customize the scope and color of your guns. You also get three "perks" these are special abilities that allow you to run faster, have more grenades and other special abilities. You unlock more weapons and abilities as you go up the ranks. The variery of game modes online is also great, you get good old school TDM, to Search and Destroy which is reminiscent of counterstrike (Plant bomb, no respawns) to Domination, my personal favorite where you have to capture and hold flags. Some other cool things are the rewards you can get for killsteaks in game, after three kills you can call a radar scan exposing enemy positions and after more you can also call in choppers and air strikes. The Multiplayer on this gives the game real value and longevity.

Visuals/Performance
The computer I run this on is dated but runs the game without any problems never a single hitch or slowdown, this game is designed very well unlike well... cough fear cough.

Specs:
AMD X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz
4 GB DDR800 RAM
aTi x1950PRO 512 MB

Settings are on max with 4x aa, this game looks really good and performs great even on the minumum required hardware. The game is very realistic the character movement, fluid animations and realistic camerashake area all really well done, in intense firefights you can see and hear the bullets ripping around you, and explosions rock the camera. Overall this is a great game with an intense but short single player and great lasting multiplayer.
















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