War, war is stupid... but fun! (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC)
Date:	12/01/09 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb FPS, great at both single and multiplayer

Disadvantages: Doesn't really offer anything new

The Call of Duty series of FPS action games is primarily known for its depiction of World War 2 campaigns. I've never been particularly interested in this era in a gaming fashion, so have tended to shy away from the CoD games. However, episode four of the successful series was entitled "Modern Warfare" and takes place in a war-torn world of our near future. The single-player game, for the most part, puts you in the boots of two protagonists, "Soap" MacTavish and Paul Jackson as they embark on their respective missions in Russia and an un-named Middle Eastern country respectively.

The single player campaign is excellent... the combination of storyline and the bond you build with the characters helps you get involved in the story, so when the heat is on, you really do feel your heartbeat going as bullets ricochet around you and grenades land dangerously nearby. While the single player campaign is quite short (I played through it in about seven hours), it is enjoyable (although I thought the story got a little cheesy in places), with a little variety in the game play to keep things interesting and a few interesting game tweaks and "cheats" available after you've completed the game to give an element of replayability. Despite using the same game engine as the more recent "Call of Duty: World at War", the game doesn't suffer from the same flaws inherent in the later game, seemingly due to better design from my observations. There is still an element of you, the player, driving the team on by hitting trigger points, but this is not really that apparent and in an area, if there are three separate routes to the exit, the team will split up and make their own way there, once you have activated that trigger point.

The multiplayer is where the game earns its stripes, though. My own personal opinion is that the single player experience is why you buy a game (with the obvious exception of multi-player only games like Team Fortress 2) and then any multi-player aspect is simply a bonus to be enjoyed, should the single player be any good. However, CoD4's multiplayer is a superb gaming experience in its own right. The maps used, for the most part, come direct from the game, with a little tweaking and there are maps that range from very small (suitable for 3 vs. 3 matches) to large (games with 20 vs. 20 are not unheard of). I find that most maps are ideally balanced at around 10 vs. 10, irrespective of the many game types on offer. Part of my enthusiasm for the multiplayer might well have to do with the group of people I normally play with (where it gets very silly, very quickly), but even as a stranger on servers, most people make you welcome.

Unlike previous versions of the game, CoD4 uses a proprietary game engine developed in-house by Infinity Ward and it really does an excellent job. You don't notice the detail as you're running around, ducking behind cover and legging it like a scaredy cat when the enemy throws grenades in your general direction, but taking a minute to have a look shows that Infinity Ward have put together a very capable game engine that not only looks good, but seems to perform very well even on lower specced machines.

The audio, too, is very good but you really don't notice this until you play the multiplayer aspect where the sound is very important. Your opponents, half the time, are located purely by listening to the sounds of their footsteps as they walk across wood or stone or metal. Gunshots can also give away your location, so consider a silencer or perhaps sneaking up and using a knife instead of that long range headshot you were considering.

CoD4 is not a game that is revolutionary in any way... it's a bog-standard first person shooter, albeit done exceedingly well. It's certainly a better game than its successor, "Call of Duty: World at War" and arguably as good as the recent A-list FPS Far Cry 2, which was terribly disappointing. If you don't already own CoD4 and are looking for a PC FPS, then CoD4 is fifteen of your English pounds, well spent.

Summary: Excellent FPS for the PC, offering great VFM over single and multiplayer experience.