World War II is finally put to an end. (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3))

Member Name: butters

Product:	Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)
Date:	17/11/07 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fantastic offline and online modes

Disadvantages: short offline

The Call of Duty (CoD) series has been going on quite a while really, probably as long as the war that the first three games were based upon, World War II. With a lot of complaints though about WWII games getting pretty old and repetitive with Call of Duty, Brothers in Arms and Medal of Honour Heroes, with a few more all based off the same war though, one was bound to change eventually. Medal of Honour’s new game has planned to revitalise the series by adding a new spin to it, but the CoD series has went modern.

At first one may be sceptical about the whole game, as I merely thought it would just be Call of Duty 3 with a new environment. However, even with the same controls, this game has drastically changed, going from the average CoD3 to this beauty. Completely changed, this is Modern Warfare.

The story is to do with a Russian terrorist threat, involving a nuke plot. Being an army game the missions take you through a modern style war to stop this from happening, and in doing so you play as a variety of characters. Straight away the game draws you in, with a decent training mission and then an excellent first mission about boarding a submarine. Unlike CoD3 where you could just run about on your own, rarely getting into trouble, this one forces you to work with your team, making it far more army-like. As you are slowly going around the submarines your fellow comrades check through doors, turning corners, very professional like, enhanced further by some of the best graphics I have seen the PS3 produce. Someone is always there giving commands and although I will not go into detail, the missions themselves make a lot of sense, not seeming obscure and un-needed. It gets eerily similar to videos on the news of civilian raids in some levels, where you are barging through houses looking for armed enemies, a fantastic thing to do, making the game that much more realistic and getting you involved.
One problem that has remained is that you get too personal with your character. Whereas I prefer to just play through the game as a soldier, CoD has the habit of certain things happening to your character, such as getting knocked out of a car where from a first person view the camera goes all blurry with someone helping you out. It would be a nice touch if you could actually skip these scenes for those not interested. However, it is one of the only bad parts of the game.
There are also new additions to the game, such as the ability to shoot through walls with certain weapons, so when an enemy hides round a corner of a thin wall, you may still have a chance of hitting him. Again, this is another improvement to the game, which, though small, makes a large difference, immersing you into the game further.

The missions themselves are good, though there may be a few too many checkpoints making it easy on the lower modes. There are numerous different environments, all very good, varying in size though not in quality. The attention to detail is huge making the game look extremely realistic, and there are a great number of weapons to choose from. You won’t find the Enfield rifle here though because of it being modern, and unlike all other WWII weapons that I have played with so much I got used to their names, there all seem new. MP5, M16A4, then the more well known Desert Eagle, Uzi and AK-47. The weapons all are different with power or reload time etc. all with a new aim which not only makes them look more modern (it is a red dot aim instead of looking down the gun sight) but also makes shooting a lot more accurate. The aiming can still be done from the hip or through the sight just like previous games. Although not all are used in the offline mode you’ll probably get a chance to use most of these weapons in online mode, which will be discussed later.
The offline game is pretty short though, and can be completed in not much longer than 5 hours excluding cut-scenes. The replay value for offline probably comes from arcade mode, which is similar to story mode but there is a point system, forcing you to get better at missions. I think that it would probably be relatively effective, maybe squeezing a few more hours of play out of me if it were not for the online mode being the main replay value.
However short it may be though the game itself is amazing and it certainly does not feel like a mediocre effort to bring warfare modern again. Although very similar to CoD3 still it by far exceeds it, rejuvenating the aging series itself and also bringing itself away from the competition between so many WWII games. It definitely sets the standard for modern games so I think that maybe Medal of Honor should focus on WWII for a while longer.

Ok, so online mode is a major advantage to this game. On the PS3 the servers have been a little awkward with over 100 000 people having logged on altogether causing a few problems. The problems are minimal though having seemed to have disappeared for me mostly yesterday. Apart from a few rank losses (which are being sorted out fast) the main problem probably comes from finding a game. Warhawk probably has the best servers for online, with CoD4 finding a game for you, after you choose the game mode. People find their favourite maps fast and I would much prefer a list so I can choose the map I want, not just the mode. However, it does not cause many problems because most of the maps are excellent.

It is a very in-depth online experience with both a ranking system army style, and a leaderboard to show how you fare against the rest of the world. The higher the army-rank the more game modes you can get into and the more guns and gun upgrades you acquire. It may seem unfair to the new players but it doesn’t work out that way since most people with good scores go on the newer game modes and those that don’t get very little advantage apart from a few perks, the red dot aim and more weapon choice though I use the first weapon acquired, available to everyone. People quickly rise in rank also and this slight disadvantage will mean they’ll have to get better anyway. It is a great system actually and means that in some of the game modes you have some serious competition. There are plenty of game modes and weapons with online an amazing experience. People seem to work in teams, going around together in many of the modes, army like and something not expected with online, and this may be because it is so easy to get killed, very few shots. Headsets are compatible and there is some team talk though the best, and by far the funniest thing I have heard are two Americans making up their own CoD theme tune. Hilarious.

The ranking system comes from earning experience from doing different things, such as killing or completing objectives. In a Ground War for example you may have to capture and defend flags. Games like this, Team Deathmatch and Free-for-all are all great parts of the game, playing like many other online FPS games and it offers a great active game of running, killing, respawning. However, a great game type I have found is ‘Search and Destroy’ which means you do not respawn but much complete objectives are part of a small team (6 v 6) such as planting or defending/defusing bombs. The no-respawn was bad at first but I soon realised it made you play a lot more realistically. Instead of running about like an idiot people work in small groups and sneak around, sniping and picking off other team members, defending. It requires a large amount of tactics and generally has some of the highest ranked people playing. There are other game modes though most are quite similar with different numbers of people supported in games, with similar objectives such as ‘defend the headquarters’ and then the old-school Deathmatch where you have to find your own weapons and upgrades.

It is the most in-depth game experience I have had online with my PS3, with online not just being a small add-on like it felt with CoD3 but like a whole new game itself. There is so much to do, increase in rank, leaderboards, get new weapons and upgrade them by doing certain challenges such as a certain amount of kills or headshots, and then there are all the excellent maps and modes.
Sure online has its problems but most of these are temporary and although I would prefer to choose my own game, rather than just game type, it has not caused me any grief and I have fast got used to it, being similar to the online mode in Resistance: Fall of Man. Being able to get friend invites to games solves some of these problems also since you can always play with your friends.

There is a multiplayer mode which is just like a 1v1 online with no leaderboard and limited weapons to choose from but it is still fun. Though I would not have minded a co-op mode for offline, or online come to think of it. Online co-op would near enough perfect this game online.

~Game Information~

Publisher: Activision
Developer: Infinity Ward
Release Date: 09/11/07
Formats: PS3, 360, PC (Nintendo DS 2008 different version)
Price: £38 ASDA
Age: 16+

~Overall~

The only problem with the offline is its length which, skipping cut-scenes will last only a few hours. The gameplay is amazing, with great guns, environments and missions with the only problem being sometimes the too personalised characters.
The game is made for online mainly though with an in depth online game that will keep you occupied for hours. Sure, it has it’s problems in finding a game, but once you are in a game the experience is nothing less than amazing, with great guns and upgrades, an in-depth rank system and over 100 000 users worldwide having logged on. The ability to call an air-strike in a match is amazing. FPS owners will not want to miss out on this game, a drastic step away from the World War II era, something that gamers have been playing for years.

Summary: War games finall go Modern. Amazing