Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Xbox 360, PS3

      This game has really made it's rounds. It's been around for years and it's sold tons upon tons of copies. A new copy of the game still will run you for about $40-$50 as of the time of this review. Now, for me, I never played any of these war-time shooters. They're a bit too mainstream for me and I've always been too much of a snobby gamer to care. I've sat and watched people play Medal of Honor, past Call of Duty games, etc. I just never saw a point to the games. They seemed way too repetitive with almost no story backing them up. It seemed more like a cash-in on kids who fantasize about kickin' ass in a war only glorifying the act further in the process. However, everyone always raved about Call of Duty 4 being this beast of a game. And with Modern Warfare 2 on it's way, with myself wanting to become a reviewer, what kind of credibility would I have if I never played as many games as I could, let alone the most popular one of the last few years? So yes, I played it, beat it, beat it again on Veteran, and toyed around with the multiplayer. So was it all hype or was it just your everyday war game?

Gameplay

+ It plays the same as most shooters in it's genre so there isn't much that's new to pickup or understand. In the end, it relied on the experience it could deliver instead of introducing something new and innovative. The game had a way of really immersing you into what was going on around you that played out thanks to it's scripted events. It always made sure you were in the middle of all the action all the time. Paired with some really tight mechanics, the game was quite the adventure. There are some moments I don't think you'll ever forget. 

+ The online versus mode however, that's where the game shines. It has a level system that unlocks different skills for your soldier. These skills enable you to create something that would let you play the game the way you want to. If I like running like crazy and knifing people, you can make your guy run faster, be invisible to radar, and you can give him a larger melee range. If I wanted to gun people down in close-quarters encounters, I can increase his bullet fire speed, damage, and accuracy. It makes the multiplayer affair addictive and refreshing.

- The game is pretty thin after you beat it. Unfortunately, the scripted events were one too many and some of them pretty faulty. 

-The weapon variety was meager and most of the guns felt the same. Most of the differences were pretty slim and it didn't feel like it really mattered which gun you had. 

-The grenade indicator was RIDICULOUS. It had caused the majority of my deaths in the game. The game will tell you where a grenade is by showing you where it is via a little picture on your hud. If it's at the top of the screen, it means the grenade is to the front. At the bottom, it means the grenade is behind you. So on, so forth. Here's what happened a number of times: 


"There's a grenade over there."
"Alright, I'll just run away from it."
*runs away*
"Yeah, about that grenade, sorry. It wasn't over there. It's actually in front of you...."
"WHA-"
*BOOM*


Yeah, it was not exactly the best of times. 

- On the harder difficulties, the friendly AI was basically playing the role of being your worst enemy. They would not help you at all but they would stop you from advancing by blocking doorways and cover. They also enjoyed pushing you out of cover into 100% accuracy bullet walls of death. 

- Flash grenades. If I'm correct, flash grenades blind people and make a big disorienting bang. It can't necessarily affect them the same way it would if they looked at it compared to if they didn't look at it. So why was it that it would have a harder time doing it's job from the front of the enemy? How does tossing the flash behind the enemy blind them? 

-The game wasn't super clear on what you needed to do all the time. I felt like I was guessing most of the time and the destination marker seemed to act up at times, telling me to go the wrong way when I was on the right path.


This game could've really used SOME polish. 


Graphics

= I guess at the time the graphics were awesome but they were just mediocre to me. All of the textures were low resolution if you took time to notice it. Most of the effects, like fire and smoke, were just revolving 2D images. Most of this game just used what it needed to get the job done and no more than that. I don't see why everyone clamors over how great the graphics are when there's a LARGE number of games that put in much more effort to make beauty bloom in their game. It was by no means an ugly game. It just wasn't anything pretty either.

Sound

+ The sound effects in this game are really where it's at in this game. You play a VERY large chunk of this game without music so all it comes down to is you and the sounds of the battlefield. The explosions were punchy, the guns felt like they were tangible. Let's see you not get freaked out when bullets start whizzing past your head and you run into a claymore. It felt like a lot of attention went into this department.

Story


- I never felt like there was a story, at least not one that had any weight to it. Throughout the entire game, you play as someone else every mission like some war edition of musical chairs. Because of this, you don't really get attached to any of the characters, making all of the slightly emotional "Oh my god!" moments fall flat. They were still cool to watch and be involved in but it just felt like the game was trying to get some kind of sympathy out of you whenever something shocking happened without really giving you a reason why you should care.


- It felt more like there was a war going on just because there was one instead of really delving into the reasons of why there was one. Modern Warfare basically showed you who that bad guys were and that they should go down just because they were marked as the bad guys. I got more of a sense that the game was trying to show how awesome a war was instead of showing the real sacrifice that both sides have to make in a war. Modern Warfare's plot seemed shallow at best.


Should you buy it?

     No, I don't think it's worth the purchase. The initial run through the campaign can be a cool experience at times, and the multiplayer is great fun. However, the campaign is short  and you could become a bit more cynical towards the experience if you go through it multiple times. Multiplayer is also lacking currently since the release of Modern Warfare 2. It was hard to get a really good room going although I happened to be playing around MW2's release. Don't spend the $40-$50 people are asking for this game. Infinity Ward and Activision only put the minimal amount of effort required into this game. It only deserves the minimum amount of what it's worth which I would say is somewhere around the $5-$15 mark. I suggest renting it if you really want to play it to get some of the references in MW2 although, personally, I don't think it's really necessary to play this before the sequel.