Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Beta Review

I have never been a fan of the Call of Duty series. I love to play FPS, and my favorite for a long time standing was the original Ghost Recon on XBOX. With Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, I had to see for myself what all the hype was about.

My biggest problem with the COD series is the "iron sights" feature. While I do my best to run and gun with the rest, I am a sniper through and through. This game finally gives me a chance to show that off. In Ghost recon you had maps that even the sniper rifles could not see all the way across, and since GRIT all the games just giving us smaller and smaller maps, forcing us to spawn in front of our enemies, who are anxiously waiting to tear us to pieces. But no longer. Whit a mixture of wide open spaces, torn-down cities, and even an invaded barracks, COD4 seems like it will cater too all players.

Set spawns are a thing of the past, with a noob friendly spawn feature that allows you to spawn to an alive comrade, spawn camping just got harder. That is not to say it can't be done, if everyone is dead, everyone spawns in the same place, if you get cornered in a building, you will continue to spawn in that building into at least one of your party gets out. And hopefully that person is not the first to die!

There are few disappointments in some of the game play that I hope gets fixed before final release. A lot of this can be seen just by watching the kill camera when you die, corners where you thought you were safe, looked like you were just sitting out in the open from the guy you thought you were hiding from. Grenades that were thrown before you died don't go off after you die. Do they share my health points? C-4 is fairly weak, or doesn't go off at all. Stuns grenades have some splash damage, causing injury or even death. Rockets have almost no splash damage, allow players to run right through an explosion and gun you down while reloading. A sniper can only hold his breath for 3 seconds? At least length that to 5 seconds or so if we have "Extreme Conditioning" as a perk guys! The iron sights once again take up to much of my screen, I can't see what I am shooting at anymore! Give us some decent 2x scopes or something it is "Modern Warfare" after all. I see problems coming with the run-jump-lay down as was seen in battlefield, also using these maneuvers to get to places on the map that are supposed to be inaccessible. If you don't want us there, block it off cause people will find a way.

Along in all it looks like a great title that is sure to please many people.