Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Review

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is brought to you by Activision and Infinity Ward which brings back the fantastic gameplay of war but in these modern troubled times. Using the modern ripped from the headlines style of terrorism using the Chernobyl accident of Russia as its staging and source of nuclear materials, terrorists bring the world to its knees with nuclear weapons threats.

The old terrorist and nuclear weapons headline may seem like a tired cliché but it works so well and you won't be sorry for the style this adds to the gameplay. You'll be spending enough time ducking and shooting from cover in this extremely fast paced first person shooter even though it does have a short single player component.

The story line follows a two person perspective as you play either of a British Special Air Service operative or a US Marine trying to sort out the latest threat to the United States and the world. This jumping back and forth between the two characters works very well along with the one time trip back 15 years to a previous mission with the British SAS that explains more of the story.

The story is not really needed but you do need to pay attention to the objectives of the mission or you will be a bit lost but even then you can follow the clearly marked compass to your objectives and the quick pop ups that tell you what to do. The save system works very well with numerous location saves along the levels as well as the ability to save and exit the game for later play.

Now to the great stuff, the game is awesome, a simple fact that I will not skim over. The gameplay is fast and furious with graphics that are so incredible you will be amazed and swearing it is real news footage. I know many of the things I am saying in my review go along the same lines as other reviews but the game is just so straightforward that it screams these things to everyone who plays it. The graphics are realistically great, the effects are fantastic and audio is very well done in both the effects and voice acting.

The games difficulty levels are the general settings of harder and easier with a very good AI that does not use the old the harder the game gets the more enemies they throw at you. The AI is very good here and will do all kinds of things that is very surprising to see in a video game. Guards will swat away bugs, sit around and smoke or do things people do both normally and when they don't think anyone is looking. But in the game and fighting you will see guys use cover and not the flimsy ones of plaster board covered walls but the concrete of the foundations instead, they will lie down and try to hide in grass and use weapons effectively.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare uses a heavy bit of cut scenes and film footage to keep the story intact that seems a bit over the top, one scene is even from the eyes of the about to be executed overthrown President while the opening credits roll for several minutes. This use of cut scenes continues and seemed a bit overdone to me, I think more effort could have been put into more of the single player campaign instead of cut scenes. I like the single player sections of first person shooters more than the multiplayer and I am a bit disappointed about the short campaign so it may be that. The cut scenes are award winning quality in themselves and the games cutscenes do keep up the storyline extremely well.

Modern Warfare uses several distinct styles in the gameplay with one mission totally devoted to the sniper abilities and another to the unique AC-130 gunship shooting that is so fun. The All Ghillied Up mission has you following your British leader in a sniping mission that is the trip to the past with all the fun of trying to be silent and unseen in your Ghillie suit. You get to try your hand at sneaking past guards and letting them walk right by over you as well as sniping from long distances.

The AC-130 Gunship mission is another unique gameplay element with you at the camera controls of three caliber weapons inside the huge circling aircraft. You must protect a group of soldiers and later civilians as they head for an extraction site in another city. Your weapons are the standard ones on the Air Force airplane with the same devastating results for the larger ones. Hitting the smaller weapons fire and shooting the Gatling gun with the small puffs of your hits is nothing compared to the two larger caliber rounds that are car busters or building busters.

The weapons do not decimate the buildings though as they are very static and indestructible throughout the game but you will kill many ground pounders by hitting the building they are near. This not being able to destroy buildings works out well because your shots can go through them nicely to round out the very realistic weapons effects including being able to shoot through doors, walls and light steel. Your rounds of larger weapons can go through walls like regular drywall covered wood studs and get the bad guys hiding there.

This use of realism is a great effect in the game and just adds so much to the realism where now you have to also worry about that cover your hiding behind and whether the bad guys can shoot you through it as well. Modern Warfare uses these little additions to the games realism and effects throughout and just creates a fantastic first person shooter.

One very unique spot comes in a few times when the cut scene transfers directly to the gameplay so you can follow the story to its logical and good guy versus bad guy conclusion at the end. The game doesn't end with the single person campaign though; the multiplayer is just as fantastic with plenty of fast paced action.

The multiplayer gaming has the added bonus of not just bragging rights but the weapons and abilities bonus you earn while playing and working toward a better character. Each rank you earn also comes with a bonus while playing like new weapons and classes along with some player abilities like sprinting longer or more carrying capacity.

There are no new grounds broken in Modern Warfare but the game screams fantastic gameplay and awesome multiplayer content. The single player can be finished in about five hours or so on normal difficulty but that finish is just the beginning. You can play in an arcade mode that simply replays each mission or the whole campaign using a time and point system. It is another way to play the game and see how well you can do using a score instead of the achievements of the game.

The multiplayer gaming is from a leveling up and earning rank perspective that I think adds so much to a multiplayer game for the value and lasting playability. You work toward unlocking classes, weapons and perks or abilities by earning points for everything you do in the multiplayer gaming.

The classes you work toward are six predefined ones and you also can create your own once you level up high enough which just means you can carry a variety of weapons and equipment of any of the classes for your own warrior selection. The perks or abilities you earn are a nice gathering of choices that add to the classes or your own class that help balance out your soldier.

The entire multiplayer experience will be a great one and I can see this game going a long time on the great gameplay of the multiplayer portion with the classes, ranks and perks to earn. The games are played on a good variety of maps and are very well balanced for everyone no matter that they have a higher rank or not. Even from the very start you can be king of the troops by using the kill streak bonuses like three kills before dying gets you radar coverage of your enemies while five allows you to call in air strikes.

Overall the Xbox 360 version and PC version are almost identical and play almost the same except for the keyboard and mouse advantage of the PC. The Xbox 360 version does not have any better graphics if you have a decent computer and the PC version will have the better control as far as weapons aiming while the Xbox 360 has the automatic aiming when you press the left trigger while aiming. Other than that the two versions are the same and are equally great, no, fantastic, no freaking awesome.

Well you get the idea, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare may have taken a little while to come out but it was definitely worth the wait and then some. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a fantastic game and worth both the single player and multiplayer gaming action. Call of Duty 4 is definitely a top ten video game for 2007.

Ratings: Graphics & Audio: 25/25, Gameplay: 25/25, Creativity 22/25, Fun 25/25
Total: 97/100