Well I picked up Call of Duty 4 on a whim on Sunday since I heard it was a pretty good game, though I had not formally researched reviews and whatnot... I beat the Campaign mode Tuesday, and I would have beaten it sooner if I hadn't gotten stuck on one of the later levels... Here we go:

Graphically, the game is beautiful. On par with most games nowadays. The character models are well rendered as seen in this screenshot:
http://gaming.instablogs.com/images/call-of-duty-4_52.jpg
They use HDR lighting, so if you're going from indoors to outdoors, the light is going to be brighter until your virtual eyes adjust to the light (a la Half Life 2). One thing I am slightly disappointed in is the explosion graphics. They look dated especially when you're getting air-striked in multiplayer. It's like they reverted back to using flat 2d animated sprites of fire and added transparency effects to hide it. But since that's my only qualm with the graphics, it's a moot point.'

Sounds are typical war-sounds. Guns sound like guns, nothing really remarkable you can do with em I guess. Voice acting is well done.

On my computer, the game seemed to stutter when I moved my mouse, but found that turning on "Mouse Smoothing" fixed this. For all the stuff going on, there was no apparent drop in frame rate. (Specs: Core 2 duo 3ghz, 2 gig ram, 8800 GTS)

Gameplay: I'll be speaking of multiplayer in a moment, for now, here's my opinion of the Campaign... I made the mistake of starting in "Hardened Mode" rather than Normal as I probably should have.... The game was a challenge and I got into moments where I couldn't find cover from enemies and kept having to reload from dying multiple times. There's a point where a game needs to be not so hard as to not frustrate the player. There's not a lot of skill involved as it's mostly run forward, shoot bad guys, advance, repeat. Standing in one spot taking out bad guys does not help because they apparently infinitely spawn until you reach triggers throughout the level as you progress. There's a lot of trial and error for some levels, because you have to figure out which direction enemies spawn from so you don't get flanked so easily.

The controls aren't as robust as in Battlefield 2... You can't change your rifle to "auto" to "semi-auto" which would help a bit for accuracy. I blame the fact that it was made with consoles in mind, and consoles don't have a lot of buttons Overall it feels better than other console shooters though, especially when I figured out about the mouse smoothing.

The story takes place in "modern day" as opposed to WWII as the other games in its franchise (I've only ever played the first CoD). As for actual "story" it isn't really deep. You're after a group of bad guys trying to launch a nuke. Simple. But there are lots of cinematic moments in between, which I refuse to discuss because you need to play it for yourself for the full shock value. Seriously, this game will awe you at some points if you're not expecting it. The ending is somewhat abrupt, but there is closure so I have no complaints. (Unlike Timeshift where you basically run through hell for nothing).

At one point in the game, you encounter a "flashback" which takes place 15 years before in which you play a lieutenant of the British SAS with a mission to assassinate the "present day" bad guy (apparently your assassination attempt only rips off his arm, and he lives). I was on the second to hardest setting throughout the game, and though it was hard, I got though no problem... Well at the end of this flash back, you are at the rendezvous point waiting for your ride, and literally something like 20 guys spawn that you need to take care of... Which isn't that bad, considering they give you 30 seconds to plant claymore mines and whatnot... The hard part is when you get another wave of 20 or so guys, in addition to 3 helicopter loads of them coming in from all sides.... and you have no cover. And the little cover you do have, they throw grenades at you like you were a magnet for explosives.... I must have spent 2 hours playing that level over and over again trying to survive till the chopper got there, and would make it about half way before some team came around and blew me up or shot me, or an attack dog tore out my throat... Yea, they have attack dogs you need to worry about. If they jump on you, it will prompt you to push the melee button at the precise time or you die. If you hit it too early, it bites your arm off... if you do it too late, it rips your throat out. It's not as hard as ... say Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles button pushing is though.

Anyway, I finally figured out that I could pick the mission separately, start at the beginning, and play in Recruit (ie. No0b mode) and I even THAT was hard due to all the troops.

As for Multiplayer, that's a whole different ballgame. Here's where I start comparing it to Battlefield 2...

First off, I approached this game as a veteran Battlefield 2 player, so my standards were pretty much set as far as what I thought to expect from Multiplayer, but I was strangely shocked at the result. First off, apparently they don't seem to have a master server in which your stats get saved, which makes me wonder how easily people hacked their game to enable all the specials they can get....Anyway...

So I hop onto multiplayer and reset all my controls (because apparently they didn't save over from single player). I check out "Join Server" and there are something like 19,250 servers it was trying to refresh.... So I quickly hit cancel, and looked through the couple thousand or so that came up. Picked one that looked moderately populated with about 17 or so people (I'm used to the 64 player servers BF2 offers, so I figured this would be a bit more personable).

Call of Duty 4 offers several modes of gameplay which gives it an advantage over Battlefield 2. With Battlefield 2, you're stuck forever capturing flags... Stationary flags... With Call of Duty 4, they have a mode similar to that, but the "flag" or area you need to capture will move to a different spot every time you capture it successfully. Gives it a more dynamic feeling, but that's also where CoD4 is different is dynamics. With Battlefield 2, you can have a commander UAV the area and give strategic plans on how to go about winning... With Call of Duty 4, it's a freaking free for all, for the most part. Even with teams, the only difference is that there are some people now on the map you're not supposed to shoot. There's no TIME for teamwork because the average life expectancy is somewhere in the 1-2 minute range. If are into Team Fortress and Counterstrike, with fast paced action, and adrenaline up the wazoo, this is that game. If you can kill 3 people in a row without dying, you can call in UAV support for your team... Which amazingly is rather rare, since only spawn campers and bunny hoppers (ie. douchebags) typically live that long. If you kill (I believe it's 6) 6 people in a row, you can call in an attack helicopter... Problem with this is that it's totally computer controlled... Good thing about this is it usually gets you even more kills rather easily and effectively...

Which leads me to the fact that the only vehicles in this game are useless props that explode to hit people with splash damage. That's one thing BF2 has over CoD4 is drivable vehicles. On the other hand, enemies appear on your radar whenever they shoot an unsilenced gun, which is handier than BF2... Conversely, BF2 actually shows you which direction the enemy is facing on the map, in Cod4, you only see a red dot.

Both have pros and cons.

In CoD4, you can shoot a claymore to get rid of it so you don't die... In BF2, claymores are so small and unnoticeable, that you usually don't have the chance to shoot them before you're dead anyway. Claymores are also much more noticeable, with red laser beams shooting off to show which way they're facing.

Another difference is the unlockables. In BF2, you unlock special weapons by earning points for flag captures, kills, and team help like medical supply or ammo supply. With COD4, you get points for completing challenges, which adds another dimension BF2 doesn't have... I mean in BF2, you can win medals, but you don't get anything for them. In CoD4, you actually unlock more options like Cammo paint for your guns and silencers and more guns. Levels also come easier, since there are so many of them... According to my stats, I'm logged in at over 152 hours on BF2, and I'm on Gunnery Sergeant which is equivalent to leveling up 7 times... In CoD4, a Gunnery Sergeant is level 17, and I made it there in 2 nights. I'm actually level 19 now. So the pace of leveling up is much much faster (as is the game as a whole).

People also have a more realistic amount of damage they can take before they die... ie. It's easier to kill people in CoD4. In Battlefield 2, health is administered through medics or ammo crates... In CoD4, if you survive through a partial fight and your health is low, the screen will beat with red, but your health will return... Which is nice because it just adds to the whole fast pace of the thing.

Overall, I'd say give the mutiplayer a chance just because it'll shoot you up with adrenaline. Even though I probably prefer BF2 overall for strategy, CoD4 multiplayer is a fun game all in its own, and raises my personal value in the game, though $49 is probably still a bit more than I'd like to have paid for it.


Overall great game: 9/10
Pros: Fast paced. The only time you get to rest is when your computer is loading up the next level. Great graphics.
Cons: Hard as hell on higher difficulties that will make you want to put your Desert Eagle in your mouth and blow your brains all over the monitor.

Also stay around after the credits, like a good movie, they put in a bonus mission unrelated to the actual story that takes about 1 minute 30 seconds to beat... If you don't, the plane you're in blows up... Happy hunting

Strangely, I was just playing this game yesterday on the XBox 360. I know I've said a lot about playing first-person-shooters with the WASD and mouse controls being my favourite, but as neither the console nor game is mine I feel justified in saying that I'm still a true PC-game fan.

Anyway, I've managed to complete the entire storyline in Veteran difficulty (after many, many attempts on some levels, waiting for extraction as waves of enemies swarm over your position being one of those) and found it to be fantastic fun. I've yet to dabble in the multiplayer game, but if it's anything like the previous CoD releases (which I have for PC, by the way) then I don't really feel a need to. The single-player campaign was long enough for me to have a great time playing it, and although the storyline was a little "standard" it had enough twists in it for me to not be able to completely predict what was going to happen.

Visually, the game is relatively stunning. The only quarrel I had was, as Herbert mentioned, the explosions did seem a little flat. The shadows and other general lighting is done fantastically in my opinion. Interestingly I seem to remember that you didn't actually have a shadow yourself, but other than that it was perfect.

As for the bonus mission, Herbert, try doing it on Veteran difficulty, I haven't managed to get anywhere near the end in the 60 seconds you're given.

This post has been edited by Mordent: Apr 10 2008, 09:40 AM

I took the first training mission and got a laughable time, so I tried again and did it in 21 secs, they recommended me "hardened"... so I did.

It is hard, but not THAT hard. I do remember how hard it was the last part of the flashback, waiting for the helicopter that took ages, and lotsa enemies everywhere, I had to leave my friend behind and went to the back of a little house, or whatever that was. Then I could just kill people that were approaching my location, and survive long enough til the heli arrived.

And of course, the last one (epilogue) was hard as hell.. it took me like 2 hours to beat that level, the funny thing is, you have to beat it in under 2 minutes or less, or you fail the mission. That was my favorite level! "weapon free"

my pc sucks, but i still got nice graphics and very good FPS, my card is a 7600gs but it handled it very well.

i would recommend this game to those who loved the first CoD but didn't so much part 2 and 3, cuz it was more of the same, but this time is different.. its modern warfare! very very good game imo

Well once I beat Single Player, the only time I ever went back was to show my friends a couple of the more dramatic scenes. Multiplayer is definitely numero uno in terms of what you're getting for replay value.

Though I was used to Battlefield 2, I'm slowly "seeing the light" when playing COD4. The biggest difference that I like at the moment is the unlockables. Battlefield 2, you only get medals and unlock guns every 20,000 points or whatever it is in the higher ranks... With Call of Duty 4, you actually get more stuff if you perform certain challenges, which is a bit more incentive.

I've been experimenting with playing styles, and so far I prefer either sniper with all possible damage turned up, or a stealthy special forces with a silenced M5 and invisible to enemy radar.

Of course there are tons of people better than me on a lot of servers, but when you find a server with some people on par with your skills, it can be quite a fun time. One of the cool things is playing on a Snipers Only server on Free For All... You have to actually stop and listen for footsteps over the random shots of gunfire so you can track other players and hope to sneak up on them. Other servers, such as this one with a level super small and super crowded, pump up both frustration and adrenaline. You'll often die as soon as you spawn because of spawn campers, but the level is so small, they usually don't live more than 10 seconds anyway, and then you can hopefully take their place! I got more points in one round of that than I had in about an hour of regular game time. It is frustrating though with one of the "perks" that you can enable that will drop a grenade when you die, essentially killing anyone in the nearby radius of where you died.... It can be quite frustrating to be stuck in a corner, shooting at someone coming at you, and successfully killing them, only to find the little grenade icon pop up indicating that you have exactly 1.78 seconds till you are incapacitated by shrapnel. All in all, a fun time.

I found that playing hard core CoD4 and going back to Battlefield 2 that my game actually improved, in that I was more "awake" to my surroundings, always checking my back, and just totally kicking more butt than I had before.

It's a good change of pace to switch between the two. Each has their own benefits and drawbacks. The lack of vehicles is a bit disappointing in Cod4, but overall, it doesn't kill the game. The game modes available help make up for that.

Games in CoD4 typically last anywhere from 5-15 minutes, as opposed to 30-45 minute rounds in Battlefield 2 (with the larger maps and even teams). The fast pace keeps you on your toes and constantly looking to find the best kit for a level, as some levels are built well for sniping, and others fit well for close quarters combat.

Overall, I'd recommend this game for anyone into multiplayer battles, but I'd wait on getting this if you're only interested in Solo campaigns, because theirs is too dang short to be worth $50

Call of duty is the best game. I first didn't think it would be good and had said no game can get me off halo 3, but my friend wanted to swap and gave me COD 4 (call of duty 4) for a few days.
When i started playing this game i just did not want to come of there was so much to do and was really fun, so days later i bought it for my self and started playing it on live.
The live version is really good and you have so many things to unlock that you never get bored of the game. The game play is also very good and a lot of people on my contacts list are always playing it as well

I hope they make a COD 5 . I would pre order straight away

I finished COD2 and COD3, COD2 was great, especially the story. COD3 didn't live up to the expectations in my opinion, iam gona get COD4 asap

Yeah you should, like i mentioned it's really good. If you liked the older CODs then you would definitely like COD 4. COD 4 is good on PC, Xbox 360 and on the PS3 so which ever you prefer to get it on you will really like it.

Call of Duty 4 overall is more enjoyable than Battlefield 2 in terms of gameplay and graphics, although Battlefield 2 multiplayer has vehicles (including airplanes) and the ability for a single person to command the team. I suppose Call of Duty 4 is better in single player and Battlefield 2 slightly better in multiplayer.

Ok, people there is a trick on the flashback mission, ala the sniper mission. When going to the LZ you will pass a pool with some dogs in it.. DON'T KILL THE DOGS, if you don't bother them or fire your gun they will leave you alone. When you get to the LZ face where they will be coming from and put ALL your claymores on the right side. Go back behind the farris wheel and wait, the dogs will kill the ones from the left and you have more claymores on the right then normal slowing them down in that direction (yes the AI is awesome in that level)

Well once I beat Single Player, the only time I ever went back was to show my friends a couple of the more dramatic scenes. Multiplayer is definitely numero uno in terms of what you're getting for replay value.

Though I was used to Battlefield 2, I'm slowly "seeing the light" when playing COD4. The biggest difference that I like at the moment is the unlockables. Battlefield 2, you only get medals and unlock guns every 20,000 points or whatever it is in the higher ranks... With Call of Duty 4, you actually get more stuff if you perform certain challenges, which is a bit more incentive.

I've been experimenting with playing styles, and so far I prefer either sniper with all possible damage turned up, or a stealthy special forces with a silenced M5 and invisible to enemy radar.

Of course there are tons of people better than me on a lot of servers, but when you find a server with some people on par with your skills, it can be quite a fun time. One of the cool things is playing on a Snipers Only server on Free For All... You have to actually stop and listen for footsteps over the random shots of gunfire so you can track other players and hope to sneak up on them. Other servers, such as this one with a level super small and super crowded, pump up both frustration and adrenaline. You'll often die as soon as you spawn because of spawn campers, but the level is so small, they usually don't live more than 10 seconds anyway, and then you can hopefully take their place! tongue.gif I got more points in one round of that than I had in about an hour of regular game time. It is frustrating though with one of the "perks" that you can enable that will drop a grenade when you die, essentially killing anyone in the nearby radius of where you died.... It can be quite frustrating to be stuck in a corner, shooting at someone coming at you, and successfully killing them, only to find the little grenade icon pop up indicating that you have exactly 1.78 seconds till you are incapacitated by shrapnel. All in all, a fun time.

I found that playing hard core CoD4 and going back to Battlefield 2 that my game actually improved, in that I was more "awake" to my surroundings, always checking my back, and just totally kicking more butt than I had before.

It's a good change of pace to switch between the two. Each has their own benefits and drawbacks. The lack of vehicles is a bit disappointing in Cod4, but overall, it doesn't kill the game. The game modes available help make up for that.

Games in CoD4 typically last anywhere from 5-15 minutes, as opposed to 30-45 minute rounds in Battlefield 2 (with the larger maps and even teams). The fast pace keeps you on your toes and constantly looking to find the best kit for a level, as some levels are built well for sniping, and others fit well for close quarters combat.

Overall, I'd recommend this game for anyone into multiplayer battles, but I'd wait on getting this if you're only interested in Solo campaigns, because theirs is too dang short to be worth $50