Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Review

[tmeacham]

Review written by Rob Wright.

Call of Duty gets a brilliant makeover with Modern Warfare, which brings the World War II shooter series to the present day. Is Call of Duty 4 the best title of the series?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2007/11/14/callofduty4_review/

 

[SEALBoy]

Nice review, but what difficulty were you playing at? 10 hours to complete the campaign is about 4 hours too long... unless you were playing insane or something.

 

[robwright]

Nice review, but what difficulty were you playing at? 10 hours to complete the campaign is about 4 hours too long... unless you were playing insane or something.

I played it on Hardened, and took my time with it. Hey, what can I say? I'm not very good. Plus, the dogs kept tearing me to shreds. I had real problems timing my melee attacks on the pooches.

 

[3Ball]

I played it on Hardened, and took my time with it. Hey, what can I say? I'm not very good. Plus, the dogs kept tearing me to shreds. I had real problems timing my melee attacks on the pooches.

lol its ok Rob, my roommate is playing it on the same difficulty and he cant beat the part where you have to run down the hill from the barn and get to the chopper before they leave you in like a minute and a half or so...lol i think he just quit!

Best,

3Ball

 

[Flyingpolok]

Awesome review Awesome game!

 

[robwright]

lol its ok Rob, my roommate is playing it on the same difficulty and he cant beat the part where you have to run down the hill from the barn and get to the chopper before they leave you in like a minute and a half or so...lol i think he just quit!

Best,

3Ball

Oh that section gave me fits, too. Very challenging, especially with the clock running. It took me a while to figure out that I could use the air strike command more than once, which helped. And the minigun was just awesome.

 

[DigiSol]

You didn't talk about the Airplane shoot-out to rescue someone. The difficult level you play at changes the time limit which really turns up the heat. One of my favorite missions.

 

[SEALBoy]

I see, I played on Normal because I knew from past experience that Hardened in CoD could be a b!tch to get through on some firefights. Hats off to you if you managed to finish the game on Hardened.

What part did the dogs keep getting you?

@3Ball, that part was pretty bad even on Normal, in the end I just ran like a chicken all the way down to the gas pump with the nice window tiles. Can't imagine how it'd be on Hardened.

I absolutely loved the part where you're playing as Price and have to hold off against an onslaught of baddies with a sniper. I lost count of how many suckers fell under my majestic sniper...

 

[gm0n3y]

I haven't played the single player campaign yet, but the multiplayer is astounding. It is by far the most intense and realistic feeling shooter I have ever played. The audio is really top notch for all of the gunfire and explosions. I also love that you can shoot through walls (especially with the Deep Impact perk). I hope the modding community goes to town with COD4 as they much as they did with COD2. The only complaint I have so far is the limited number of levels, but, I'm sure the community is in the process of making new ones. I didn't know what to expect for COD4, but it definitely one of the 2 or 3 games I have ever played (the multiplayer is definitely better than Halo 3).

 

[robwright]

I see, I played on Normal because I knew from past experience that Hardened in CoD could be a b!tch to get through on some firefights. Hats off to you if you managed to finish the game on Hardened.

What part did the dogs keep getting you?

Sniper mission when you're playing as Price and have to run like hell to the landing zone. Before you enter the apartment building, there's that section where a bunch of Russian soldiers come at you amidst wrecked cars and two busses. Then all the sudden, two hell hounds come screaming out of the bushes. Aaarrrgghhh....

Yes, the game is extremely difficult in some areas at Hardened, the mad dash BACK down the hill to the helicopter being one of them. Still great fun, though.

 

[devolutionist]

OK, I don't like being the lone stick in the mud, but I thought the multiplayer was absolutely horrible as far as gameplay went. Visually it's great... but it's Counterstrike. If you were to blindfold me and sit me in front of a PC running it, my first impression would've been that this was a CS:S mod. The points system is totally bolted on - points are stored locally, not on a server. So if I play from my laptop or from my desktop with the same account, my points will be different.

Now all that alone isn't the end of the world. For me, the worst thing about it was that there is no way to form distinguishable squads. The action is so chaotic - which sometimes is a good thing but it's like that on ALL maps - that if you're trying to play with friends on teamspeak, it's virtually impossible to keep track of them, where they are, what they're doing, etc. If I could just make them a different color in the minimap, I'd be happy.

My final gripe is the balance of the game. The weapon unlocks give the guys that play seven hours a day SO much more of an advantage that it's ridiculous. If you're on a map with an M16 - or even the M4 or MP5, and the rest of the guys on the map have P90's, you might as well leave the server because your kill:death ratio is going to end up being around 1:10.

Like I said, I hate to be a stick in the mud since we're having a big CoD4 love-in here, but I feel like I wasted my $50 on a single player game that lasts 6 hours, and a multiplayer game that's unoriginal and unbalanced.

But hey... it IS pretty, you can't argue with that.

 

[Maziar]

One of the best games i have ever played , very addictive, very nice story and also very nice graphics too

 

[itotallybelieveyou]

It's addictive online with such nice gfx

 

[sprucebr1]

I Love this game, the hell with crysis. I'm not even done the campaign, and I want more. This is by far the best of the series, call of Duty, and COD 2 we're good, but this is great! My hats off to Infinity Ward, they kicked some Treyarc butt. FPS games belong on PC, that was the mistake with COD3. Anyways I love it. nice review.

 

[saintones]

Rob, didn't you help Gaz from PC Gamer build his PC, he was braggin you up in his article last month.. I could use some help : )

 

[SEALBoy]

I havent played Crysis yet so I can't really talk about that, but people have been complaining that CoD4 is unoriginal and linear. I don't get their point. So what? It doesn't matter if the game isn't terribly innovative, as long as its fun as hell to play. Enjoy a game because it's fun, not "new".

 

[vip3569]

amazing game. i only have an amd fx-55 with a 7900gt. Lets me play at 1440x900 with max everything settings. Developers need to learn how to optimize a game like these guys!

 

[someguyy]

I give major credit to the guys at Infinity Ward. Despite being brand new it still runs better and looks nicer than COD2 ever did for me. The single player did feel a bit short but that is because i dont think any of it was a redundant as COD2 was at some points.

Yeah, the multiplayer does feel a bit like CS (then again what do i know, i never played CS). My beef with multiplayer is the maps feeling to small, then again i played a lot of the Battlefield series so that spoiled me some.

It is still a sweet game though, totally worth the $50.

 

[Maziar]

It's addictive online with such nice gfx

Unfortunately my internet connection is very poor (only 19.5kb/s) so i mostly dont play online

 

[randomizer]

The biggest graphical improvement over COD2 IMO was the lighting. Smoke is the same, textures I haven't bothered to look at much. But flares etc add alot to the atmosphere especially at night.

On the topic of difficulty levels, has anyone played through on veteran? Or don't they have it in this one? I'm still playing COD2 through on veteran.

EDIT: Rob, what's the specs for your PC?

 

[terror112]

Yea this Game Rocks, Almost done with it on sinlge player on hardened. The Huge Battles are very Intense. The worst part about being on hardened is you can die in like 2 shots from a powerful weapon like an AK-47. The single player is freaking amazing. After im Done I will try the game on veteran, Might die in 1 hit lol. Also I remember that mission with the Dogs. I just shoot at them they didnt even get close enough for me to melee them.

 

[seeker1321]

I would agree this game is amazing.

FYI in your review you mentioned it only supports 18 in multiplayer, I believe that is only for consoles, I am pretty sure the limit is higher for pc, for example my clan has a 28 slot server we are playing it on.


For those of you not liking the fairness of the points system, all those advanced guns get dropped so you are free to pick them up and use them. Plus a lot of people have been using the Xfire mod to play. It levels the playing field, by offering everyone most all the guns, and certain perks.

 

[robwright]

I would agree this game is amazing.

FYI in your review you mentioned it only supports 18 in multiplayer, I believe that is only for consoles, I am pretty sure the limit is higher for pc, for example my clan has a 28 slot server we are playing it on.


For those of you not liking the fairness of the points system, all those advanced guns get dropped so you are free to pick them up and use them. Plus a lot of people have been using the Xfire mod to play. It levels the playing field, by offering everyone most all the guns, and certain perks.

Good catch, thanks. I meant to clarify that point -- consoles have 18 player limit, PC has 32. Therefore PC rules! Still, I thought it was worth mentioning as a flaw in the game that most version of CoD4 can only support 18 players online.

Did I mention the PC version blows away the console version?

 

[robwright]

The biggest graphical improvement over COD2 IMO was the lighting. Smoke is the same, textures I haven't bothered to look at much. But flares etc add alot to the atmosphere especially at night.

On the topic of difficulty levels, has anyone played through on veteran? Or don't they have it in this one? I'm still playing COD2 through on veteran.

EDIT: Rob, what's the specs for your PC?

I ran CoD4 on a Gateway FX, Intel quad core 2.66 Ghz with a single 8800 GTX and 3 GB of memory. I had all the settings at Yes or Normal (except dual video cards setting, obviously) with 4X AA and a max resolution of 1680x1050 (which coincidentally were NOT the game's optimal settings) and it ran perfectly. I didn't run any benchmarks for frame rates, but I'll probably do that in the next week or so. I agree that Infinity Ward has done an excellent job optimizing this game. It can run on current hardware AND look fantastic, unlike a certain other FPS title that was release this week....maybe a comparison is in order....

 

[randomizer]

maybe a comparison is in order....

You can do it!

Interesting how the "optimal settings" style options have changed in recent games. In COD2, it would nearly always default to lowest settings except for textures, and set the resolution at 800x600 or 1024x768. Pretty much the same for all past titles. COD4 and another "FPS title that was released this week" both set them higher (especially the "other", which sets them too high for me :lol.

And what I really like about this game graphically is that they didn't use Oblivion style cartoon HDR where the sunlight on stone can blind you, and they also didn't use the UT3/"other title"/DiRT style desaturated HDR where green looks like brown.