Review: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Infinity Ward returns to the Call of Duty series with a vengeance in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. They took a break from the series for CoD3 (which was developed by Treyarch) and the game was vastly worse. It appears that the men and women at Infinity Ward were aware of this and decided to kick everything up a notch, run on all cylinders, and create a new cliche to describe how hard they worked.

Single-Player: The single-player in the game is fantastic. There are tons of memorable micro-events in the game that prevent the combat from ever getting stale. These run the gambit from having to snipe a terrorist while having to take wind and the Coriolis effect into account, to manning a helicopter-mounted grenade launcher in between battles, all the way to crawling out of your helicopter after a nuke goes off, only to die minutes later of radiation poisoning. Also, the fact that the SAS and USMC characters play so vastly differently greatly helps keep players on their toes. The SAS levels are played out in a more covert manner than the USMC levels, where you just need to go kick some terrorist ass. Although the narrative dwindles to a single perspective about half way through the game, it still manages to keep things interesting. Also, the narrative in the game is thrilling to say the least. you actually care about most of the characters you encounter, which is a great feat for most FPS games nowadays.

The only negative thing I have to say about single player is that Veteran mode with the 360 controls (i.e. NO LEAN FUNCTION) is fucking impossible unless you are made of lightning and Tahitian Treat.

Multi-Player: The multi-player function is wonderfully done. The level system that has been implemented is fantastic. Basically, as you play you level up and with each of these levels you can use a new gun or ability. This process can be repeated (otherwise called a "Prestige Run") up to 10 times in the console version. This adds some replay value to the multi player aspect of the game, unlike Halo 3, where at some points it felt like getting to that next rank was impossible. All of the levels are very well balanced and the majority of the game modes are implemented well.

However, there are a few modes that are, in my mind, an EPIC, EPIC FAIL. For starters, I'll just say that Old School mode (a mode where you have super jump, super life bar, and you have to go around and find your weapons) is very much unwelcome. Also, the Sabotage game mode is nearly impossible to complete without running the time limit and going to sudden death. Another, more minor issue in the console version is the fact that some people in the Search and Destroy playlist have grenade placements memorized and can easily thwart any rush by lobbing a single grenade the length of the level and killing 3 people.

Conclusion: Overall though the good far outweighs the bad. The controls are intuitive, the graphics are smokin', and it managed to keep me entertained for hours on end.

I give Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 4 and 1/2 stars out of 5