Call of Duty 4

[Bob the Insane]

Well, anyone else got it?

Picked it up yesterday and it really is CoD with modern weapons...

All the same fun and fustrations as before...

It does look really good especially some of the later levels, good sound and voices too...

Good variety of missions too, very cinematic and exciting... In gunner in vehicle missions have been fun and not to hard so far, a welcome rest from the hectic ground action...

For fustration, I am having my first play-though on Hardened and just as in CoD and CoD2 there are times when it seems like all the enemy soldiers are ignoring your buddies and just shooting at you...

very minor spoiler

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And the end of the flash back mission near Chernobyl is just insane!!

[Ferret]

What it's out! Although I didn't like the demo or the beta particularly much but I'll still get the game :P

[Lorenzo_H]

I'm definitly getting it. It's just a question of when. I need a computer first.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Better than CoD2, and at least a new(er) setting. Some missions are fun, some aren't. I find the attack dogs very frustrating. Also much more mature content - blood, language, more wrenching violence...

[RoadKill]

I am a big Call of Duty fan, owning 1 , 2 , and 3. But my budget will only let me get one game, and right now I can not decide either to buy the coming Assasin Creed, or this.

[Monarch]

Better than CoD2, and at least a new(er) setting. Some missions are fun, some aren't. I find the attack dogs very frustrating. Also much more mature content - blood, language, more wrenching violence...

I have it on 360 but when a dog attacks you just click your melee button and you snap its neck, its simple...

Anyways, a simply outstanding game. Multiplayer is brilliant and I've just finished the sniper flashback mission, tense, beautfiul and amazing.

[Lehesu]

The demo was so horrible that I don't even know if I want the game.

[Viking]

The demo felt crappy; any other opinions on the full game?

[Bob the Insane]

Demo is one of the least fun missions to be honest... If you view that as the low point of the game you will not do too bad...

SP was a blast, but short...

When you finish watch the credits through for a little bonus mission at the end...

MP is just nuts...

All the fun of CoD2 with more powerful weapons and some BF2 machanics for advancement thrown in...

The challenges and ranking up is fun, always unlocking new weapons, attachments and more challenges...

The grenade lancher is nicely implimented and is not the noob cannon of BF2 fame...

I can't describe enough how the penetration of materials bu some weapons adds to the gameplay. Enemy in cover, you could assault, grenade, flashbang, or you could simply setup a 50. cal and shoot everyone through the walls...

Only MP issue, the maps appear to have been balance for the console's 18 player max, so at 32 players can be a bit crowded. One map in particular called Container is a total riot on 32 player...

The modes are fun to, played Headquarters for an evening. A laptop appears somewhere on the map. The first team that gets there captures it and then must defend it from the opposing team who try to destroy it. The twist is that while you normally respawn immediately, when you team is defending you only respawn once the laptop is destroyed or every 30 seconds.

[Mongoose]

How's the team stuff in MP? Is there are a lot of cooperation, or is it more of a random melee kind of thing? I'm thinking of getting this but I'm not totally sure about it, since I've heard that the SP campaign is short and I've never really played a COD game in MP before, so I don't know what to expect there.

[Decker]

I can't describe enough how the penetration of materials bu some weapons adds to the gameplay. Enemy in cover, you could assault, grenade, flashbang, or you could simply setup a 50. cal and shoot everyone through the walls...

Only MP issue, the maps appear to have been balance for the console's 18 player max, so at 32 players can be a bit crowded. One map in particular called Container is a total riot on 32 player...

The modes are fun to, played Headquarters for an evening. A laptop appears somewhere on the map. The first team that gets there captures it and then must defend it from the opposing team who try to destroy it. The twist is that while you normally respawn immediately, when you team is defending you only respawn once the laptop is destroyed or every 30 seconds.

Don't have the game but being able to shoot through walls is a deffinite bonus.

Bummer about the small maps, kinda sounds like a well made console export if that's the case. Can PC players tangle with Console players?

And are there any more MP modes? HQ was around since the first COD except for the new setting and that it's a laptop rather than a radio hehe. I cannot wait till I get a new comp to play this game!!(Prolly won't be for a looooong time! )

[Mikeus Caesar]

Got this yesterday, just finished the mission where you play as the gunner in the plane. Very very fun. Failed that mission numerous times after nuking my own people.

[Ferret]

A short summary: demo was appaling and that level is my least favourite in the whole campaign.
Rest of campaign=very fun
Multiplayer=amazing

[Bob the Insane]

I think Sabotage is the only new one...

If you have not played CoD MP before I would describe it as a half way between UT and Rainbow6...

It is prety random and chaotic and people to jump about a bit, but the weapons are pretty deadly and it pays to use your sights rather than running around shooting from the hip... You can lean and try to shoot from cover, and the game (CoD2) had a nice way of going from deadly chaos to equally deadly sneaking about "first one to make a mistake" dies gameplay... This has the same, execpt it is easier to dig the snipers out of their holes with heavy weapons now...

Plus there is this mechancism, 3 kills in a row and you can call in a UAV sweep and shows all the enemies on you radar (for your whole team), 5 kills in a row and you can call in an airstrike (you map enlarges and you click a location for a quick and very deadly airstrike) and finally 7 kills calls in an attack chopper which hovers over the battlefield gunning down anyone it sees (but can be shot down)...

[Mongoose]

Are there any use able MP vehicles?

[Ferret]

No, but there are turrets and I think it is better without the veichles. In campaign you get to fly a giant plane with loads of guns though :)

[Decker]

I think Sabotage is the only new one...

If you have not played CoD MP before I would describe it as a half way between UT and Rainbow6...

It is prety random and chaotic and people to jump about a bit, but the weapons are pretty deadly and it pays to use your sights rather than running around shooting from the hip... You can lean and try to shoot from cover, and the game (CoD2) had a nice way of going from deadly chaos to equally deadly sneaking about "first one to make a mistake" dies gameplay... This has the same, execpt it is easier to dig the snipers out of their holes with heavy weapons now...

Plus there is this mechancism, 3 kills in a row and you can call in a UAV sweep and shows all the enemies on you radar (for your whole team), 5 kills in a row and you can call in an airstrike (you map enlarges and you click a location for a quick and very deadly airstrike) and finally 7 kills calls in an attack chopper which hovers over the battlefield gunning down anyone it sees (but can be shot down)...

Freakin AWESOME!!! I cannot wait till I get a new computer! will be awesome.

BTW, hows the realism mode working out? and can you play realism in campaign? O! and do the enemies pop back up after getting "gunned down?"

[Bijo]

This is among some of the series I abandoned. It may be fun to play for a while but it is nothing special anymore. Back in the day when the first one was released it was special. Now it has merely become another typical franchise to milk as much money out of it as they can. I will not even play the demo.

[Lehesu]

I can assure you; your opinion would not change after playing the demo.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Bijo - i can assure you this is most definitely something special. It's one of the few games where the AI have consistently outsmarted me with actual tactics. One of the little beggars cottoned on to my tactics, threw out a flashbang and shot me dead while i was blind.

[Papewaio]

It's like playing a role in Blackhawk Down in the first mission as a marine.

The ability for walls to be penetrated by a variety of weapons, to have cars explode once they have caught fire, the ability to pick up and throw back grenades, to be flash banged and then stormed by the enemy, to see your troops and theirs use flanking tactics, to think you are safe behind sheet metal only to have someone fire at you through it.

I've used shadows of guys seen through door ways to line up a shot and shoot through the walls to kill them.

Very fun game. With the SAS missions I feel like a puppy trying to keep up with the Wolves, with the Marine missions I feel like I'm leading the charge. You need almost equal numbers with the Marines to win where the SAS seem to just push through 4 or 5 to one odds (with you mopping up the stragglers).

[Mikeus Caesar]

Also, just wondering, but have any of you tried the game with cheats yet? Ragtime mode is absolutely hilarious, especially when the music picks up at the wrong moments!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

When Imran Zakhaev is just about to shoot Gaz, the piano music suddenly started playing that tune, 'here we go here we go'. I fell off my chair laughing.

[Husar]

What I hated about the demo was that moving forward is more important thatn shooting people in most places. The game will respawn an endless number of enemies until you proceed past a certain trigger. Forces you to rush forward or else you will never defeat them.

And I didn't find them to be very intelligent either, most of them follow the same path all the time and throwing grenades and shooting guns can hardly be called tactics in a game that revolves around throwing grenades and shooting guns.

I just think it's utterly stupid to take cover somewhere and shoot a guy on a balcony only to have him replaced endless times until you walk through a certain place or click use in a certain place. Means you could almost throw your gun away and let your teammates kill them while you walk from trigger to trigger.

I'm sorry but I can't stop thinking that's ridiculous.

[Bob the Insane]

What difficulty where you playing on?

I found that you can usually eventually beat the endless supply of soldiers, but it takes longer as the difficulty goes up...

It is one of the flavour differences between the the SAS and Marine missions. The Marine missions tend to face hordes (though again the rescue the tank missions is one of the least fun)...

[DukeofSerbia]

Great game! Even on my semi-old machine graphics is just excellent.

What I don’t like is campaign is just too short even in veteran. The end of mission in Chernobyl is one of the greatest idiocies I ever saw in any FPS! I think somebody from Infinity Ward watched too much Rambo movies as kid. As I played in veteran difficulty I typed cheat (god mod) to finish that absurd Rambo level as there is no way to kill over 100 enemies. Also, dogs (in veteran) when came too close have ability to go left/right and avoid bullets easily which is very unrealistic and frustrating. How many times I missed them in just 3-4 meters in front of me! Dogs are more maneuverable than Licians in Underworld (movie).

Also, Aftermath mission is how to say, just... to see what engine can in simulated atomic explosion. American missions are very similar to Black Hawk Down. I like music in American missions.

I like Epilogue mission in plane shooting terrorists.

Conclusion:
CoD 2 is much better. I hope later for some good mods as is for CoD 2 (like WCP v2.3).

[Ferret]

I don't agree with any of the things you have said and prefer CoD4 by a long shot. Maybe it's because I have it on 360.

[Husar]

What difficulty where you playing on?

Probably medium or whatever they call that in the game.
Still found it ridiculous but then I've never been a fan of the CoD or MoH series anyway.

[Kekvit Irae]

Played it, got sick of it, uninstalled it. It's just CoD2 with a few additions.

However, I vastly enjoyed the AC-130 mission and the counter-terrorist epilogue mission, and the Arcade mode was amusing for replay value.

[Paradox]

I enjoyed it, the portrayal of 'modern warfare' and Iraq was great.

[Navaros]

I got COD4 a couple of weeks ago, for the PC.

Here's my analysis of it:

The PC version is gimped in terms of not having achievements in SP, and not having the ability to get prestige in MP - both things which the console versions have and the PC version does not. I was very ticked off when I bought the PC version and found out after the fact that it was gimped in that way.

I hate buying versions of games that are less complete than other versions of the same game are yet meanwhile they are sold in identical boxes - as if they are identical products to the non-gimped versions. I believe this is false advertising, and bad for consumers. When I personally as a consumer get taken for a ride by this false advertising, it ticks me off immensely. Any gimped features, like prestige & achievements not being in the PC version of COD4, should be legally forced to be advertised clearly on the retail box of the gimped product.



Singleplayer
First of all, everyone should know that this game takes 5 hours for the average player to beat. If you are buying this game for SP, you are getting ripped off; it's not worth the money just for 5 hours worth of gameplay. 5 hours and you are done, that's it. The console versions have achievements in SP that add a bit of SP replayability to it, but that's not in the PC version.

My first impressions upon playing the SP was wow, this is definitely one of the most immersive games I've ever played. Storming the boat at night in the midst of a storm with some squad mates while they make jokes as they murder drunk and sleeping guards, totally amazing.

But, soon it dawned on me that to have this sort of experience, it's necessary for the devs to build the whole thing upon a novelty concept. And for me the novelty concept lost a lot of shine before the end of the SP experience. I came to realize that who I shoot in SP matters little since they respawn infinitely anyways. But rather the thrust of the gameplay is running to the exact predetermined trigger point to trigger the next NPC dialogues and the next batch of infinitely respawning enemies upon which the whole game is based. This problem became especially evident to me because a few levels, in, a checkpoint didn't even save my progress when I reached it, although the NPC dialogue did continue and the next batch of respawning enemies came at me. I only realized I was having an especially difficult time after dying a ways off from that checkpoint and working my way back to it from 2 checkpoints back, only to realize the second checkpoint save spot was indeed a checkpoint save spot on my second time there. This has happened to me on more than one occasion.

On a similar note, I've also come to realize that you get an infinitely respawning ally army to create the illusion of you being one man in an epic battle. But the illusion wears thin once you realize they can all die a million times, and never stop respawning right next to you; so their deaths are every bit as 100% irrelevant as the deaths of any of the enemies you kill are. On the maps where you only have a few allies in a small squad based level, they are invulnerable to the enemy fire and it is impossible for them to die. I had a few incidents where I suppose I took "the path less travelled" or something (as opposed to the exact path to the trigger point the devs would have wanted me to). and then these NPCs allies did not follow me when they were supposed to, instead they were stuck engaging the previous batch of infinitely respawning enemies that me and them had already killed 10x or more. Them being stuck like that, with no way to unstick them, resulted in me having to take on tons and tons of enemies by myself in a way for which the game was not designed, resulting in unfair deaths. This also has happened to me on more than one occasion.

All this stuff broke my immersion quite a bit, although I respect what the devs were trying to do by making a really chaotic experience on an epic scale. I wonder if something like that will ever be able to be done without needing to be based on a novelty concept.


Multiplayer
I played a lot on the MP side too. I was disappointed that it's nothing like the SP experience at all. MP has none of the atmosphere or epic scale of being just one small part of the huge army that ths SP side has.


The MP is a very arcadey/cartoony game, so if you are looking for realism like in the America's Army game, that definitely ain't what's in COD4.

MP is pretty much is more of the same as you'd expect from any FPS game. There isn't anything special in the multiplayer. There are some superfluous differences from standard FPS games like perk abilities that change what you can do in some relatively minor ways. But those certainly don't go anywhere near being deep enough to differeniate COD4 above a standard FPS game.

All the maps are extremely small. In my opinion any claim otherwise is affection-based spin and does not accurately reflect the reality of the small size maps. COD4 suffers from a severe case of console-itis in this regard. I saw one player sum this up very nicely in the following way: "I don't get what all the hype is about, frankly. I don't see how much fun it is putting 32 players into a map the size of my bedroom and playing for about 3 seconds before dying, then waiting 15-30 seconds to respawn." That sentiment rings very true to how the MP game plays out.

I found the voiceacting in MP to be pretty annoying, especially the fake foreign accents. At least it's not as bad as the fake German accents in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory which for me, are so annoying that they make that game totally unplayble. Still, since these voices in COD4 have to be heard constantly, millions of times, for however long the game lives, it would be nice if they hired some better-sounding voice actors to do the voices.

I found the constant "UAV launched" and "Airstike launched" voice messages to be extremely annoying. They say that every minute of every game, it gets extremely monotonous & tiresome extremely fast. I suspect that originally they didn't think players would be getting so many kills in a row constantly, and that is why these things are constantly occuring in the game despite not being the original design intention. I see many posters on the official boards for COD4 saying to increase the kill count needed in a row to be able to call those things in. I think that would probably be a good thing due to the high skill level of the average COD4 player, since it's pretty silly that they are coming in constantly every minute as things now stand. Although that would suck for me in particular because I'm pretty bad at FPS games and the most kills I've ever gotten in a row in COD4 after playing for 8 hours is 4 in a row. It bewilders me how good players always get way, way more kills more in a row and call in UAV/airstrikes/helicopter strikes as if there's nothing to it. If I ever achieve just one of those things, then it's something of a minor miracle for me. LOL. The UAV/airstrikes/helicopter would work a lot better if all players were as sucky as me. But since they are not by a longshot, to balance the game it should be adjusted according to how the players on the official forums want it.

I was disappointed when I learned your MP stats and unlocks are all saved on your local hard drive. That means they can be hacked by someone who knows a little bit of what he's doing, or who downloads hacks. I did some reading about this on the official boards and I encountered at least one poster claiming he was able to make his friend a level 55 within 5 minutes via copying his own mpdata file to his friend's computer, and then altering that file on his friend's computer to tie it to his friend's CDKey instead of his. Although, that poster didn't not outline the specific process for doing this. And I've also read that the mpdata file is encrypted, so that would stop every Tom, Dick, and Harry from doing this. But I imagine that the poster claiming to have done this in 5 minutes was telling the truth, and many other players are savvy enough to have caught on about how to unencrypt and hack their mpdata file to give themselves and/or friends maximum level/maximum unlocks in 5 minutes.

It is also very disappointing that the aforementioned prestige feature is gimped out of the PC version. Leveling up to the maximum level is very fast and easy to do via normal gameplay (maybe takes a week or two at most), and there isn't much reason to keep playing once you do that on the PC version, whereas the ungimped console versions get much more replayablility due to the prestige feature.


Sniping is not very good in this game. I bought COD4 intending to play it as a sniping game, but it sucks for that in my opinion. The spots where the enemies respawn is constantly changing, so you if you camp a good sniping spot, then after a few minutes chances are you won't be seeing any enemies anywhere near you pretty soon, and you will be pretty much completely out of the game and not seeing any enemies in your scope at all unless you move to the newly shifted respawn points.. Thus, you have to run across the map again to search for another spot you can sit at for 1 minute (til the enemy respawn points shift again), and get completely massacred along the way by players using normal guns that you can't compete with by using your sniper rifle in Close Quarters Battles you'll have along the way. Besides all that, the chances of anyone standing still long enough to be sniped is very slim. Chances are the enemies will be blinking in your scope for only 1/5th of a second and then gone, not enough time to take a shot unless you have gosu skills or something.


I noticed on the official boards they have "outed" Punkbuster as being an ineffective way to stop all hacks in COD4, and many players there do not consider Punkbuster to be an anti-cheat at all and petition the devs to put a better anti-cheat method in place instead of Punkbuster.. There are what I believe to be a few cheaters there making pretend posts that cheaters don't exist in COD4 thanks to Punkbuster. However, in my discerning opinion, the consensus that Punkbuster cannot stop well-made hacks which are not made public (and even some that are, apparently) is correct, and the reports of aimbots operating in COD4 is correct. Those players also complain of hacks completely ruining COD2 despite it's Punkbuster protection. In my opinion there are many aimbots operating in COD4 MP despite it's Punkbuster protection.

All in all I'd give COD4 about an 80% or so. It's a good game, but nowhere near as perfect as the professional reviews make it seem. I'd say the professional review consensus giving it over 90% is over the top.

I found that you can usually eventually beat the endless supply of soldiers, but it takes longer as the difficulty goes up...

I believe the information in the above quote is completely incorrect. The game is, as stated by the other poster and myself, completely based on triggering the next checkpoint by stepping on them, and who you kill or how many times you kill them is completely irrelevant. They will never stop coming, ever. They are scripted to keep spawning repeatedly in the same places until you step onto the next checkpoint which triggers the new infiinite respawn points so that the process then continues in the next section of the map. The actual gameplay is all a thinly-veiled novelty with no substance whatsoever, much like in the game Dragon's Lair (in Dragon's Lair you just press the exact button at the exact right time, or die....similar to how in COD4, you step on the exact right checkpoint with your feet, or nothing ever happens until you do).