Call of Duty 4

[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).

[Ferret]

wow the PC version sounds a lot worse than the console version. The MP on that is the best of any game out there. Now I could write a counter argument to all your points but I can't be bothered as I enjoy the game and play it with people I know so it's your loss if you don't enjoy it.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Anyway who plays multiplayer games a fair bit knows punkbuster is ****. The only reason games still use it is because of companies being too lazy too code their own anticheat stuff.

[Viking]

That 'death from above' mission was worth all the $ alone. I really felt like I sat in that plane and dustified those enemies.

A good cinematic game and excellent graphics. Storyline is weird.

Summed up I can't say anything but that I love this game. That execution in the opening seqeunces is pretty cool.


I'll give a try at the MP once I'm done with SP.

[Phatose]

It's an Xbox 360 game ported, through and through. Single player has a single truly awesome mission, a couple of cool cutscenes, and gameplay that is otherwise completely uninspired.

Multiplayer has some signifigant frustrations built in from the ground up, and is clearly intended for Xbox360 play, with no more then 16 or so players, all with crippled gamepad aim.

It can be fun, but best stay away from anything with more the 20 players absolute tops, and even then expect frustration. It has ridiculously overpowered grenade launchers, and martyrdom, which really really needed to have a fuse on the grenade twice as long as it actually is.]