Kry Retro-Reviews: Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is an acclaimed first person shooter title, released in late 2007 and developed by Infinity Ward; it proved an immensely popular title. As such, a sequel, Modern Warfare 2 is due out this November. Interest in playing the sequel is what drove me to give COD4 a quick run through. This is an abbreviated review. Since playing FPS games on consoles is an extreme source of frustration for me, I only ran through the single player of COD4; my review omits the multiplayer, which is a most significant feature.

COD4 is set in faux modern times, pitting the player as SAS and USMC versus terrorists of the standard Arab and Russian fare. Despite this common setting, COD 4 still offers a fresh, compelling narrative, and is able to keep interest throughout the entire campaign. It also disguises its linearity well. That, along with a very strong visual and aural presentation, makes for a solid experience. The only real immersion breaking experiences are with your teammates’ AI. It sometimes leaves you wondering as to why they will prioritize less dangerous targets or conveniently sit around doing nothing. This is more nitpicking though, and usually the AI is nothing short of stellar.

Gameplay is similar to your standard shooter these days, and it should be, as COD4 set a benchmark that many other titles have followed. Indeed, I do believe COD4 is one of the titles responsible for starting the current fad of automatically recovering health by not getting hit. But I digress. The campaign puts you in a variety of roles, and you can usually pick up the weapons you want to fit your playstyle as you progress through missions, so the game continually feels fresh until the end. You usually are given a surplus of ammo as well as secondary items, like grenades, to complete your mission. Speaking of grenades, my one biggest gripe about the campaign has to be just how many times I got killed by them. It’s pretty frustrating how easy it is to get instagibbed by them, especially because it doesn’t feel parallel at all to how many bullets it takes to kill me. It’s probably more me approaching the game the wrong way, but either way, it’s a cause for rage.

COD4 certainly feels like it’s worth the money, and with Modern Warfare 2 releasing imminently, it should be available for pretty cheap, if you’re into yesterday’s big thing. I will be picking MW2 up on launch, assuming it’s not just hype. Hopefully, it will sate my FPS needs for quite awhile. If not, well, Left 4 Dead 2 is coming out about the same time… so there is a contingency plan in place.