Kursah's COD4 Review
Well thanks dude, I'm just in a low spot atm, I'll come out of it eventually...just a lot going on that I have to accept and deal with right now. But I did sit down, turn on some Megadeth and type a quick review for CoD4 since that's all I've really been playing lately. Sorry it's kinda long, and I do know I did not cover a lot of features/things, but I may revise it later. Thanks for the support Theonetruewill, you're a good friend.
Well, without further adeau:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare PC Game Review
By Kursah (Sean L.)
Summary: Fast paced action in Multiplayer that needs some polishing, Short but polished Singleplayer, Overall a great game.
Introduction:
The Call of Duty series is well known for it's WWII shooter games that took the world by storm. They created a game that could put you into an epic situation, with an epic feeling, with explosions, gunfire, people. I remember the first time I loaded Call of Duty 2, I felt so immersed, I probably played for 6 hours straight without blinking once! The feeling was genuine and something I had not felt in another game. Of course back then I was more for gaming in single player campaigns instead of multi-player meelees and shootouts, so I did not experience the multiplayer of CoD2.
Enter November 06th, 2007, a new Call of Duty for gamers to enjoy. Yes we all know about CoD3 being console only, I'm over it..are you? Now we have CoD4, and in my mind it's as-good-as ever. The feeling is welcoming, yet now we're in modern times, with a story that has a familiar feeling. A battle in the middle-east between a new head boss and the forces of SAS and Marines doing their job to stop this "evil take-over".
Singleplayer Campaign:
If you've read any other reviews, you will notice more-likely than not, that stated is "...the single player campaign is very short." This is exactly right, it's short, don't expect more than a handful of hours in single player, but I guarentee they will be some very enjoyed hours. The polish of the story, scripting, levels, enemies is very well done. You feel immersed in an action flick, you have two characters you play as throughout the campaign, either ..... "Soap" Mctavish of the S.A.S. or ''''''''' of the Marines. You'll have goals and waypoints, for many missions you'll have fellow AI at your side that do a decent job. The enemy A.I. is good, they do their job. In some missions you fight so many, you wonder if there's an end to the tunnel of bad guys, but you are blasting away and enjoying the hell out of it!
Whether it's a mission to invade an outpost, snipe at enemies, ground pound to their front lines, you will be immersed in a very enjoyable environment that does an excellent job with the sights and sounds. Don't expect to get too lost in this game, it will give you plenty of hints, commands, visuals to keep you heading towards your objectives. The missions are clear, your objectives are the usual to be expected from this type of game, kill this guy, destroy this piece of equipment, infiltrate this area. So as generic as that sounds, how they orchestrated it through our speakers and monitors will give you a unique feeling or at least a "Call of Duty" feeling to this game.
Once you're done with the Single Player, then you're training is complete, and now you can get to what I consider the bread and butter of this game, the multiplayer.
Multiplayer Experience:
Alright folks, this is the reason to get the game. As I said before, in my views, this is the bread and butter of Call of Duty 4. Sure the bread crust is a little dryed out, with a couple of patches and extras tacked on in the future, there's no reason this can't be the one of the best out there. The multiplayer can be summed it in a few words, fast, hectic, frenzy. That's exactly how it feels, unlike popular games like BF2142, where you spend a while setting up, coordinating, and moving from a distanced point to another, here, in CoD4 you have decent sized maps that are small enough to just keep the pace on the faster side. You want action in multiplayer? You want a fest of grenates, bullets, rockets and dead enemies? You're at the right place.
I am thouroughly enjoying CoD4 right now, and not even a month after release, I seeing over 10,000 servers to choose from. That's a pretty amazing number from my viewpoint. I'm also impressed with serviers where 200 ping can still play fairly smoothly and not hinder your game experience. Anything 100ms or below is always prime, but isn't required to enjoy the game. The graphics engine does a great job here too, allowing the same "max" settings as the Single Player.
You have all sorts of awards, achievements and ranks to create a more fulfilling character in this game. You can customize your weapons and create up to 5 preconfigured to your likings "load-outs" if you decide. This is an excellent feature that you open up with weapons, attachements, scopes, etc by gaining XP. XP in CoD4 are points you gain from killing others, assists, completing objectives, capturing posts, completing acheivements, etc. XP is very important for getting new goodies, ranks, and the such. There are 55 ranks to attain from Private to 5 Star General. And for the first couple dozens of rank, you do rank up fairly quickly if you can get used to the fast paced feeling of MP.
There are 16 maps right now to choose from, quite a few game modes from Domination to Free-For-All, with up to 32 players. There are all sorts of customizations you can do with their server creation, and mods are going to be in the future of CoD4.
Also there have already been 2 patches, 1.1 and 1.2. Both are to fix small issues, primarily in multi-player. On one note, I had done a format-re-install Windows XP on my system, I had failed to backup my CoD4 profile as I didn't mind going back through the SP campaign all over again, as it's a good play-thru. I re-installed CoD4 and found that as soon as I tried logging on to my MP, I had lost all my stats, ranks, weapons, etc. I was back at LvL 0 Private. Activision is currently sorting this issue to have servers to save your online profiles, which I expected was already there. Do not make the same mistake and as of December 2007, this issue has not been solved. You should keep a backup profile just in case.
In order to find your data, you go to your game install directory, i.e. C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare\players\profiles\Kursah. In that directory you will find a file called "mpdata". That is what saves your MP stats/ranks. Mine became corrupt upon re-installing the game, a mistake that I will share with others and avoid from happening again.
Fortunately, though as I was a higher ranking soldier after a couple of weeks, in a few days with more experience, it has been a lot more fun trying a different weapon strategy and ranking up without too much issue. And even though there will be plenty of weapons with extras, and Perks (the games way of giving extra grenades, bombs, health, accuracy, etc...), being new is not all lost. You can do plenty of damage with the games pre-configured set-ups and basic weapons from assault rifles to shotguns, to sniper rifles...there are plenty to choose from.
So get in there soldier, get used to dying, I figure an average life expentency from 30 seconds to 1 minute. With that frame of mind, I try to do as much damage in that time as possible. You can use strategy to your advantage. Alas, some downsides to the game here. The first is having no buddy list/squad creation in multiplayer, which does really feel like both should be there. Another is the sometimes very random spawning, when you spawn in a group of 5 enemies, sometimes you can turn it to a good frag-fest, other times, you're dead before you can pull the trigger. The average game is about 15 minutes long, and that's about right for a round. The scoring is fair, and the scoring system does a good job. There is voice-over featured in the game, and it does a decent job, I still use and recommend Ventrillo/Team Speak though.
The final issue is cheating, while there is a hack/cheat for CoD4 MP, not too many are doing it yet. But if you notice a few too many 5 star generals that you may have noticed were a lesser rank not too long ago, you may be onto something. There is accuracy and bullet power cheating, but it will be obvious who is cheating and most of the time, who is not. There are lucky shots, and those who have a quicker reaction and trigger finger than you, so don't immediately point fingers. If it bugs you, change to a different server, as there are many of them. You can sort them in almost any fashion, though the interface feels very basic. I hope Activision can take a page from BF2142 for the multplayer server/buddy list setup is about perfect.
The Graphics, Sound, and Hardware:
The graphics in this game are done quite well, and is probably one of the better looking games for Fall 2007. The effects and physics are also executed very well. I have been impressed that this game is capable of playing on a variety of machines with a variety of hardware without too much issue. From my OC'd Core2/x1950xtx setup to my buddy's Athlon 2200 X64/6600le, there have been no issues. Sure some resolution and graphics setting changes are to be expected, but playability and overall visuals were great on both. I was suprised how good the game looked on that older AMD machine, and how smooth it played.
This game uses a proprietary graphics engine, and that's just fine because it takes care of business and doesn't seem to have much for problems. The smoke effects are nice, the light and shading are done very well, the bullet impacts and explosions are top notch. The controls are easy to setup, and the standard WASD.
The sound in the game is also done very well with the gunshot sounds reminding me of my own perosnal equipment, some of which are featured in the game. The surround sound is executed well, the overall sound of battle is very well and you can follow gunshots to the enemy is some cases. Just remember that in some maps, that part of the ambient sound is gunfire as has been the norm in many games like this for a while. But you can differentiate the ambient gunshots from player gunshots and tell where they're coming from. The voice acting is done as would be expected, feels like a stressed out, war torn, Micheal Bay flick that you interact with, and for me that was a good thing.
And really, the hardware required for this game does not have to be the newest or the beefiest. While I would recommend a newer dual-core, 2gb of Ram, and at least an NV7600/ ATI x1800 + for video, with 256mb+ gDDR Ram for a decent experience, even that's not needed. This game has impressed me with how well it will work on a lower-end machine, yet how amazing it looks on a higher end machine. They have done a great job letting everyone enjoy the beauty this game has to offer, a strategy I wish more game developers could or would pull off.
The Conclusion:
In conclusion, this game has been worth every penny of purchase. Sure the single player is short, but to me it felt more like training for the online experience. Once you get your online character ranked up and set up for whatever situation you want, you will really enjoy the game. If you like a fast paced first person shooter with an epic movie feeling to it, without going too overboard on the epic part, this is the game for you. I thouroughly have enjoyed this game, which is the point of writing this review. I would recommend this to anyone who needed an action/shooting fix for their game platform. This game is featured for the PS3, XBox360, and the PC.
Score: 9.0/10 -TPU Thread Reviewer's Choice!
I know nothing too crazy, and there's more I would put in if I took more time on it, but here you guys go!
