Overview
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hit the shelves on November 5th, 2007. Activision was pleased to see high sales on all platforms (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) and rave initial reviews. The game is the fourth installment in the Call of Duty series, a first person shooter (FPS) powerhouse.

For games 1-3 developers stuck to WWII as the battlefield, but sensing the market for 1940’s shooters was starting to fall, they decided to spin the clock forward to present-day conflicts.

Players fight through a single player campaign as either American Marines or British SAS Special Forces trying to stop a mastermind terrorist from wreaking even more havoc on the world.

The newest graphics and physics technology were utilized in the creation of the game, and the gameplay is incredibly realistic. NPCs (non-playing characters) from the COD series are famously animate and lifelike. They react to the world around them with impressive accuracy, even pausing to cough or talk to their buddies.

Players will enjoy a wide range of weapons and missions, intense combat, and an incredibly written storyline that is emotional, surprising, and quite a commentary on modern international relations. Many people, however, have complained that the campaign is too short, and that the supplementary game modes (in which a player tries to get as many points as he can for headshots, kills, and various other things) are just not as fun as they could be.

Multiplayer action is also available, and has been hailed as one of the greatest games ever made for online play. This is one of the first FPS games that has mixed a “leveling” system into the heat of a firefight. Players gain experience points as they fight, and eventually they gain promotions through military ranks and unlock new guns and accessories.

Overall the game is great in Single Player and even better in Multiplayer. It is realistic, fast-paced, fun, and a general good time.

Single Player
The single player campaign starts with the main character, named Soap, being admitted into the British Special Forces, the SAS. One is taught to fire, aim, melee, and throw grenades in a realistic barracks setting.

Once you’ve completed these tasks, you are introduced to your team and you get a chance to run through a training course filled with pop-up targets. You need to complete the course in a quick (but not unreasonable by any stretch of the word) time, following your commander’s shouted commands.

The missions that follow develop a story that is actually quite complicated, involving the sale of nuclear weapons, a regime change in the Middle East, and the perspective change from American to British soldiers. Health is rechargeable, so if you are hurt badly you can recover- one aspect of the game that is unrealistic. The recharge system, however, is necessary to the gameplay because of the sheer amount of gunfire, explosions, and other sources of damage that are nearly unavoidable.

Weaponry differs per map and country, and the game offers up very realistic sniper rifles, assault rifles, RPGs, SMGs, C4, Claymores, Grenades, and any other manner of harming someone you can imagine. The levels in the campaign are massive and very lifelike. The degree of realism is sometimes a bit disturbing to some players.

In one mission, the player mans the guns on a C130 Gunship, laying down air support for his comrades on the ground. The imaging is done in black and white heat vision, which is what is used in real life. A screenshot from the game and an actual photo through gunship technology are nearly indistinguishable from one another. Many gamers, though, went crazy for it, and that particular level was quite fun.

Fantastic graphics combined with meticulous attention to detail by the designers creates a real-world experience few are likely to forget. Enemies are also realistic- communicating with each other and using tactics to defeat you. They are, however, very easy to kill even in Hard Mode; it is much easier for you to kill them than for them to kill you.

Sometimes the game can have that “007” feeling in which you are the all-powerful destroyer of anything trying to kill you, although upping the difficulty level will definitely squash that feeling into frustration and smashed keyboards.

Other than the campaign, Arcade Mode allows players to run through missions they have already beaten and rack up scores for time of completion, headshots, number of kills, and tons of other surprises. This adds to the game’s replay value, challenging participants to beat their scores and try again. The real competition, though, starts with multiplayer…

Multiplayer
If you’ve played single player, you know how fast paced and evil this game can be. Now imagine playing the campaign but everyone else is real, and has been playing longer than you have. Starting out is a bit hard since people you are playing against have all kinds of perks such as “overkill” which allows you to carry two main weapons.

In the Xbox 360 version, a skill-matching system pits you against other players of your level. On the PC, however, you choose a server from a list, and hope that you’ll survive. One thing that I’ll give the system, however, is that the amount of experience needed to gain a level is directly proportional to how difficult it is

This means that in order to move up to the first unlockable rank one doesn’t need to work too hard- only a few kills are necessary. As the levels unlock more powerful weapons and perks, more experience is needed and therefore more work.

Luckily for most PC users that don’t have the latest in PC technology, there is an option for graphics labeled “Optimal System Settings” that will set the game for the best performance on your computer. I (and many others) have found that checking this option and then setting the screen resolution to whatever monitor you have gets the best out of the graphics and the least lag for a nice balance of playability and “cool.”

Actual gameplay is fantastic. Kill streaks allow players to call in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS), Air Strikes, and even Helicopter support. Multiple gametypes are available to fit each player’s style. Team Deathmatch is a classic, in which the team with the larger amount of kills wins.

Free-For-All is the same idea; however each player is his own team and is fighting everyone else on the map. Headquarters and Domination are ground-control King-of-the-Hill type games, and Sabotage and Search & Destroy evoke counter-strike type bomb plant and defuse scenarios.

Another facet of multiplayer is the “Hardcore” option in which there is no HUD, and weapons are realistically powerful. This is a terrifying and high-stress game in which seeing an enemy player means one of you is going to die since a 3-shot burst is likely to kill you immediately.

Many players complain about this game because helicopters and air strikes are so powerful, but many also love it because of its realism.

Overall I love the multiplayer in CoD4 and it makes up totally for the short campaign mode. The action is paced around the number of players on the map, since overcrowding causes massive firefights and under crowding allows players to stalk each other.

As an avid FPS player I feel that this is the future of the genre- a merging of the RPG leveling system and the unique feeling of a shooter. Well done, Activision- Call of Duty 4 was 2007’s best selling game according to BBC News (and I trust them).