Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I wrote video game reviews back in college. It was my first proper foray into publishing anything online, and rewiredmind.com was one of the sites I wrote a lot for. This is one of them.

Reviewing games tends to make you slightly more bitter than your average gamer. There’s several assumptions you’ll make of a game before you even play it: a sequel is almost definitely going to be worse than it’s prequels, any racing game will be either too unrealistic or too realistic, and any original game will be an enjoyable romp, but nothing great. So by that rationale, Call of Duty 4 should be rubbish. Luckily, it’s not.

The major thing that takes Call of Duty 4 out of the ’not rubbish’ pile is its AI. Lots of shoot-em-ups claim that they’ve got intelligent enemies, but they end up turning out to be not much more than trained monkeys that know how to pull a trigger and run around in circles. Here however, Infinity Ward have managed the almost impossible; there’s intelligent enemies and intelligent allies, making each fire fight butt clenchingly close and utterly fair. Never once I have thrown the controller down in anger at Call of Duty 4, which is really saying something.

For the first time ever, you can also rely on your teammates to take point. A lot of the time you’ll find yourself taking part in breaching and clearing buildings, but you’re usually one of the guys that go in second. Also lovely and refreshing is that you don’t have to point at any doors and tell them to do it; they act like real soldiers and take the initiative. The beauty of the whole game is you can be as little or as much involved with fighting at the front as you like, but you’ll find it next to impossible to beat the game by yourself. You really do need your teammates.

It’s pretty too, especially some of the larger explosions. I wouldn’t say it’s in the same league as GRAW for utter prettiness, but that isn’t saying much. It’s still a very good looking game, with care and attention taken in every little detail from reloading animations to how your enemies die.

I can’t go through this entire review without briefly mentioning the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty 4. The original Call of Duty was one of my favourite EVER (and still is) online games, and Call of Duty 4 is no different. It’s a fast paced, furious kill-em-up online, now with the added features to gain EXP and upgrade your weapons and character. After earning enough EXP you’ll be able to create your own class to play as in a multiplayer game, which is a nice addition.

Overall, Call of Duty 4 is refreshing. It doesn’t break the mould with the gameplay mechanics, but the change of scenery and new added intelligence on both sides of the fight makes this a completely different beast to the other three games that preceded it.

It just shows – assumptions aren’t always right. In this case, I’m glad to be proven wrong.