Review: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (XBOX 360)

Infinity Ward's first game, Call of Duty, was a welcome punch in the face. I still can't believe so many of us dared to enjoy Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, that game released a couple years before CoD. Even lamer, it was one mere level from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault that convinced us our allowance was worth it: the recreation of the Omaha Beach landing, the battle resulting in the deaths of 6,000 U.S. and German troops in Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Almost all of Call of Duty was like that level, except better. In CoD your allied NPC soldiers were actually useful (in that they distracted enemy fire). Because of this brilliant game design, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences gave Call of Duty their Game of the Year award, and the Game Developers Conference gave Infinity Ward their Rookie Studio of the Year Award.

And the Pegasus bridge defense mission, the one where you, an S.A.S. commando, fought off waves of german troops and tanks, with your Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle and the magic, self-loading Flak 88. That still remains the best mission from the Call of Duty series, oh yes.

But now for something truly shocking. Infinity Ward are the 2nd best developers of first-person shooters. "How?" you rhetorically ask. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is how. What makes this disturbing and awesome at the same time are two facts: 1. Infinity Ward are younger than most other AAA FPS developers; and 2. CoD4 gameplay mechanics are barely different from CoD2.

The Singleplayer:

World War II offers plenty of intense, cinematic gaming experiences, but the horrible, most unfortunate thing about WWII is that it has been milked to death. That is probably why Infinity Ward decided to make a game loosely based on Operation Enduring Iraqi Freedom Liberty & Justice 4 Apple Pie Umm Good. And what a good decision. Modern warfare has a tendency to look way cooler than ancient warfare; and consequently, Call of Duty 4 is the coolest first person shooter ever made. It's a spectacle squared. Some call it military porn; it's hot despite lacking romance.

It's so hot, putting on your night vision in the game. In fact, it's so hot taking off your night vision in the game. You feel like a big, bad, third-world liberating, WMD-finding mofo, with your state-of-the-art gadgets and your bad ass allies in their wittle Marine Corps helmets and that baseball cap Gaz the S.A.S. commando wears that has the U.K. flag on it. And the Gillie suit missions are so cool, sneaking around alongside your older, more mature S.A.S. captain, doing every crazy thing he says, deadly assassins disguised as shrubbery. It's so cool and hot, when you first meet your S.A.S. commando pals, they dressed in their lovely gas masks that make them look like unusually large insects with machine guns and British Isles accents.

And the level design. If you've never played Call of Duty 2 or any of the Call of Dutys that came later, here is their typical level design. In each mission, you proceed from point A to point B to win. The levels are linear, and sometimes there is a countdown. As you proceed toward point B, you activate checkpoint triggers, each showing something like "Checkpoint Reached"; the latest checkpoint you reach is where you get to respawn when you die. Because enemies usually respawn, you advance by killing enough enemies and, when it's clear enough, dashing to the next cover closer to the finish. You repeat this process till you win. On paper it's monotonous, but the levels are varied and cool-looking and cool-sounding enough that it's not; at least, not in CoD4.

Call of Duty 4 on Regular difficulty plays differently from Call of Duty 4 on Veteran difficulty. This is potential replay value. Regular difficulty makes Call of Duty 4 an interactive movie you can play and view with your visiting friends. Veteran difficulty makes every decision count and kills you often. It turns COD4 into a puzzle game, one where your skills with the gun matter. Auto-aim arguably makes Veteran on the consoles less frustrating than Veteran on the auto-aim-less PC. (In one mission, enemy infantry pinned me down. I was prone in the grass and couldn't see my enemies through the blades. I used auto-aim to clear away my enemies.)

If you only want to play the campaign once, try this: the missions you MUST play on Veteran are the ghillie suit missions - "All Ghillied Up" and "One Shot, One Kill" - and the mission after the credits - "Mile High Club." The mission you SHOULD NOT play on Veteran is: "Charlie Don't Surf." The mission I tepidly encourage you not to play on Veteran is "Heat." "No Fighting in the War Room" on Veteran can be managed with minimal frustration if you restart the level from the main menu, as this gives you an M4 with an optical sight and a grenade launcher (and this mission has a countdown - if you're too slow, checkpoint triggers won't activate). You should play all the other missions on veteran. This, I believe, is a good balance between depression and fun. Playing it all first on Regular isn't bad though; it will let you better understand the environments, making your deaths less common.

The other great thing about CoD4's campaign is the writing. Even though the marines forget to swear, the lines and voice actors give the characters enough personality that I wish the game were longer than eight hours. Unfortunately, the plot isn't as good as the rest of the writing. The ending feels like a mess (realistic ending? arguably - but realism isn't the goal anyway). The writing has way more wit than humor, which works well. The soldiers speak clearly and are all about business, communicating as appropriately as militarily possible. Call of Duty 4 might be the best recruitment tool ever made.

Yet, it's arguably the opposite. Call of Duty 4 is one of the most anti-war war games I have ever played. Really bad things happen to its heroes. One squad of marines die because they decided to rescue a downed chopper pilot. And your S.A.S. officer, Captain Price, is no Mother Teresa to his PoWs.

It's one thing to fight in Arab streets against Arab muslims, but it's another thing to name a level "Shock and Awe" and make it a combined arms assault on Baghdad where something really horrible happens to the innocent and the honorable.

And everytime you die, you are shown quotes like these:

"War is delightful to those who haven't experienced it."

-Erasmus.

"The press is our chief ideological weapon."

-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing."

-Edmund Burke.

"Teamwork is essential. It gives them other people to shoot at."

-Unknown

Multiplayer:

Call of Duty 4's multiplayer has enough modes to please millions of fans of people-shooting. Modes like 1-on-1 death match to Counter-Strike to ...... ermm, there are more; it's just that I've lost my list of modes and my console is 1,130 miles from me.

A study came out that said people like getting killed in multiplayer shooters. It's like a climax to an exciting story, and it happens over and over again until finally the player is done for the hour, waiting a few minutes to do it over again. I, however, find this kind of play hopelessly monotonous. That is why I forgo CoD4's team deathmatches and free-for-alls. They are chaos. Your teammates don't do the teamwork thing, and matches become a matter of all individuals fighting individually to rake up the most points for their team.

I prefer the one-on-one deathmatches and the hardcore modes. Going against just one other XBOX Live user is thrilling. It's a mixture of stealth - being as quiet as possible, walking through deserted, windy streets and into buildings, tip-toeing with your submachine gun or assault rifle - and sudden loud violence - when you sneak up on the other XBOX Live person, the devil, and you strike like lighting. The tension is beautiful. There is nothing like that thrill of hunting someone else down and killing him (or her). And sometimes you will converse with your opponent. In one match, my enemy asked me what I was wearing, asked where I lived, and asked if I would like a ride on his private jet.

The hardcore modes are different from the non-hardcore modes in that bullets do hardcore amounts of damage (if you get shot, you're probably dead) and your HUD becomes less useful; and less people are allowed to play in a hardcore match. I like this mode because it's less of a chaos.

Perks! That's the no-longer-novel-because-even-Killzone 2-has-it feature in Call of Duty 4. As you level up, you get awarded more weapons and "perks."

Perks are basically special abilities. You can use three at a time. You might want the dropping-a-grenade-when-you-die perk or the pull-out-your-pistol-and-shoot-people-as-you-bleed-to-death perk; these will make people hate you, which is good. Unfortunately, as you play, you will realize that some combinations of perks are better than others.

Leveling up and getting awards keep many players playing. You can unlock unlockables for your weapons by getting enough headshots or killing enough people or yadda yadda yadda. And when you reach the highest level on the XBOX 360, you get the option of restarting from scratch, except the next run through gives you another country's ranks to show off to your XBOX 360 friends. (The first run through gives you a version of the U.S. Marine Corps ranks.)

Conclusion:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare does almost nothing new. But it does it so well. I still think the best Call of Duty experience is the Pegasus bridge defense level, but the ghillie suit missions are the coolest levels I've ever played, and playing "Mile High Club" on Veteran might be the most exhilirating minute in FPS singleplayer. The multiplayer has a little something for everybody who likes military shooters. Call of Duty 4 is a classic, and you should play it.

Unmentioned Nitpicks:

-The shadows on the XBOX 360 version are shit.

-The Information Age Military-style introductions to the levels may come off as grandiose to some wine-drinking gamers.

-Heavily scripted level design saps the campaign's replay value, which may turn off thin-walleted gamers who hate multiplayer shooters or people or both. (Although it is counter-arguable that misanthropes and team work-discouraging multiplayer shooters such as all-shooters-that-require-XBOX-Live go perfect together.)

-Some multiplayer maps are better than others.