Meltdown

Game Title - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Developer - Infinity Ward
Genre - First Person Modern Combat Shooter
Rating - M
Release Date - November 6, 2007
Platforms - Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows PC, Mac OS X

Game Overview
If you have played any game in the Call of Duty series before, you know the basic idea of the way the game is played. More than one character (in this case 2) from different military factions take the role of the game protagonists. Every 2 or 3 missions, the storyline will alternate between the characters, displaying their experiences in the war. Eventually, the storyline of the characters merge, and what one character did in a mission will help the success of other characters. In the case of CoD4, the game is based around 2 characters. Sgt. "Soap" MacTavish, on the side of the 22nd Regiment of the British SAS, who's missions take place mainly in Russia. The other character is Sgt. Paul Jackson, a member of the 1st Force Recon team of the United States Marine Corps, who is stationed in an unknown location in the Middle East.

The story is immense and well written, with great plot twists and characters who you will end up bonding with. The missions are all unique and have great clinchers. They vary from standard search and rescue missions, to missions of stealth, a mission in wich you take the role of the Thermal TV Gunner aboard an AC-130 Spectre Gunship, and even a mission based around sneaking through Prypiat, Ukraine, in a full Ghille suit with a silenced sniper rifle and pistol, as a member of a 2 man sniper team.

The game has a great multiplayer community with a great XP and leveling system. Each level you gain, you increase in military rank. You gain experience from killing enemies, capturing objectives, placing the the top 3 of the final scoreboard, and completeing mini "missions." At certain levels, you unlock new and better weapons (sniper rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, Light Machine Guns, SMGs, and pistols). You also unlock new game types, and new mini mission objectives. Mini "missions," as mentioned earlier, add even more playability to the game. Each weapon has their own objectives, as well as other things. For example, if you get 50 kills with the M16A4, you unlock the silencer for the M16A4. Then it goes up to 100 kills for the red dot sight, and 150 kills for the ACOG scope. If you get 25 headshots with it, you get the digital camo paint scheme for your M16A4, etc. Each weapon has new unlockable upgrades and camo paint schemes for full customization.

You also unlock "Perks" You can have 3 perks for your custom classes, where you can pick 1 of each type of perk to use. These range from your inventory section (3 extra grenades, 2 RPGs, 2 claymores, etc.), stat perks (Increased damage, increased health, faster reloading, etc.), and bonus/death perks (drop a grenade when you are killed, pull out your pistol to try and shoot your attacker before you bleed out or are shot once more, more stamina so you can run for longer periods, etc.) Some of the mini missions are just extras and reward large amounts of exprience instead of weapon uprades. For example, some of those extra XP missions include "Kill 25 people from the prone position" and "Blow up 15 cars" and "Kill 50 people by shooting through a wall" and "Get 15 greande kills" and knife kills and sprinting for 26 miles total and a plethera of many other fun and interesting objectives that keep you changing up your gameplay just to gain them.

The multiplayer itself is a blast. The community is pretty balanced as far as skill level, and the games tend to last for a decent amount of time, they dont end really quickly, but they dont drag on for forever. The maps, for the most part, are fun and intriqate. There are small quirks in game, like assistance for killing streaks. 3 kills in a row gives you the ability to call in a UAV to show all enemeis on the Radar for 1 minute. 5 kills lets you call in an air strike to carpet bomb an area of the map you choose. And 7 kills calls in an attack helicopter that flys around the map, tearing up every enemy player for 1 minute, or until it is shot down. The realism and game mechanics of them ulitplayer is well thought out as well. In most games, like counter strike for example, using a silencer on your weapon is pointless. In CoD4, normally when you fire your weapon, you temporarily show up on everyones radar. If you have a silencer, firing your weapon keeps you invisible on radar unless they use a UAV. If you crouch walk, you move slower, but your footsteps cant be heard unless you are really close to the enemy. Everything in the game was thought out well and works together perfectly.

In conclusion the game is pretty amazing. So on to the points.

1. Audio - 10
The audio in this game is mind blowing. First of all, the voice acting for all characters is professional movie quality. Aside from that, the sound effects, from the guns to explosions, ambient sound and footsteps, are all realistic to a pindrop.

2. Graphics - 10
The texture and model quality of everything in this game are great. The rain is beautiful and misty, the detail and quality of all things in the game are over the top, and everything that should have refraction or reflection does its part, even down to the missions in the rain where the steel armor and plastic parts of gear glisten from the light shining on their wet surfaces. The game has full HDR and beautiful lighting qualities, and the detail goes down to even heat distortion effects at the barrel of the gusn when being shot.

3. Controls - 9
The button layout is very comfortable. Everything seems like it is where it should be naturally. The handling is tight and everything works fine. The only reason this lost some points is because of the look sensativity. There arent a lot of options (high, medium, low). Low is really slow, medius seems way too fast (it becoems very easy to overaim at targets, even making slight adjustments will usually take 3 or 4 trys to get on target), and high is just too rediculasly fast.

4. Content - 10
Like mentioned above. There is so much to do in this game. The ahcievements on xbox 360 are a lot to handle, as well as the gripping story and fun gameplay. Then when you get to the multiplayer, the content pretty much quadrupils.

5. Replayability - 8
The game has some good replay value in it. Mainly because the multiplayer takes a really long time to get old. The storyline is fun to replay from time to time, but then again its just the same stuff.

6. Multiplayer - 10
Superb. One of the best multiplayer experiences online to date. The fun is constant and stuff to do is non ending.

7. Story - 10
The story is gripping and detailed. Some of it will suprise you and it has its good share of ups and downs. There was l ot of thought put into this.

8. Innovation - 9
New to the CoD series. A lot of what they have done in this is fresh and new, the only downside being that it is the same exact thing as previous CoDs, besides the setting.

9. Getting Into It - 10
You will get into this game fast and it is fucking addicting. Easy to learn, and easy to play, it becomes a necessity from tiem to time.

10. Game Length - 6
The game is pretty game short. I beat it in 1 day but tha might be jsut me. But still compared to pevious CoD games and other games in general, this has a lot less missions.


OVERALL SCORE
9.2 out of 10


Final Comment
Definately go out and buy this one. It is more than worth the money, and will have you entertained for days.