Video Games : Call of Duty 4 (PC DVD)

Rating: - Superb single player. Not so great on-line
When they say near-photo realism they are not kidding. Probably the best looking game out there, certainly the best single player. I could, and did, play it all night.

On the multi-player side I felt let down. I came to this game recently, and as the players have the ability to retain XP you join as a Level 1, faced with other players with much greater accrued awards. With your poor equipment you have a lot of work to catch up. This rather took the shine off for me. There are no vehicles or deployables and the team play was quite sporadic on the pubs. But then I have been spoiled by ETQW !
Overall it's still worth the money, as the best looking game that *works*.

---

Rating: - It's a great experience but not without its flaws
Not had the game that long but immediate impressions are

GOOD
* Great intensity of action
* Excellent immersive experience, it really makes you feel like you are in the middle of a battlefield with little time to think, let alone act
* Top notch graphics
* Some entertaining scenarios

LESS GOOD
* Very obviously linear gameplay
* Last man standing perk - if you're dead you should stay dead!
* Multiplayer is a bit too run and gun for my liking
* The 'recover by taking cover' feature. I know that there's a balance between gameplay and reality but this is just daft (I thought the same about COD2)

---

Rating: - pros/cons
pros-
great graphics
quick load screens
low computer recuirments
great online play
GREAT!! STORY LINE
game play 5/5
constant updates - including new online maps (recent)
Real life chernobyl scenary

cons-
non.... perfect game for its genre

---

Rating: - If Crysis is Shumacer then this is Hamilton!
I just bought a new pc, a fairly respectable core 2 duo with a 9600gt in it. Got Crysis, installed, monumentally disapointed in the gameplay, and with the anti alaising only at 4, it doenst look super wonderful.
Got COD4, first of all, it runs like a dream and 've seen it running like a dream on lower spec machines.
It looks fantastic, vision affects, explosions, light, design etc etc.
It sounds fantastic, radio chatter, background noise of a warzone, 3d effects
But best of all for me, it plays brilliantly. Singleplayer has some very well designed levels to try and drop you in some exciting and hectic firefights. There are levels where you go into a middle eastern warzone with a platoon of marines, Covert SAS missions behind enemy lines, 2 man sniper team on a black ops mission, gunner in a c130 gunship!
They seem to have found a happy medium between super real tom clancy 'one shot kills' and ridiculous, shoot a baddie 30 times in the head and hes fine, graze his finger slightly and he gos down.
When you shoot a enemy, he will go down if in a vital area, hit his arm and he wont be able to aim his gun, hit his legs and he cant walk. The aimings good as well, instead of making guns widly inaccurate at any range over 10ft to try and make it 'realistic' (Im looking at you Crysis) they make the the cros hairs large so its not accurate at long range unless you use the sights (flick right mouse button). Works brilliantly.
I loved the way as well they have designed the game so you are a normal soldier, part of a unit in a larger war, not a super strong, phsycic, alien mutated, flying superhero who single handendley wins the war. One level sees your squad leaving a mission area on a helicopter, a support cobra next to you gets shot down and your squad volounteers to set down and rescue the pilot, you set down neer the cobra under huge amounts of fire and have to carry the injured pilot back to the helicopter while your squad cover you and fall back, once onboard you turn around and lay down a bit of fire to cover the rest of your squad who are falling back. Very much a team effort

Ther multiplayer I've only started on so I cant properly comment but have been enjoying so far and there is a ranking - bonus system that is much more detailed than BF2's

If you want to spend hours locked in a room overclocking your pc and playing crysis, this isnt for you. If you want to come home from work and have a good quality blast for half an hour before dinner then there is nothing currently better. You'll be grinning the whole way through!

---

Rating: - Fighting in a straight line;
Bit of a belated review of a game I've owned since day 1 of its release. So lets get down to it?

Medal of Honor is a notoriously linear game. Call of Duty is a notoriously linear game. Indeed 90% of FPS these days are still veritable "rail gun" games featuring:

You.
Objective.
One approach.

That gets a bit old, very quickly. Medal Of Honor tried to spruce it up with their Airborne, but once you're past the initial parachute drop it's as linear as they come. Call Of Duty4 meanwhile sticks with the tried and tested formula. However they introduce superior set piece sequences, almost movie style scripted combat and a pretty solid plot line (decent characterisation, interesting comrades in arms etc).

Yes the badguys respawn until you in particular manage to get a particular number of yards down a path where the spawnpoint will reset - but at least your teammates aren't entirely useless.

Graphically the game is stunning, but in an entirely different way to Crysis. COD4 offers a seriously fleshed out urban experience, as well as dense foliage, buildings and vehicles.

Sound wise it's your usual bells and whistles production.

Gameplay - aside from having manually edit my config file to bind my particularly preferred settings, it worked as well as it ever has. Lean, jump, climb, duck and prone - and all serve a purpose.

The maps are sizeable and diverse, however (and it is a bit of a bummer) it's a one way in, one way out approach. There's a tiny bit of leeway for the approach, but otherwise you've got to do it the way it is scripted otherwise it wont activate the next series of spawnings. Annoying.

Fortunately the missions are all pretty well thought out. Most are varied and you'll have different approaches to certain missions depending on your 'role' in the team, and/or the type of combat.

Multiplayer is great - but recent patches have, somehow, made it less efficient and is causing lag issues.

Oh, and when you complete the game - hang around for the extra mission, it's one of the best and makes you wonder why there weren't more like it.