InsomniaReview: Call of Duty 4

First off, let me say that I'm sick and god damn tired of WWII shooters. Yes, it's the Normandy beach invasion. Very nice. Clearly you've watched Saving Private Ryan. Can we do something new, now? Oh, tanks in Africa. Lovely.
But if you HAVE to play a WWII shooter, you could do worse than Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2. This game was a launch title for the 360, and one of the big attention grabbers at the time. And it deserved to be, the game looked great. It didn't play half bad, either, I grudgingly have to admit.
This title is not to be confused with Treyarch's (ptoo!) Call of Duty 3. You see, after the runaway success of Call of Duty 2, Activision, who owns the rights to the title, told Infinity Ward they wanted another one in a year. IW replied, "Uh... we COULD do that, but it would suck." So, Activision did something kind of smart. They hired another developer to make Call of Duty 3 (Treyarch) and had Infinity Ward start on 4. This gave both companies an 18 month development cycle, but still allowed Activision to get it's yearly Call of Duty revenue.
Alas, Treyarch apparently spent their 18 months figuring out how to heat and compress a 20-pound back of horse shit into the shape of a DVD. CAll of Duty 3 was an abomination, even for a WWII game. But we're not here to talk about 3. We're here to talk about 4. I just want to explain to you that 3 and 4, despite being in the same series, could not be further apart.
Of course, another clue that this game is not like Call of Duty 3 is that it's set in the modern day. I know, I just about shat a brick when I heard that, too. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare takes you away from the trench of 1942, when America stepped in to save the world and defeat the legions of categorically evil Nazis, and instead drops you into the shoes of a handful of soldiers fighting in modern day engagements.
There's a lot to like about this title. First off, it's darn good looking. It doesn't exactly blow the roof off, but the graphics are enjoyable. But, for me, it's never about the shiny textures, it's about the game. And in that arena, CoD4 does famously. If you've played 2, you'll likely remember the
grenade indicator, the ability to make the reticle 'lock' to a target, going prone, etc. All those make their way into the game. About the only difference is they've taken away your handy dandy enemy radar, which is kind of silly, if you think about it. I mean, we're closer to having that kind of tech now that in WWII. But you get night vision, claymores, C4, and under barrel grenade launchers to even things out, so it's not all bad.
About my only complaint with gameplay is how fucking accurate the enemies are with the grenades. There's a particular level where you play as a sniper, and you're trying to hold your position and wait for a chopper to come pick you up. Inevitably, hordes of enemies start charging your position like it's the last dance of Genghis Khan. And that wouldn't be so bad, if absolutely ever fucking one of these guys could drop a grenade right on top of you from 100 yards away. I wasn't aware that football was the premier Russian pastime. Most of the time, their uncanny accuracy with the grenades wouldn't matter, but when you're lying prone with a sniper scope in your eye, you don't always have time to either get up and run, or lob the fucking thing back.
But that brings me to my next point: realism. Now, I'm not a soldier. At best, I'm a weekend warrior with a gun fetish. But to my distinctly untrained eye, it seems like COD4 managed to hit all the bases. In the course of your missions, you get to play around with everything from an MP5 (the mainstay SMG for, well, pretty much every military force that figures they might need to kill something indoors) to a fully loaded M4A1 (with grenade launcher, laser sight visible only to NVG, reflex sight, bell peppers and onions), to a god damn Barrett Light 50. Sadly, you only get to shoot that big bastard a few times, but oh, what a shot. Surprisingly, there was no 'tank' mission. Well, there was, but you didn't actually get to ride in the tank. But I can forgive not being able to play in an Abrams because of what they DID let me do... take control of the weapons suite of an AC-130. If you don't know what that is, wiki it. Frankly, I don't know why the US military doesn't show that thing off more often. I think if the poor saps were fighting over in Iraq knew we had those god damn things, they'd lay down arms.
And as great as all the toys are, the best part is it seems like Infinity Ward got the 'feel' right. When you play the SAS man, Soap, you and your team are unapologetic murder machines. You drop right into the first mission and start gunning people down without so much as a 'howdy do'. You and your squad have zero problems shooting sleeping (and therefor unarmed) soldiers in their bunks. It's a god damn mission. You're SAS. Somebody has a nuke, and you do not fuck around. Even better, the game doesn't analyze, or provide commentary on itself. It's not making a point on the morality (or immorality) of war, it's just showing you a snapshot. It's for you to make up your own mind.

But while I'm on that subject, I'd like to direct your attention here. I'm not really sure what the point of this article is. Okay, the Iraq war is bad. Pretty much all of America is with you there. But it was okay when you were just shooting Nazis? Gotcha. So, the German soldiers (not all of whom were Nazis, by the way) didn't have families? I'm not denying that some seriously fucked up shit happened in WWII, but the camps, the genocide, all those decisions were made up at the top. The man in the trenches? He was probably just pissed about the treaty of Versailles, and wanted to get 3 square meals. If "Nazis = bad, America = good" is what you've been 'teaching' your kid about war, then I'm afraid you don't really have a high horse to stand on, friend.
In addition, I'd like to point out that the conflict in COD4 doesn't take place in Iraq, it's in Azerbaijan. But fair enough, they're still brown people who don't worship Jesus. What's the difference, right?

All in all, I found Call of Duty 4's single player campaign fantastically enjoyable. The storyline is well done, start to finish, and along the way you get to play with all kinds of ridiculously expensive pieces of military hardware. I haven't sunk my teeth into the multiplayer yet, but from everything I've heard it's of high quality as well, and includes such mouth watering features as customizable character abilities and levels.

VERDICT: BUY, If you're a lover of high grade military carnage, solid multiplayer, or action movie-esque plots, this game is for you. If you're not... what the fuck are you doing with your life?