Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Review - 9/10

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare is not the kind of game I would normally run out and buy, but after many solid recommendations from friends saying it’s a must have game on any platform I decided to give it try, and it’s a decision I’m glad I made.

Call of Duty 4 is a first person shooter and has been released on multiple platforms including PC, 360, PS3 and even the DS and has won countless awards for its quality, even the box art is covered in quotes from noted gaming websites stating how good it is.

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Story

There’s no real story or end goal in this game, there’s obviously an ending but you take on the role of soldiers so where ever there’s war you still have a job to do. As the title suggest this is Modern Warfare set in present time with real weapons. You take on multiple roles on different missions; switching between a member of the US Special Forces or British special ops, with both rolls eventually coming together in a joint operation fighting against terrorists and separatists in various hotspot location around the world.

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Game play

With a game that has such a high quality in visuals and sound you wouldn’t expect the game play to be so dam addictive. The single player game starts you off with the standard issue training mission then pretty much throws you straight into the deep end of combat.
Before each mission you get a briefing on what’s involved, this is presented to you in a satellite image of the mission location with news reports and or military instructions, these briefings add extra depth to the game making you feel more involved in the game, and is a cleaver way to hide the level loading.
The majority of the missions will place as part of a small team, you can choose to cower behind some cover hoping your team will eliminate most adversaries for you or get right in there and get your hands dirty, but some sections of a mission you are directly asked to do specific tasks and the level wont progress with out that completed.
You wont last long in this game if attempt to be a hero and barge straight into the action shooting at anything that moves, depending on what the scenario is patients, tactics and cleaver use of available weapons might be all that gets you through the stage.
The stages are laid out nicely but there is a on the rails feel to it with limited exploration involved, at some points you can choose to have a look around trying to find laptops with intel on them, locating these laptops is not necessary for the completion of the mission, they just unlock some cheat options that allow some limited manipulation of the game.
As you progress through the game you find your self compelled to finish each mission and itching for the next, this addictive feel to the game adds immense excitement to the single player experience but can be referred to as the games only down fall because you’ll have found that you’ve just ripped through the game in no time.
Finding the laptops hidden through the game and cranking up the difficulty level is all that’s left to do once you have completed all the missions, luckily the multiplayer experience will keep you coming back for more, with a truck load of options available, some of which require you rack up some experience points to unlock, add to that a downloadable patch that isn’t to far away as well.

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Control

The control system is what you would expect form the PS3 controller, using the analogue control sticks to move and aim with each button assigned a task, personally I’ve never been a huge fan moving cross hairs around a screen to aim, luckily I racked up some hours playing Resistance earlier to familiarise my self better with that system.
Activision has chosen a good logical button layout, with the actions you need in a hurry to survive in good locations, for example when in close combat and you need to do a melee attack, just press down on the control stick which make perfect sense because you thumb is already on there.
To people that aren’t used to aiming with the analogue control it may take some time to develop those pin point accurate shots but this can be overcome with the obvious practice make perfect approach, and you’ll need to develop these skills if you wan to survive online.

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Graphics
Graphics don’t make a good game, but they sure make the experience a hell of a lot more enjoyable especially when the game is set in the real world with real people.
For game like this and with the hardware available Activision had no excuse to not make this game look fantastic, and they didn’t disappoint, the photo realistic graphics that run smooth and clean at 60fps and look incredible at hi resolution. Nothing has been over looked with realistic detail added to every aspect of the game, the lushes back grounds, weapon detail, and every physical entity in the game looks stunning, and even the small things impress like the reflection in your sniper scope and the heat vapour emitting from the tanks exhaust, all of this just enhances the gaming experience even further.

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Sound

With such detail in the graphics it would only be fitting to inject the same amount of effort into the sound to complete the overall package of the game.
The authentically sounding weapons fire, communication from your team mates, and yelling of abusive fraises in other languages from your enemies (I’m assuming their abusive, you are shooting at them right?) all sound top notch in Dolby Digital and compliment the graphics perfectly.
Music is added to sections of stages at the perfect time, it’s not completely in your face and can be easily over looked while you’re busy trying to stay alive, the game adds epic movie type music when it seems the odds are against you. It’s good that they didn’t add a thumping sound track to this game as it would have reduced the realistic sensation.
To truly appreciate the sound quality I strongly suggest that you turn up your home theatre set up nice and loud, who cares if your neighbours think your house is a war zone, it’s worth it, nothing sounds better than hearing a chopper crashing behind you in 5.1.

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Value

For what we pay for games these days you want to get some serious replay value, you want to be hanging out to play the game after work/school Call of Duty 4’s single player game will give you that feeling for a few of days, depends on how long it takes you to finish it. The only replay value the single player game has is searching for the laptops and increasing the difficulty and using this to sharpen you skills for multiplayer game.
The online multiplayer is where the replay value lies, choosing to battle your mates or just jump into random matches hosted by others; it’s all up to you either way you’ll have that hunt or be hunted online experience, and as mentioned earlier there’s heaps of online options to keep things mixed up enough to prolong the enjoyment
In closing I recommend to add this to your PS3 collection of games, you wont be disappointed.

Thank you for reading.

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