Graev and I gave ourselves an early Christmas present since waiting has never been one of our strengths. We each picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from Steam yesterday and haven’t been able to put it down since. COD4 has to be one of the greatest FPS games I’ve ever played. The graphics, realistic gameplay, single player, AND multiple are all so superb. I’ll write up a longer review later but I wanted to share a few things while I found time to write.
First off the multiplayer has a great system. Similar to BF2142 you gain experience while playing (more if you’re actually good at the game) which leads to unlocking ranks which unlocks guns which unlocks challenges, etc. The challenges range from getting 25 kills with X weapon to jumping Y feet off something. If you complete challenges you unlock more goodies like scopes, laser sights, silencers, etc. In addition to all of that you can also customize your class that you’re playing. By default the game offers assault, sniper, demolition, and those types. If you create your own class you can choose your primary weapon, secondary weapon, and here’s the best part: your “talents” or Perks as the game calls them. These talents are the backbone of your character because they not only passively make you better if you choose ones like increased bullet damage or bullets penetrating walls better, but they can actually give you abilities like Last stand and martyrdom. When you are shot near death instead of just falling over, Last Stand allows you to lay on the ground and pull out your pistol shooting off your last shots. Martyrdom allows you to drop a grenade as you die – a totally cheap but hilarious move when you watch the guy who shot you go down with you.
Although I’ve only played the first 2 missions I can already tell that the singleplayer is living up to the Call of Duty name. COD’s have always had the best shooter singleplayers because they actually make you feel apart of the team by creating the best atmospheres. I’m not going to go into much detail now but so far it’s a blast.
I took some screenshots of the game (see them at the end of this blog entry) to show you all just how great this looks in DX9. The game does not drain system resources at all. When you close it down it shuts down immediately and your system suffers no side effects. While running the game can feel a little intensive if you don’t have a really good rig but on a 7950gt 512ram card with 2gig ram I’m able to play with most of the settings turned up. (I turn off shadows in multiplayer to boost my fps). I did run into a few problems with display drivers for my 7950 though which I should mention. Even with the latest release drivers I was getting some black textures. These were fixed by upgrading to the BETA drivers – so no biggy.
I definitely recommend this one goes on the Xmas list.
how is the computer AI? i know that is something that takes me away from these games. for instance in kane and lynch the AI runs into walls or runs in circles. makes it unrealistic.
The AI is very very smart especially on higher difficulties. It took me three attempts on NORMAL difficulty to get past this one part where (in the screenshots I provided) the enemy had men on roofs and behind cars. They would throw grenades whenever I tried to hide in concealed places.
Very smart AI – something I like a lot about COD games.
Wow- I honestly did not know this was coming out for the PC. I’m not crazy about FPS on the 360, so I was going to give it a pass. I’ll have to look into it once my new card gets here. Thanks a ton!
That game looks amazing. I’m holding out for a 360 version, because my PC won’t handle it well enough to make me happy. 😛
I picked up the game for my PC a couple days ago, and it is nothing short of awesome. The single player gets pretty intense, and yes, the AI is impressive. The only downfall is it’s length, I finished the game in a mere 6 hours on the normal difficulty. I do plan to play it on harder though. Definitely a must have shooter.
I was gonna get it on PC but all of mine friends have xbox and are anti-pc games. Got the game the week it came out and still playing it. I’m on the 2nd level of Prestige mode but not sure if i wanna keep doing it … I just finished the game on Veteran, the One Shot One Kill level took me 5 days to figure out. I’m trying to not play the game every night so I don’t burn out.
I play that a ton as well. We should play sometime!