Review: Call of Duty 4

Gameplay: 10
Sound: 8
Graphics: 9
Value: 9
Overall: 9.7

The Good:
· Outstanding graphics
· Extensive and addictive multiplayer
The Bad:
· Short (but amazing) single player campaign
· You play as someone called Soap...

It’s always exciting (sexually) when a developer of a long established franchise announce that they’re scrapping their tried and tested formula. Infinity Ward are the team behind Call of Duty 2 which came out a couple of years ago when the Xbox 360 first launched and it was that game which set the standard for “next generation” shooters. Ever since the release of that game, Infinity Ward has been working on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which they claimed would bring a successful World War II series up to modern day. Frankly, it’s already a better game then it would have been because, seriously, we’re all fucking bored of WW2 shooters right now. We all know that the developers behind this successful franchise are great at developing shooters, but this time round, they’ve made a game that not only meets the expected level that’s been set by the phenomenal raping year of shooters we’ve had, but it raises the bar several notches in both single player and multiplayer areas.

Let’s get this out of the way: the single player in Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare is as short as a Chinese man’s cock. You could probably get through it its three Acts (excluding the short and pointlessly irrelevant Prologue and Epilogue) in about six hours on a regular difficulty setting. However, Infinity Ward appear to have taken the ‘quality over quantity’ approach to CoD4’s campaign because it offers up the most exhilarating and varied single player experience that there’s been for a very, very long time.

Like other Call of Duty games, you‘ll take control of multiple characters from different military organisations from England and America and travel over several continents in your time playing through the campaign. This helps to make the game’s short playtime appear much lengthier because you feel like you’ve covered a lot more distance then you really have. In the English sections of the game you play as an S.A.S. member called Soap Mctavish. I’m not quite sure what the developers were thinking about when they decided on that fucking name, but whatever, it’s good to see that soldiers don’t all have macho names like in real life ehm...Just to be safe though, on the American side of things you’ll take control of a A.S.M.C. Sergeant called Paul Jackson, which sounds suitably American and hero-like. Both characters offer different experiences for the player which change from mission to mission, creating a hugely deep and ranged single player experience. What I’m saying here is that if you pay this game and you don’t like it, you’re a cunt.

If you’ve never been a fan of shooters, you aren’t going to be converted by CoD4. Infinity Ward hasn’t done anything different or revolutionary with their story mode that will make you think that they’re striving to evolve the F.P.S. into something new. Moreover, to somebody who’s never played or enjoyed playing shooters, I don’t think that they’re ever going to understand why CoD4 ‘s deserving of such a high score. Even a fan of shooters isn’t going to immediately notice how excellent CoD4 actually is. That’s because it sticks so close to what’s been done in the past; Infinity Ward haven’t made a revolutionary title, they’ve made a perfect one. You could see, acceptably, the short campaign of Modern Warfare as a reason to not buy it; however, you’d be mistaken, dick face. By not having an extensive story mode, Infinity ward haven’t had to create any boring material to fill in between the points of action. Instead, what you have is a five or six hour story mode with all of the intensity and action of a ten hour standard campaign, which basically means that there isn’t any ‘off’ time.

As with previous instalments of the series, CoD4’s campaign is quite linear. There might be points in the game where you’re going to be able to choose to go into a building through the front or back door, but all in all you’re mainly sticking to a set path. Usually, this is a negative thing in shooters because there isn’t enough variety in the level to make it each fight unique. However, in Cod4 the lineation is not noticeable unless you’re looking for it (like me) because the level design is so fucking superb. In a game like Cod4 all you really want to be doing is shooting people in the face and in this game there are so many different ways to shoot people in the face that you’re limit is as good as your imagination. I’m not saying that it’s like Bioshock or anything. What I mean is that you can approach your enemy from a tonne of different angles. You’re rarely going to be confronted in a situation where you don’t have the ability to flank left or right, or take position on the roof of a building etc, and because the artificial intelligence in both your allies and your enemies is half decent, unlike a lot of other shooters, you get a fresh experience every time you play through the campaign, adding to its value.

One of the best features of the new CoD is the addition of an actual, competent story. The basic plot revolves around a current RL (real life) political hot topic which concerns the lives of every person on the planet: the threat of nuclear weapons (very Clancy, I know). Without revealing anything significant (spoiler fucking free!), you’ll be travelling to a load of different locations which all have their own tone and feel. To name a few, you’ll see yourself in Chernobyl and Azerbaijan, illustrating the range of locations. Probably the best thing about the story is the way that it ends and without ruining anything I’ll say that it isn’t all happiness and love world-wide...

Call of Duty has always been about the guns and with this instalment being all about Modern Warfare, you can expect to see some very high tech equipment. This doesn’t seem much, but the ability to utilise night vision technology in a fast paced action intensive game like CoD4 is fantastic and allows for some hysterical moments in the single player and multiplayer experiences.
Speaking of multiplayer, when Halo 3 arrived on the scene, Xbox 360 owners world wide rejoiced because they’d found a game that offered a great single player and a great multiplayer experience combined (despite the amount of 8 year old singing Americans). Well, you’re all going to have to stop wanking of your miniature Mastercheif figurine because Call of Duty4 offers one of the most addictive and fully fledged multiplayer experiences I’ve ever played. Ever. Customisation is one of those things that - if it works – is awesome. Infinity ward have taken a large amount of time
implementing their customisation options into the game’s multiplayer, but it’s not what you think, and you’re going to have to work for the best shit. The integrated system that’s offered to players in Modern Warfare’s multiplayer is called the Perk System. In basic terms, perks are special abilities that you can choose from which will compliment your play style. For example, if you really love running in with a machine gun and going all crazy like, you can add the juggernaut perk, which allows you to take more damage before you die. You can choose up to three perks at any one time which means you can pretty much cover all aspects of your play style with all of the perks available to you, making each player unique. Alas, from the beginning of your time playing multiplayer, most of the perks will be locked. This is where the game becomes addictive. You see, CoD4 also incorporates a levelling aspect which means that your points that you earn in each match by killing people and completing challenges will eventually level you up and by doing so, you unlock new perks and weapons. With all of this crap you’d think that Infinity Ward would have to compromise the amount of maps and game modes to be able to fit in the levelling and the perks but again, they’ve managed to do all of it, providing the most fully fledged multiplayer experiences ever created.

The sheer quality of the whole package that Infinity Ward is offering here is fucking phenomenal. An amazing campaign with an expansive and addictive multiplayer is fantastic, but at the end of the day, it’s the shooting that makes a shooter, and to shoot someone in the face in Call of Duty 4 feels tremendous. Really, the fantastic sound affects and great use of vibration make the shooting in this game feel awesome! Seriously, I don’t think I can use enough positive adjectives to describe the quality of Modern Warfare, but all in all, it’s the best shooter to come out of 2007, so if you’re a fan of the genre, you have to pick it up.

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--

Scoring Policy

It’s inevitable, we’re going to get some smart arse saying “OMFG why did you rate Assassin’s Creed 9.6 when it deserved a 9.9????!!!?!?!?! It’s game of teh year you friggin n00bs”.
Well this, fellow reader, is a scoring policy. Let’s talk about the aspects we focus on when reviewing a game:

Gameplay:
Well, what good is a game if it’s not fun to play? Gameplay will differentiate depending on the title, the series and the genre. Take the Grand Theft Auto series, Gameplay will be marked on how it has improved from previous instalments and how it compares as a standalone game.

Graphics:
The beauty of the evolution of games... With better hardware comes better looking games, right? Well, while focusing on how the game looks nice we need to consider stuff like lighting, textures, character models, special effects. We also must take into account that games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero don’t focus heavily on graphics.

Sound:
Yeah, it plays great and it looks great, but do you want to be listening to terrible voice acting and a looping track that makes you feel as though you’ve been face raped? No! Of course you fucking don’t. Sound will be rated on bit rate, quality of the music and the use of voice acting. Just everything you can hear.

Value:
How long will you be playing this game? That is the question, a low value rating could possibly determine if we recommend renting or buying a title. Taking Grand Theft Auto as an example (again), it’s a single player orientated game and what makes people come back to it is the ability to cause absolute mayhem, or drive through the stunt markers. Call of Duty 4 offers a deep multiplayer experience that shooter fans will enjoy, making it worth a buy. You get the picture.

Overall:
OK, just to get this straight, this is not an average of all gameplay, graphics, sound and value. Overall is the reviewer’s final score for the game. Yeah, so what if we give a game 9, 9, 8 and 7? We could give the overall game 9.5, not saying we would, but you get the point.
--360Stage--

Review Policy

We like to talk about videogames. Good or bad we’re likely to put some kind of spin on all Xbox releases.

Sometimes we enjoy talking smack about people’s games, but if they’re good then there’s nothing really to worry about, why would we bad mouth if there’s nothing to talk about, that’s got to be an incentive to developers, right?

Sometimes, we’re a little bit outrageous with our comments in our reviews (and for that matter, in everything that we do) so we expect to receive a tonne of hate mail from fan-boys. Alas though, these are the types of people who we don’t want on our site. Fan-boys pollute every other place on the web so they can stay there and leave us be.

These are some things to look from in our reviews:

· Well made opinions, based on the completion of a game, meaning that our reviews will be based on the full game experience. We’ll take into account all special features and modes that the game may contain. For example, if a game features co-op, we’ll play the co-op as well as the single player experience so that we can provide the fullest and most accurate review that we possibly can (or as accurate as opinions can be).

· Crazy talk. We like to keep it crazy in our reviews so as not to bore you, the reader. We know that other sites (and our early reviews lol) keep to the formal, but we’re not like that so curses, abbreviations and colloquialisms will be used frequently. It you don’t like it then you can go to somewhere else.

· Under our apparent lack of sanity lies a soft and fudgy centre, which tastes really nice, so despite making 360Stage sound perverted there, we are very professional about what we do and even though our reviews are a little raucous, they have a point (mostly). Expect the length of our reviews to vary from title to title. We might be able to write a load of great stuff for a really crappy game just as we might write a load of stuff for a really fantastic game. But on the other hand, sometimes you don’t need to say much to convey a point succinctly and effectively.

· We here at 360Stage are – funnily enough – more than one person. That means that it’s more than likely that we’re going to probably have different opinions about different kinds of games, just like you, the game player. This means that the staff of 360Stage will often screen each other’s reviews (and other crap) before releasing them to the world. This system should lead to fairer reviewing which should satisfy more people. Here again, it is notable to mention that we do not cater to fanboys. They are very FTL.

· All of the staff here at 360Stage have very different tastes in games. Some of us like sports games and sports games only (ehm casuals...) and others can’t stand to be within four meters of them. That’s why we don’t make these people review them, because if a reviewer has no particular interest or experience with the type of game that they are playing then you can guarantee that their review will be shit. We know that that would grind on your gears and, we actually like you guys (but not in a sexual way) so we actually want to keep you here.

· Video games are delicate things – delicate and expensive things which live within the existence of each other. That means that we actually realise that there are similar games to the games that we are reviewing and so therefore, there may sometimes be occasional references to other games which can help us to provide helpful reference points for you, our faithful readers.

· Our reviews are not the be all end all. Sometimes, after reading (or watching) one of our reviews you might not like what you hear from us, and if that’s the case you’re likely to be wrong. Only joking. No, seriously, if you don’t like what we’ve written then check out a couple of other sites’ reviews and see what they have to say. As you probably know (so not to be patronising or anything,) our reviews should not be the only factor into your decision to lay down your phat loot for a videogame. Moreover, it should only be a fraction of your decision and there are a thousand other places you can look. Why not ruin the games industry and check out a score averaging site etc...Alternatively, if you want to stay local, check the comments and see what other people think of the game and see how much other people hate the score that we gave your most-looked-forward-to game of the year.

All of the above points should help you when you’re looking at our reviews in the future. Don’t hate us, it’s what we do.
--360Stage--

Welcome to 360Stage Launch Party

Welcome!!! We use triple exclamation marks because we’re that excited. This is the official home of 360Stage, the site that’ll give you the best no-bullshit reviews and other tit bits, making us the most awesome site on the interwebz.

We’re based in the UK (Leeds to be precise) which means we’re a little of the beaten track but whatever, we know everything anyway. Expect to see a tonne of content appear on here in the next few days and from there on out you’ll be able to see daily updates from the team. We’re going to start uploading stuff now so we’ll see you around the site.

Thanks,

--The Team--