Introduction: Call of Duty on the Spotlight
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's TV spots urge that, while wars and weapons shift, a soldier is for always. It's a respectable tagline-- the kind of fist pump-provoking slogan perfect to obtain the devoted blood gushing for an assault on the enemies of freedom. But enticing recognition to the advancement of warfare may have been a misstep. COD4 remains, in every way, a Call of Duty game; a neatly scripted first-person shooter where pressing F on exhibiting purposes merge for interactivity. The compliment isn't entirely backhanded. No person does dug-in heels quite like Infinity Ward, and blitzing through the designer's enemy-flush scenarios is often electrifying.
Enemies in COD4 are more patient than intractable, always waiting for the right groan to uproot them in the right way. Enter British S.A.S. agent John "Soap" MacTavish and U.S. Marine Corps soldier Paul Jackson: The only munitions in the arsenal of freedom capable of staunching this game's unlimited progress of evildoers. MacTavish and Jackson are the action-hero opposites of grumpy Russian ultranationalist Imran Zakhaev and firebrand dictator Khaled Al-Asad, recently installed leader of ... well, somewhere (Infinity Ward refrained from naming Al-Asad's home nation, presumably bowing to an extremely modern fear of ruffling feathers). Either terrorist leaders have a couple of option words for the West as well as the nuclear warheads to scrawl them on. The storyline is pure Macho Network, perfect for an FPS like COD4-- nonstop us-versus-them bloodshed with no time for moralizing.
As either MacTavish or Jackson, you carry out matching marching orders: Juke from cover to cover through the detritus of war-torn landscapes, scoring first downs for Team Liberty as you go. The football metaphor's no exaggeration; invisible checkpoints send Joe Terror scampering for his next defensive line and close the-- let's call them "clone closets-- that bullets can't. When the pacing is thoughtful (and it is more often than not), connect-the-dots combat is delighting.
Remain in any one area for too long, however, and what was intense becomes overtly mechanical: Infinitely spawning baddies pin themselves to the same positions as previous waves of baddies, becoming more nitwitted fodder for your rifle. In a similar way, grenades and time-bomb Bimmers cease to alert and turn right into impediments to progress prefer to than believably close calls. But before the game gets too discouraging, it's over-- short, and mainly sweet.
"Create-a-class" is a misnomer for COD4's system of multiplayer kit specialization. "Class" implies that you can create something other than exciting new means to hurl death at competing players. You cannot, and you would not find Team Fortress 2's Medic or Quake Wars' Constructor here. Semantics aside, create-a-class is an excellent addition to the series' multiplayer.
Performance-enhancing Perks-- swappable superhuman skills uncovered via combat encounter-- are the big draw. Who needs a new cannon when your next deal enables you reload the one you've got twice as fast? The system inspires compulsive leveling-lust typically connected with MMORPGs, even more so than the Battlefield series' rank-based rewards. Scheming toward your next gun-Perk-grenade combo is almost as satisfying as gaining it, and daydreaming up new ways to specialize on a map-to-map basis ensures longevity.
