Vital Stats

Genre: First Person Shooter
Players: 1-4 local, 2-24 LAN, 2-18 online
Online: Multiplayer, downloadable content

Developer: Infinity ward
Publisher: Activision
ESRB Rating: M
Release Date: 11/05/07

Platforms

• Mac
• PC
• XBox 360
• Playstation 3

Like Smash Brothers Brawl is a tribute to Nintendo icons young and old, Call of Duty 4 is a love letter to the FPS genre. We’ve come a long way since the days of Marathon: Durandal; health bars have given way to temporary damage, waypoints are status quo, and it’s hard to imagine a modern FPS that fails to lead you from objective to objective. Call of Duty takes modern FPS design and, without really adding anything new to the formula, delivers a lean and polished game experience.

Army of One
The single player campaign follows a series of military actions on the part of the US Marine Corps and the British SAS to stop some generic middle-eastern terrorist (surprise). Each of the game’s stages is a little set piece, describing the incursion, assault, and extraction of troops during these operations. As you might expect, this means that most player agency amounts to navigating through the game’s environments, shooting enemy combatants, and paying attention to the orders barked at you by your superiors.

This is all par for the course for a pure FPS like Call of Duty, though the group emphasis of military action does make things a little different. As you’re typically part of a group of no fewer than 4 soldiers, there’s a commensurate increase in the number of foes you’ll encounter. Where Call of Duty diverges from the standard FPS formula is that your allies aren’t mere window dressing–they actively contribute to the combat. This isn’t tremendously uncommon in military FPS games (though CoD has the rare distinction of useful AI partners), but veterans of lonelier FPS games like Metroid and Doom will need to adjust to the group dynamic.

One of the corollaries to the increased manpower on the battlefield is that combat in CoD 4 is quite chaotic. Beyond the large number of enemies who may or may not be firing at you at any given moment, most of the game’s environments are complex urban settings, where every window, balcony, overpass, and rooftop can suddenly bristle with potential threats. There’s no radar (outside the pause menu, at least), so you don’t really have much of an edge in separating the signal from the noise. It seems a little overwhelming at first, but a lot of the game’s fun comes from learning to tactically evaluate your situation and developing an appropriate response.

Call of Duty mixes up the parade of violence a bit with a few gimmicky interlude stages. There’s a bombing run where you’ll control airborne artillery as it wipes out a town or two, a stealth section and related assassination attempt. Normally these sorts of sections are disorienting and break the flow of action (see: every minigame in RPGs ever), but these focus on refining skills you’re already developing and placing those skills in new contexts. The novel gameplay also flows organically from the story, so these little digressions never feel like padding.

Speaking of story, if CoD brings anything new to the table, it’s some remarkably artful storytelling for a video game. The establishment vs. terrorists plotline isn’t particularly revolutionary, but the game delivers it with panache. There’s a mission briefing before each level, but the story is otherwise delivered through action and dialogue. In two particularly remarkable sections, the game revokes all but the most rudimentary player agency, as you might expect from a cut scene. However, instead of using it to ensure smooth event scripting, CoD takes that old trick and uses it to evoke helplessness. The characters feel real as well–they’re not drowning in epic backstories, they’re horrifically practical men doing a dirty job.

This is helped along by the game’s generally competent voice acting. When the actors are asked to deliver some corny lines, they come across with a hardened gruff style that carries the worst of the writing. Environments and enemies also look pretty natural; we’ve finally passed out of the uncanny valley to the verdant fields on the other side. The large number of enemies, complex environment, and general chaos do result in some very occasional slowdown, but otherwise the game does a generally good job of smoothly simulating a war zone. Much of the music consists of bombastic military brass, but it’s generally pleasant to hear.

The campaign mode is a bit shorter than most modern FPS games, but like Portal, it tells a story, doesn’t pad, and is generally succinct. Players looking for more to do can exhaustively search the game’s corners for collectibles that unlock some mostly cosmetic gameplay tweaks, and perfectionists can replay the game in arcade mode, where better performance earns points toward bragging rights on Xbox Live leaderboards.

The Killing Fields
The multiplayer in Call of Duty 4 is pretty much what you’d expect from a typical FPS. There’s a variety of modes ranging from deathmatch to capturing objectives and a variety of ways to organize teams. CoD diverges from the standard formula by offering a number of selectable character classes who come equipped with different starting gear, letting you pick your preferred method of play. The game eschews random weapon placement in the multiplayer maps, opting instead to let you change your class between deaths. You’ll have more freedom than usual in picking out your gear, but there’s less to draw players together for mayhem. The upshot is that if you hate campers, you’ll love this. If you are a camper, there’s even a selectable mode that goes back to the classic way of doing things.

The multiplayer gameplay feels finely tuned. There’s considerable diversity among the different classes, but they’re all strong in some situations and weak in others. The game’s controls are tight, and you probably won’t find better without picking up the PC/Mac version. The maps are also generally well designed, providing multiple routes to defensible objectives, and attackers and defenders never feel overly favored.

Light Fuse, Run Away
Call of Duty 4 isn’t the most accessible game, however. It does some things right–there’s a skippable mission briefing that introduces each level and plays every time you load a save file, making the game much easier to pick up after a hiatus. The game even has a nice tutorial before the main body of action gets underway that gives you a pretty good recommendation for one of the game’s selectable difficulty modes. However, the game’s manual is next to useless, and most of the game’s selectable multiplayer and single player options have clever names that aren’t particularly informative. Adding to the frustratingly clandestine menu options is the total absence of any help text describing what anything does. It’s like opening a gift from a thoughtful friend and then having to ask what it is.

Debriefing
Call of Duty 4 is a classic example of a first person shooter done right. From the finely tuned balance in multiplayer to the succinct single player, Genre fans and hardcore gamers should both find something to enjoy. However, casual players may want to sit this one out if only because the game does little to resolve the innately steep learning curve in FPS games and the unforgiving difficulty.

What It Costs: $50

What It’s Worth:

• To The Hardcore: $60 (buy)
• To The Genre Fan: $60 (buy)
• To The Casual: $30 (play)