Call of Duty 4. Now with 100% less Germans!
The story is a welcome change, if a tad predictable, it turns out an unnamed Middle Eastern country (COUGH Iraq COUGH) has assassinated it's leader and the terrorist group responsible have taken control. Of course their first action is to try and get hold of nuclear missiles and blow up the West. Some Russians are more than eager to oblige and it's your job to stop them. So your introduced to the British SAS recruit your controlling called 'Soap' MacTavish, I assume he got that nickname from his antics in the shower with the other recruits, and your off to save the world.
Strangely enough I actually found myself liking these characters, from the sarcastic comments from Gaz, the wily old veteran Captain Price and the stereotypical black character Sergeant Griggs. Some of the story moments are genuinely touching mainly the moment you take the final few steps as a dying soldier, and after all the work you put into keeping him alive you feel genuine sorrow during his final moments. Overall the story is great and will keep you interested from start to finish.
The gameplay is great as well, on the surface it's a standard FPS but there is an amount of hidden depth to it. You will find your preferred weapons, ways of utilizing Flash Bangs and Grenades, also you have to make the decision to gun your way through or take it more stealthy moving from cover to cover. Your team mates AI is relatively good as well taking down their fair share of enemies and finding good cover. Unfortunately they do have a habit of getting your way and believe me when I tell you nothing is more infuriating then getting to the end of a level on Veteran difficulty only to have a team mate get in the way of your bullets. Obviously the enemy AI has perfect accuracy from miles away but they flank and grenade you cleverly which is a good bit of development. The single player mode is quite short, I managed to finish it in 12 hours on Veteran difficulty, but it never gets boring as Infinity Ward really made it varied with you infiltrating a base one minute to going all stealthy in a ghilly suit in Chernobyl the next. Although I expect on a lower difficulty it would only take you about 7-8 hours to complete.
The game is extremely good looking with great lighting effects, detailed environments and character animations which come together to make it one of the pretty games on the console. The sound is top notch as well with the music accompanying the action on screen well and the voice acting is superb as well, if a little corny.
Right on to the big seller of the game and that's its multiplayer mode, now there is no denying that the online multiplayer is great there are tons of different maps to play on, lots of different modes and a great feature where you level up your rank as you keep playing and getting kills, this provides a great reason to keep playing and makes up for the short single player mode. This game is one of the most popular games on Xbox Live and unfortunately that means that are plenty of 12 years just waiting to call you a newb, saying how you 'phail at life' and waiting at spawn sites with a sniper rifle. Still these people can't be helped and shouldn't detract you from a well put together multiplayer mode.
There isn't much to do after you finish the game there is an arcade mode with an online leader boards to try and get on (although lets be honest you'll never beat the obsessed freak from Austria who's memorised every enemy placement), there is a cheat mode where you can…….well you know cheat and of course for all you achievement whores you can earn lots of points if you play through on veteran difficulty.
So that's Call of Duty 4 by far one of the best shooters on the console, with a better multiplayer mode than Halo 3 and great story to play through. What more could you possibly want?
What you want Treyarch to develop Call of Duty 5 and send us back to WW2. No chance mate Activision wouldn't be that stupid.