Short One Player, Awesome Multiplayer
First the single player. Being the fourth installment of Call of Duty, much of my opinion of this game is going to be based off of comparison with the previous two Call of Duty games for PC. You may have noticed that I am not counting Call of Duty three. This is because
1) It did not come out for PC (and I am rating the PC version of CoD4)
2) It disgraced the name of Call of Duty
But this is for another review. In comparison to the previous games, the first thing I noticed was that CoD4 only allowed you to play as a soldier from two campaigns instead of the usual three. As a direct result of this, the campaign was very short. If you look in to it, you will see that the campaings for the marines and for the SAS were comperable in length to the American and British campaigns from the previous to Call of Duty games. What made the game so short was a lack of a Russian campaign. I also think that this hole in the single player left many of the characters you encountered throughout the game undeveloped, as well as leaving out some information from the story. It would have been better, had a Russion campaign been included. Many people might say that the Russians were the bad guys in this game, so it would not be expected to have a Russian campaign. However, there were two seperate Russian factions, and it would not have been a stretch to add a campaign for the faction fighting with the SAS troops. This would have added depth, and much needed length to the single player campaign.
Now that the bad stuff is out of the way, it is time for the good. Obviously the graphics in the game are good. They will be outdated in a relatively short period of time, but they keep up with similar games. This makes the single player that much more emersive. This is possibly one the best ways to describe the CoD4 single player: emersive. From the very begining you feel an attachment to your character that is unusual for a FPS game. Of course those of us who have played the entire CoD franchise have come to expect this, as well as the attachment with the other characters who show up in the game. CoD4 accomplishes this as well, with a very strong attachment, especially for the characters in the SAS missions. The only exception to this are the characters from the Russians with whome you are allied. Like other CoD games, there is a varying level of difficulty. The easiest is very easy, and good for beginers, which is always a nice touch. On the other hand, the hardest difficulty was not the difficulty I am used to as a CoD player. It is very hard by the usual standards of shooters, but doesn't quite live up to the other CoD games for PC. The only reason a short campaign is a bad thing is because it was so good, I didn't want it to end. There are a ton of surprising turns in the story, that I didn't expect to see, even from a Call of Duty game. In a franchise known for the unusual quality of telling a story in a shooter game, the story told in CoD4 is possibly the best of them all.
Now for multiplayer. In the past CoD multiplayer has always been very good. However, it has never really been extremely inovative. There has always been something to make it stand out, but it has never set a multiplayer standard for the industry. This time, it has. The introduction of customization is completely new to the FPS genre. Shooters have had classes for a long time, and as a result, your character was just a carbon copy of many of the other players online. Now, you can have a character that is uniquely yours. Not only is your character at least a little bit different than all the other characters playing, but it is taylord to your playing style as well. Between weapon modifications and perks, you would be hard pressed to find two characters that are exactly alike. I would have only made one change to the customization of the multiplayer game. I would have allowed players to switch out perks for more gun modifications. For example, instead of a perk 2, a sniper could, perhaps, add a silencer to their sniper rifle to keep from appearing on the radar (please note that this example replaces UAV jammer with this weapon mod, so it would be a balanced and difficult choice to make for a sniper). This is just an example, or perhaps a person could have no perks, but instead have a gun with a grenade launcher, a silencer, and a dot sight. Not that this makes or breaks the game. That would simply be the cherry on top of an already amazing multiplayer. Finally the multiplayer customization gives the game a re-playability. If you get tired of playing with the same old stuff, switch it up. There are endless possibilities so it is very difficult to get bored with the same old thing on multiplayer.
Over all, the game gets a high rating because the only real problems lie in the short single player. However, the sinlge player was very good while it lasted and the multiplayer gives the game immense depth and re-playability.
I would also like to apologize for any spelling erros as I don't like the new spell check system for gamespot and I am too lazy to type this in Word before posting :)
See you online - [asia]GunMetal