Tense, cinematic, polished, and highly playable.
If you've played Call Of Duty 2, you know what to expect here, gameplay-wise. There are scenarios, an interesting story told, and plenty of highly-polished shooting action. The engine for this game has been tweaked to near perfection. The weapons actually feel powerful and deadly. When you run up behind an enemy and put a knife in his back, you feel it. When you take down a series of tanks with a Javelin missile launcher behind heavy cover, you get a thrill of satisfaction. Simply put, the gameplay rocks.
The presentation is on par with the gameplay. Impressive visuals await you on nearly every front. From the highly detailed weaponry, to the fur on a guard dog's back, almost everything here was rendered painstaikingly. There is also visual variety. Some levels take place in a swamp. Some levels take place at night. Some levels take place in a war-torn farmtown. There's even a level in the middle of a rainstorm. The audio follows suit.
The Mutliplayer. Let's talk about multiplayer. Incredible what Infinity Ward has done to breathe life into what has become a ho-hum aspect of military shooters. Included is an incredible leveling system that rewards players of ALL SKILL LEVELS. Every time you play, you gain experience. These experience points are used to rank you up, open up new weapons and abilities (such as faster reloading times, ability to withstand more damage, etc), as well as new play modes. One of the most impressive aspects of multiplayer is that I never saw a moment of graphical sputter. Not even with a full on 16 player melee. 60 FPS, and it feels so good, baby. Oh, did I mention there are 16 great maps out of the box?
Call Of Duty 4 confidently achieves FPS greatness is every area possible. The only flaw I could see is the campaign's length. But you won't care because it's so fun and playable, you'll want to beat it at least 2 times. And then we have one of the very, very best multiplayer packages on the market.
If you've ever enjoyed shooters, get this game.