Everything you want in a first person shooter but was to afraid to try!

User Rating: 9.5 | Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare X360
First person Shooters have come a long way since the days of Doom and Quake. Back then you got solid corridors and mindless action coupled with insane guns and gameplay. Nowadays, FPS are getting a little more realistic and quite honestly...stale. Almost every FPS you'll play has almost the same mechanics and gameplay styles. Flash forward to 2007 and you get CoD 4! This game quite honestly blew me away. Not only was the story amazing (and yes it was a GOOD story for a FPS), but it had all the mechanics that I wanted that were lacking in other games before.
First I'll start with the obvious, Graphics. The level of detail in this title was completely photo-realistic. Everything from the NPC's to the level design right down to the gun detail was all done with effort. The lighting brought everything together. There were some levels that were dark and there was only a little light in some areas making it out to be an amazing experience.
Next I'll talk about the gameplay. In earlier Cod games you would run around and shoot whatever moved. In Cod 4, I noticed that I was making more tactical decisions rather than running and gunning my way through the game. If you tried the latter you might end up dead...FAST! The multiplayer aspect of the game, to me, was by far one of the better online experiences thus far! Even beating a certain game previously released! The leveling system employed in the game is an amazing idea that draws players back in for round after round of fun. Every kill gains you a bit of experience points that will later level you up and also unlock new guns and camo and even attachments to augment your load-out! The maps are quite nice although I'd like to see more variety. One map in particular has you running around a missile launch site...topside.
The soundtrack is pretty good but seems to be pretty typical of the CoD franchise. The gun sounds and environmental noises are pretty top notch and probably sound terrific on a surround sound system. Unfortunately for me, I have no such system.
Overall, the experience was one of the best this year and I add this to my top 5 games of 2007.