Call of Duty 4

July 30th, 2008 · No Comments

I started playing Call of Duty 4 on Monday night because I finally got my 360 back from repairs after it experienced the red rings of death and started locking up randomly. I’m lucky it was the red rings of death though because my console was out of the normal 1-year warranty but the Red Rings of Doom are covered under a 3-year warranty so the repair cost me nothing and they even provided a pre-paid shipping label and a shipping box with packing materials!

The console works as good as new and all of my content is still working great as well so it wasn’t my hard drive that was the issue!

Anyway, Call of Duty 4 I borrowed from one of my friends and he told me it was “the best game he’d ever played”. He was close to right on that count as it was probably the most immersive, adrenaline-filled gaming experience i’ve had in a long time. The only complaint that I have is one that some review sites such as IGN mirrored - the game is far too short! This is only made worse by how great the game is! On the “regular” difficulty I was able to finish in around 5 hours and I died a lot on some levels, especially the last level. The game really does stress some strategy, effective cover usage and even the effective usage of things like flash bangs or smoke grenades. Also, smoke grenades in this game are the first that actually seem to do what a real one would do and produce huge clouds of obscuring smoke that you can run into to hide or to plant C4 on an APC or light tank.

The game also had a large variety of missions jumping between the British SAS and the US Marine Corps. You also got to do things such as be the gunner on the AC-130 gunship to provide close fire support for the troops (after playing the previous mission as one of those troops on the ground). Another part of the game features you being the door gunner on a helicopter and the last mission has you in the back of a truck that is careening through traffic trying to fend off other trucks full of troops.

Call of Duty 4 is really where video games need to be at: cinematic quality entertainment that is interactive. I think i’ve had more fun in those 5 hours of gameplay than I did in a long time and from what i’ve read, the multiplayer mode is even more addictive due to its huge depth of gameplay with tons of levels and skill-ups and different perks you can use. It sounds like what Battlefield 2 did with persistent rankings on a much more in-depth scale. If you haven’t played Call of Duty 4 you really have no excuse given it is on the 360, PS3, and the PC so I encourage you to give it a shot if you like first-person shooters and war games.