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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 13th November 2007
Hearts and Minds
The main appeal of the game though is that the gameplay hasn’t changed fundamentally and it remains very similar to the past Call of Duty games. You start playing and it feels just like an old friend – albeit one with a few slightly annoying tendencies. Even then a lot of them aren't that severe though and things like being immune to most fires are just about forgiveable.A lot of the tweaks which the game has picked up over the years have remained in place too and it’s clear that Infinity Ward has listened closely to the community – keeping good features and dropping bad ones as well as adding new ones.
Hence, your health recharges if you take cover for a few moments and the grenade indicators introduced in Call of Duty 2 are still present. On top of this though you also get the ability to switch between three stances – active, crouched and prone – and can also steady your aim for short periods when using scoped weapons.
Meanwhile, smoke grenades have been replaced by flashbangs and players can use active cover to leap over obstacles.
That’s all extraneous though – the most important thing in the Call of Duty games has and always will be the weapons. So, what have we got on offer in that department?
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Obviously the game has grown up past M1 Garands and Sten Guns, thank God. I don’t know about you but I was getting pretty tired of using the same weapons over and over. Replacing the standard palette of 1940s guns we’ve got a range of modern weapons, all of which are suitably powerful. Silenced submachine guns and sniper rifles with 10x zoom, SPAS-12 shotguns and mini-UZIs are the new tools of the trade and, although each one of them feels beautifully realised, they actually only comprise a small portion of your arsenal.
On top of the scoped assault rifle and sidearm combo which will be on screen for most of the game, players also have access to a selection of other tools. Grenades are the obvious one – with frag grenades getting lobbed with the mouse wheel and flashbangs requiring a tap of ‘4’ by default – but there’s also a few others.
The rifle-butt melee attack has now been replaced with a deadly knife slash and the selection of explosives has been further rounded out by the addition of new rocket launchers and mines.
The rocket launchers come in two varieties – the standard RPG launchers which we all know and love and the more advanced homing launchers like the Javelin. Homing launchers are only really used at a few key places in the game as their main use is for destroying vehicles. When you do get your hands on them it’s a case of lining up the sights and locking on.
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Mines are an interesting addition to the game and we found them especially useful on stealthier missions where it was important for us to take out a large number of enemies at once. The game helpfully leaves you with an indication of which way the claymore will fire too so that you don’t get caught up in your own traps.
Truthfully, the rocket launchers and mines are only really of use in a few certain situations and even then you can just find other ways around the problem if you wanted.
For example, one area of the game has Soap and Pryce raiding a small group of huts. The first time through I followed the Captain’s orders and laid some claymores at the entrance and exits of one hut before storming the other. Enemies poured out of the mined hut, set off the traps and died horribly. The plan was perfect.
On the other hand, I came back later on a higher difficulty and did same thing in my own way. A grenade through a window on either hut solved the problem in half the time. Now, it may seem like I’m faulting the game for having weapons which are largely redundant for certain methods, but I’m actually not. It’s far better for the gameplay to have the weapons there and not use them – it makes the game more open to different methods and gives players stories to tell about the tactics they used.
Speaking of stories, there was this one time at training camp…
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