Multiplayer Mayhem

One of the great things about the Call of Duty games has been that the series has often balanced out a superb singleplayer campaign with an involving team-based selection of multiplayer modes. This multiplayer focus has grown an awful lot in the latest games in the series and the multiplayer is now more important than ever, particularly on the console versions.

It’s no real surprise then that the multiplayer side of things is beautifully realised as well.

The multiplayer side of the game boots up with a separate application to the singleplayer game and is dramatically different to the usual kind of deathmatch affair. There’s no rocket jumping or rail guns – it’s a case of making your bullets count, laying covering fire, moving with cover and working as a team.

There’s times where it feels very much like playing a game like SWAT, with the tactical feel of the game so omnipresent that it’s ungodly.

The gameplay breaks down into six different game modes, none of which are tremendously original but all of which are well-crafted and most of which fit with the game ethic. There’s Domination, Search and Destroy, Sabotage and Headquarters for those who want some objective based missions while old-schoolers can enjoy the standard deathmatch and team-deathmatch games.


In terms of maps there’s just shy of twenty available by default and most of them are based on areas from the singleplayer game. They range in size a fair bit and cover a wide range of terrain types, from the deck of a cargo ship in a rainstorm to a suburb of the irradiated Pripyat, Russia.

Gameplay is also made more complex by the inclusion of levels and classes. There are five basic classes to choose from, each of which has a different weapon set, and a whole host of perks to be earned from playing through the game and mastering each level and weapon. The perks do all the usual stuff, giving extra explosive damage or increased disorientation from flashbangs.

The great thing about the perks system is that it is fairly subtle – most classes can do most things and the perks are only really useful for accentuating the tactical style of a player. Just because you decide to play as a sniper class doesn’t mean that you can’t run in to a firefight and go toe-to-toe with the enemy – Snipers are as competent as most other classes in that department. The perks simply mean that the Sniper class is a little bit better at the Sniper tactic – but not enough to break the gameplay.

Conclusions

Overall, there are a few flies in the ointment of Call of Duty 4, but none are big enough to prevent this from being a great game. The main thing I felt the game was lacking was the ability to dive for cover as there are a few areas of the game where you have no choice but to dodge bullets and move between cover. At those times, navigation can be a little difficult and you can easily get the process of sprint, stop, duck a little bit wrong.

I can’t count the times I got killed by a helicopter gunner because I was ducking early or accidentally going prone instead of crouching.


That said, there are a few nice extra touches which have been worked into the latest game, such as the enemy intelligence which can be collected throughout the game for extra boasting points. The voice acting and clever use of loading screens as more high-tech briefings is also particularly praise-worthy as it really helps make the game more immersive and interesting.

There’s bound to be a fairly large number of Call of Duty fans who are going to be disappointed by Modern Warfare because it’s moved away from the original setting and shifted to the present delay. Those people are missing the point. Call of Duty 4 is the same as all the other games in the franchise – an awesomely fun war simulation which blends realism and superheroic endurance to give players a war which is all at once scary, difficult, moving and enjoyable. The shift to a new setting is mostly a cosmetic change and it isn’t a bad one at that.

Combine the kinetic feel of the game which communicates every nudge of recoil and the graphics which beautifully detail every bullet impact with the same fluid gameplay we’ve all come to love and it’s easy to see that Modern Warfare could be the best Call of Duty game yet. It acts as if it were in another, different Christopher Lambert film, decapitating the opposition and absorbing their power to become the king of all war shooters to date.

There can be only one. Modern Warfare is it.