My brother bought Call of Duty 4 when it come out at the beginning of the month and promptly beat it (the single-player campaign is pretty short), so when I was over at my folks' place for Thanksgiving Thursday I borrowed the game from him to play through it after watching him for a bit. While my taste in first-person shooters usually tends to fall in either the very gritty, realistic shooters like the Red Storm games or very well written story-heavy games like Half-Life, the thing that struck me about watching my brother play Call of Duty was that it was very, very cinematic, and seemed to do a good job of treading the ground between the two. I was intrigued, so I took it home and I've played through the single player campaign in the last couple days. I've put my spoilerific review, as always, behind the cut.
This is the first Call of Duty game I've ever played, so I can't speak to any of the others -- I'm not generally too big on WW2 shooters anyway (though I do like playing Day of Defeat multiplayer). It's good to keep that in mind while you read this, since most of my comparisons will be to other FPSes I've played and this might not be anything new to people who've played the Call of Duty games.
The game focuses on two storylines; in the first, you are a British Special Air Service operator, and in the other you are a US Marine Force Recon soldier. Both take place in totally different parts of the world, but they are linked by common threads. The game starts off with an SAS mission to capture a freighter carrying a dangerous cargo, which is thwarted when the ship is attacked by a pair of MiGs, forcing you to abandon ship. The last few minutes of the mission consist of running through the ship to reach the upper deck (and the evac chopper), while the ship lists heavily, pipes burst and water pours in. It is intense. But it's really only the first set piece in a game that is littered with them; more on that later.
After that is an opening credits sequence where you are in the body of a US-friendly Middle East leader who is being taken to his execution at the hands of a rebel leader. The bad part is, it doesn't seem like there's any way to skip it. The good part is, you probably won't want to. The car trip through the capital city from where you were being held to the place you're going to be executed does an excellent job of making the city feel alive around you; there is still fighting in the streets between rebels and loyalists, you wind through tiny alleys and behind bombed-out houses, groups of people run from processions of soldiers. It's not as good as tram ride in the original Half-Life, but I think only because it is not serving the functional purpose of the Half-Life tram ride (which also revealed to you all the parts of Black Mesa you would be moving through as the game went on). Like the tram ride, you can't really do anything but look around, but it is still a very "movie" experience that could have come from something like Black Hawk Down.
Throughout the game, similar set pieces like this occur, but most of them are much more interactive. There are scenes where you are serving as a door gunner in a helicopter during a Marine assault on the capital city you saw in the intro, which is very impressive. There's one where you get to be a gunner onboard an AC-130 Spectre gunship, providing cover fire for the SAS team you were just playing a part of, and there's a few scenes where everything happens in slow motion (but not a player-controlled bullet-time). The missions all have action sequences that seem to be choreographed by an action-movie director. It's really top notch in that respect.
On the other hand, it falls flat in some other ways that are kind of annoying to me. In both Half-Life and say, Rainbow Six, when you kill the enemy troops, they're dead. They don't respawn. That's not the case in Call of Duty 4. As far as I can tell, except in certain areas, the enemy troops will keep respawning until you move up to a certain place. Now, there is a good part to this -- like a good action movie, the action keeps moving, because you can't just sit there and plink off the enemy before moving up, so every advance is a hair-raising experience. On the other hand, if you're only "decent" at FPSes, like me, it's very frustrating because you feel forced to move up maybe before you're ready, and you often have to make several attempts and try several different approaches to get past the next part of the game, leading to a lot of dying and replaying of the same sections. That's frustrating, especially if you're playing the game mostly for the story. That said, I never really got super-stuck, like I have with some other games (the end of the second to last level of Oni, I'm looking at you and your stupid jumping puzzle!), and I think it was a good trade-off on the part of the developers.
The save point system for the game is probably the thing that kept me from being so upset. While it doesn't have the save anywhere functionality of most PC titles like Half-Life, it does save fairly frequently (generally after every sequence in an action scene), so you never really have to start from too far back. It certainly isn't as bad as the Rainbow Six games, where you had to start the mission over from the beginning.
Overall, I really liked it, though it is short. I'd say the single-player game is even shorter than the Half-Life 2 episodes. On the other hand, if you like the multiplayer, it might well be worth it -- I've not messed with it much, and I generally like single-player campaigns better anyway, so borrowing it from my brother has satisfied me; I probably won't pick it up myself. However, it's definitely worth playing through, and if you liked the other Call of Duty games and you want a more modern multiplayer game, I suspect it will hit the spot quite nicely. There's a couple scenes I haven't wanted to spoil here even, because they are pretty jaw-dropping when they happen and if you play the game, you really need to experience them to get the full effect (the end of each of the storylines especially). I was very satisfied with the quality of the story, and you will really feel the twist in your ribs at some of the plot points.
The game focuses on two storylines; in the first, you are a British Special Air Service operator, and in the other you are a US Marine Force Recon soldier. Both take place in totally different parts of the world, but they are linked by common threads. The game starts off with an SAS mission to capture a freighter carrying a dangerous cargo, which is thwarted when the ship is attacked by a pair of MiGs, forcing you to abandon ship. The last few minutes of the mission consist of running through the ship to reach the upper deck (and the evac chopper), while the ship lists heavily, pipes burst and water pours in. It is intense. But it's really only the first set piece in a game that is littered with them; more on that later.
After that is an opening credits sequence where you are in the body of a US-friendly Middle East leader who is being taken to his execution at the hands of a rebel leader. The bad part is, it doesn't seem like there's any way to skip it. The good part is, you probably won't want to. The car trip through the capital city from where you were being held to the place you're going to be executed does an excellent job of making the city feel alive around you; there is still fighting in the streets between rebels and loyalists, you wind through tiny alleys and behind bombed-out houses, groups of people run from processions of soldiers. It's not as good as tram ride in the original Half-Life, but I think only because it is not serving the functional purpose of the Half-Life tram ride (which also revealed to you all the parts of Black Mesa you would be moving through as the game went on). Like the tram ride, you can't really do anything but look around, but it is still a very "movie" experience that could have come from something like Black Hawk Down.
Throughout the game, similar set pieces like this occur, but most of them are much more interactive. There are scenes where you are serving as a door gunner in a helicopter during a Marine assault on the capital city you saw in the intro, which is very impressive. There's one where you get to be a gunner onboard an AC-130 Spectre gunship, providing cover fire for the SAS team you were just playing a part of, and there's a few scenes where everything happens in slow motion (but not a player-controlled bullet-time). The missions all have action sequences that seem to be choreographed by an action-movie director. It's really top notch in that respect.
On the other hand, it falls flat in some other ways that are kind of annoying to me. In both Half-Life and say, Rainbow Six, when you kill the enemy troops, they're dead. They don't respawn. That's not the case in Call of Duty 4. As far as I can tell, except in certain areas, the enemy troops will keep respawning until you move up to a certain place. Now, there is a good part to this -- like a good action movie, the action keeps moving, because you can't just sit there and plink off the enemy before moving up, so every advance is a hair-raising experience. On the other hand, if you're only "decent" at FPSes, like me, it's very frustrating because you feel forced to move up maybe before you're ready, and you often have to make several attempts and try several different approaches to get past the next part of the game, leading to a lot of dying and replaying of the same sections. That's frustrating, especially if you're playing the game mostly for the story. That said, I never really got super-stuck, like I have with some other games (the end of the second to last level of Oni, I'm looking at you and your stupid jumping puzzle!), and I think it was a good trade-off on the part of the developers.
The save point system for the game is probably the thing that kept me from being so upset. While it doesn't have the save anywhere functionality of most PC titles like Half-Life, it does save fairly frequently (generally after every sequence in an action scene), so you never really have to start from too far back. It certainly isn't as bad as the Rainbow Six games, where you had to start the mission over from the beginning.
Overall, I really liked it, though it is short. I'd say the single-player game is even shorter than the Half-Life 2 episodes. On the other hand, if you like the multiplayer, it might well be worth it -- I've not messed with it much, and I generally like single-player campaigns better anyway, so borrowing it from my brother has satisfied me; I probably won't pick it up myself. However, it's definitely worth playing through, and if you liked the other Call of Duty games and you want a more modern multiplayer game, I suspect it will hit the spot quite nicely. There's a couple scenes I haven't wanted to spoil here even, because they are pretty jaw-dropping when they happen and if you play the game, you really need to experience them to get the full effect (the end of each of the storylines especially). I was very satisfied with the quality of the story, and you will really feel the twist in your ribs at some of the plot points.
Leave a comment