Call of Duty 4 (COD4) is one of those amazing experiences that will reaffirm why you love playing video games. Whether online or off, COD4’s tremendous graphics, sound, and game play all coalesce into an overwhelming package that is so fraught with peril, it instills players with respect for the men and women of the armed services. Not only is it by far the best game in the venerable Call of Duty series, it’s without a doubt one of the best first-person shooters ever crafted.
Unlike the previous installments in the series which focused on recreating 60 year old battles from the World War 2, COD4 takes place in the present and weaves a fictional tale which centers on preventing two bad men from launching a thermonuclear attack at American soil. Players will perform a wide variety of tasks as they alternate between the roles of a US Marine and a British SAS soldier as they attempt to prevent the launch of rogue missiles poised to destroy the East coast.
Half of the time you will assume the role of ’Soap,’a new recruit in the British SAS
Graphically COD4 is incredible to behold, but the most amazing thing about the graphics is that they run at 60 frames per second (double the frame rate of Epic’s masterpiece Gears of War) without sacrificing a bit of visual quality. At no point during the game’s numerous hectic firefights does the silky smooth frame rate take a nosedive, ensuring smooth immersive play and proving that the code ninjas at Infinity Ward are geniuses capable of extracting every bit of power out of your next gen hardware. Nifty video briefings occur in between missions that seamlessly mask all load screens, and amazingly these briefings fluidly zoom from a satellite image of your next objective to the first person perspective of your player on the ground, producing a feat of technological prestidigitation that is sure to impress even the most jaded gamers.
In addition to the luscious photorealistic imagery, COD4 has some of the best lighting in this generation, allowing players to take cover in the shadows. And for the first time in a first person shooter, COD4s snipers have Ghillie suits that actually work against human and computer controlled opponents alike, allowing stealth oriented players to remain invisible even if their enemy is standing directly in front of them. It’s a neat effect, and just one of the many ways in which COD4 impresses players with its realism and attention to detail.
COD4 character animations are eerily lifelike. When you get a headshot, the physics look frighteningly realistic as your opponent’s head snaps back and their body crumples to the ground. A result of this high quality animation is that it humanizes the characters on screen, making each death a grim reminder of the horrors of combat. When a team mate standing next to you goes down, you really feel (and hear) it on a gut level, creating an emotional response absent in the vast majority of war-themed games on the market.
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