Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Date Acquired: 1.16.10 -Borrowed from my friend Ben in exchange for my copy of Modern Warfare 2

Date Completed: 1/31/2010

Thoughts: Obviously I'm a little different here. As you can see I've already reviewed Modern Warfare 2. I avoided playing CoD4 when it released, despite all the hype it got. It released in a great year for gaming, it was competing with other FPS's for my attention such as BioShock and Halo 3. And I never really played the other games, so I just passed this by. After it got such great word of mouth, I was open to the idea of picking it up, but even today, 3 years later after it's release and it's still $50 at retail. I don't buy new games for full price after 6 months. It's usually just a bad practice as a price drop is right around the corner (first party Nintendo games being the exception), so I figured I'd give this game a shot when it dropped to $30. Ha ha.

My opinion on this concerns exclusively the single player campaign. I love playing through games on multiplayer co-op with friends that I know, but playing in deathmatch after deathmatch with random internet strangers, many of whom are 13 year old kids hurling obscenities has no appeal to me. I understand this is a game that derives much of it's appeal from it's mulitplayer aspect, but that is an aspect that doesn't factor in with me (nor did it when I played MW2)

The first thing that hit me when I played this game was the graphics. I'm sure they were the cats pajamas in 2007 but in 2009 I was spoiled by the sequal which is to me the best looking game I've ever played. My roomate commented on it also when he saw me playing it. The game looks so much more dull than the dynamic, flashy Modern Warfare 2. I noticed it everywhere. I'm far from a graphics whore, but it was a very noticable difference. It didn't affect my enjoyment of the game (I think) but it was there.

To be honest I was pretty underwhelmed by this game. I'd heard so many great things about it, and I loved MW2 that I thought for sure I was going to be rocked by this. Maybe it's because Infinity Ward did such a fantastic job of improving their game for the sequel that they spoiled me. I don't think knowing bits of the plot before hand hurt me. When we went to rescue Nikolai, I knew we'd be successful because he spends all of MW2 giving me orders. I didn't think there'd be a problem playing the second game before the first, but I was only considering plot elements. I didn't think I'd miss anything from the story by playin them out of order, and I was right. While I didn't know the various characters such as Soap and Price were from the original game, it didn't keep me from enjoying and understanding the second game. But the true cost of playing them out of order may be that I was unable to appreciate the original as I would have if i hadn't played the sequal. But perhaps that's over stating things. Perhaps had I tried the original I wouldn't have thought much of it and never tried the sequal at all.

I'm not trying to take anything from the game, I know this game has it's rabid supporters, And I'd guess that 95% of them love the game for it's multiplayer, my stance on which is abundantly clear. I'm surpised at how different my reaction is to the two similar games, and I plan to keep playing it on veteran to see if maybe I was just in the wrong mood when I played it before. I'd recommend the game to those who haven't played it, but I'd encourage those not to skip the 2nd one, no matter their thoughts Call of Duty 4.