Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Review - Xbox 360

8

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 9
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 6

The Call of Duty series has come a long way since its first title on the PC. The graphics have always been of high standards, and Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare shows Xbox 360 owners what we have to look forward to with the many shooters to come. The new graphics engine boasts an amazing new array of effects and animations, which makes Call of Duty 4 a serious contender for Xbox 360 Game of the Year 2007, even competing against such hugely successful titles as Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect.

Gameplay

Call of Duty 4’s single player campaign offers three separate acts where you follow the story of a U.S. marine and a British S.A.S. officer as they fight their way through global hotspots to eliminate terrorists that are on a mission to devastate the free world as we know it. The single player campaign plays very similarly to other Call of Duty games, except this time around its modern and all your weapons are the latest military issue. For this reason alone, we can’t award it with a very high score for innovation, as it basically felt like the previous Call of Duty games except in a modern world, and other shooters have already gone modern so that wasn’t new either. It’s amazing how much can be on-screen at the same time though, and Infinity Ward have obviously gone to a lot of effort to make the missions look very hectic in key moments, and also very detailed when you’re crawling around trying not to be seen by the enemies.

The user interface is fairly simply designed, displaying things like how much ammo you have left, where you need to go on the radar, and a helpful alert comes on the screen if a grenade has been thrown near you. There is also a red marker in the middle of the screen that shows where you are being attacked from. This really helps for those missions where you’re in the middle of a dark field and have a very small range of sight. The health works in the same way as previous Call of Duty games and it seems this is becoming a standard for all shooters. The sides of the screen will start to go red if you are shot, and it will continue to get worse until you take cover, kill the enemies, or die. If you take cover, you are healed automatically over a few seconds.

The campaign takes around 5-10 hours to complete depending on what difficulty you play. We decided to play it on Veteran, and it does provide a very real experience of exactly what warfare would be like. You can die in a couple of shots, and if you’re ever exposed, you’re doomed. Playing the game on easy, it’s quite easy to run through missions and not worry too much about your health. There are two other difficulties in-between, and they (continued next page)