Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Comments by Kristan Reed

the penultimate level on Veteran took me about eight hours to do

What was the last level like? Even more difficult?

MoGamer2006 said: "Is anyone else getting bored of FPSs?"

Dixons said: "That's why I basically ignored BioShock"

moggsy said: "That's a mistake of quite massive proportions"


I know I've basically committed gamer sacrilege with what I just said and I know Bioshock is meant to be all art deco and stuff but at heart it's still a shooter and over the last year or two I've simply had my fill. That said I do love the Halo games. In fact, they're about the only shooter I can really abide by these days. But the rest generally leave me cold, irrespective of how good they are.

Like I said, I've basically given the likes of Bioshock and The Orange Box a wide berth, in favour of saving my monies for more adventure-tastic games like the upcoming Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider Annie, etc.

Christ, just read last comment and thought there was an ANNIE game coming to 360.

/baggsy being Daddy Warbucks

This is what an Infinity Ward programmer had to say about the PS3 and 360 versions:

"There are minor visual differences between the 360 and PS3 versions, due to the platforms being extremely different from an architectural standpoint. This results in us having to make different tradeoffs on both platforms to hit our framerate targets. They're very nearly identical, but you'll be able to pick screenshots in which both versions are "clearly" the better version. They're as close as we could make them without going completely batcrap insane (though whether or not we are already completely batcrap insane is a matter of some debate.)

Tradeoff example: Shadow filtering. We use different techniques on PS3 and 360 to filter shadow edges, which gives them a bit of a different look. I think it's a matter of taste as to which way looks better, but we did it that way because it was the most efficient way to do it on both platforms that yielded a look that was good enough."

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php...

Im just not sure wheter to pick this up on pc or 360. 32 players compared to 18 is a big deal, and theres a bigger PC MP community in Europe than there is for 360. But it is tempting on the 360. No fiddling around with resolutions for HD etc.

@lavalant: As much as I agree with you, and adore Edge, they can get cought up in a games' hype as much as anyone else. The difference is that people respect Edge, even if they're a bit dumb with scores sometimes...

The multiplayer alone deserves a 9 to be honest. It's just superb.

"The old skool Eurogamer review would have this on an 8/10"

I suggest you go back and see who reviewed the other Call of Duty games for Eurogamer....

As stated before, they only got the x360 version, so not that strange that it's the only review up.

from gamespy btw:
"Control-wise, both the PS3 and 360 games fare very well. There are really no big differences between the two setups, and this in indeed true of the game as a whole. Anyone looking to pick holes in either version will be promptly stumped; this is truly the best example of how one game can look, play and sound identically on two different console platforms."

Fuck all of these shit comments, from what I've seen this game look damn awesome. So there.

Well I'm annoyed cuz Play haven't sent my copy yet. Usually they send it 2 days ahead of release, so it arrives day of release or if you're lucky, day before.

Grrr.

Great review! Looking forward to getting this on Friday.

@barchetta

"The above anecdote was a JOKE"

We might have believed you, if you hadn't felt the need to point it out ;)

Is it actually possible for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners to play on the same servers together?

No.

Whether or not the PS3 is better is better than the 360, looking is always better than guessing...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/art...

Last level was pretty easy next to the penultimate one. When you're under some sort of time limit, it gets pretty crazy because you're forced to take so many risks.

This SP is pretty intense and a notch or two above CoD3's campaign in terms of fun. VERY similar to CoD3's campaign, though, which isn't the worst thing in the world. But if you took the layout of each area in CoD3 and added some "modern" flare to it, you'd have CoD4.

Still some issues bother me about the SP, as was the case with CoD3.

1. Why can't I save 2 games at once? Dumb.
2. If you don't continuously move forward, you will get stuck at parts where the enemy continuously respawns forever and ever. I'm a "hunt and peck" type of player and for me it's frustrating to almost be forced to jump directly into the middle of the fray.

Otherwise, so far it's excellent!

God I hope not. CoD3's campaign was awful.

I haven't quite finished the single player, but with the exception of the ghillie suit sequence, I'm finding it's a pretty average shooter to be honest. Nowhere near as good as people have hyped.

They still haven't sorted out the stupid re-spawning enemies this time around!? There's no way I'm rewarding such lazy design. I play games to have fun, but to frustrated by wave after wave of respawning enemies who can only be beaten by one lucky Kamikaze run in a hundred.

I've only just started COD2 and am loving every minute of it. Can't wait to move on to this one in a few months (very slow with games due to family!) I notice there's no mention of COD3 in the comments - is it worth skipping straight to COD4?

@smurphs
CoD 2 single player is much better than CoD 3. I played 3 before 2 luckily so I really enjoyed 3 and then happily found that 2 was better. Buy it and play it anyway, it will be quite cheap on ebay etc.

You are doing it wrong if you need suicide runs to beat respawn points. There is always a logical way of approaching it. I never had much problems with CoD2 or CoD3 on Veteran.

Is there a co-op campaign mode in this?

@clockworkzombie

cheers for the info. Given limited time I think I'll skip COD3 for the time being. Got to get onto Halo 3 someday.....

Great review thanks Krudster. I missed out on the beta but did get the PC demo down the other week. I was gobsmacked by it. Roll on tomorrow!

:o)

Gaming is in a sad state when a 5 hour long game scores 9/10 and people think it's OK.

Got it yesterday, the graphics are the best i've ever seen with no drop in frame-rates. It's also got the best double intro ever!

It's not a 5 hour game if you play it on Hard or Veteran - so just ignore the wussy Normal mode and play it properly and stop whining!

Short games = good, at least in most genres. Especially linear shooters have a tendency to outstay their welcome if they're too long. Besides, I've read several times that it is as long as CoD 1 and 2, which is more than enough in my opinion.

"I've only just started COD2 and am loving every minute of it. Can't wait to move on to this one in a few months (very slow with games due to family!) I notice there's no mention of COD3 in the comments - is it worth skipping straight to COD4?"

Do COD2 on normal then do it on Veteran.

Then check out COD4.

COD3 for multi-player only, the single player game isn't fit to wipe COD2's arse.

If I get 8-10 hours out of it on Veteran, and then the same again on multiplayer (as an absolute minimum) then thats 20 odd hours for £40, compared to DVDs, or going out for a meal or the cinema, that's still good value entertainment.

IF you play this game and do well at it, you will be carted off to the middle east when world war 3 breaks out. They will use your gamerscore to assign your rank and class type ...... DONT SAY I DIDNT TELL YOU ;)

I got it yesterday and completed it on hard, and my two cents it that maybe it isn't the best FPS ever but it definitely is the best military FPS ever.

If you can do this on Veteran in 10 hours or less you deserve a medal :)

I decided to buy this on the 360, main reasons it was a fiver cheaper than the ps3 version. I traded Halo 3 and Resistance fall of man, I did not really think Halo 3 was all that either. I only have Motorstorm left now for my PS3. Oh and by the way if you own a 360 and haven’t played Bioshock then you are only denying your self one more of life’s pleasures. If there is any one out there with both systems who decided to go the other way and get it on PS3 it would be interesting to get there thoughts?

This game really is super-mega-awesome.

I was planning to hold onto Halo 3, but now I think I'll be trading it in for SMG next week.

I did my first Halo experience the other day and it's been dumped quick-style. I was shocked at how piss-poor it is when compared to IW's latest class act.

Just finished the Sniper level, the one set 15 yrs ago, my God this game has been awesome pretty much continuously, shame it's almost over already :/
I have never played a FPS where it felt so much like you're in an actual battlefield, so bloody hectic, bullets zinging past everywhere, the last one I remember was actually COD 2 and only really the last level of that comes close to the battles in this one.
As much as it hurts to say it, this single player campaign has really shown what an unfulfilling Campaign Halo 3 had. The conclusion of the US Seals level where you save the downed helicopter pilot (Don't want to ruin it for others) was one the most dramatic I've ever seen/played, it was very well done and quite friggin dramatic.

I'd take a 5-10 hour campaign over the pain that is Halo Combat Evolved any day.
A good game you can even play again the odd time, while making a game longer by cutting and pasting the same room into one level many times over just leads to a permanently tedious gaming experience.

Don't know if it was mentioned before but both versions are actually upscaled from 1024x600! This keeps the 360 version in the EDRAM without tiling, and does seem to discredit somewhat Infinity Ward's claim that the game was developed for both platforms at the same time, but certainly discredits their l337 programming skills.

However, what's even more striking to me is how DVD limited this game is. The 360 disc can only hold 6.8MIB and it's stuffed, video sections have very ugly compression ratios, and there's a significant texture budget limitation that for instance has removed a lot of blood textures for the multiplayer maps. They've obviously really gone out of their way to keep the graphics and everything else the same on both platforms, because they could have easily given more and better textures to the PS3 version (though their engine problably wouldn't have been able to make too much of them) and they could have easily also done that other thing that matters for us Europeans, which is give us more language options on the same disc. Because as with Halo, you can't play the game in English if you buy the German version and so on, which is a shame for those that care (and there are a few of those).

DVD is not good for next-gen. Fortunately there are developers like Insomniac and Naughty Dog; may Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted show us the path to the light. :)

How long this will hamper multi-platform games though, is anyone's guess. But it's a darn shame.

Do you actually believe the utter bollocks you're spewing out?
I've got to admit it's one of the more novel excuses I've heard as for why the PS3 is underperforming so far.
''Ughh, yeah it's ummm the 360's fault, the 360 is holding back the PS3's true magic, because as Heavenly Sword and Lair have shown us when games are specifically designed just for the PS3 they are both wonderfully epic in game length and absolutely grand in the graphics department''....
Those Lair water textures up close were spellbinding weren't they? And Heavenly Sword's 5 hour campaign fooking blew my mind :) Thank God for Blu-Ray huh?
As long as games like Assassin's Creed are coming out for the 360, with absolutely gorgeous graphics and game lengths of 25 hours+, I'd refrain from complaining about how DVD is destroying this generation of gaming.

Arwin, who gives a good god damn fuck about what the resolution is when the game looks and plays so good? Grow up for christ sakes.

Shall I spout some fanboy bollocks like 'I suspect they scaled the game from 600p because the PS3 couldnt keep up the framerate' too?

"Just finished the Sniper level, the one set 15 yrs ago, my God this game has been awesome pretty much continuously, shame it's almost over already :/
I have never played a FPS where it felt so much like you're in an actual battlefield, so bloody hectic, bullets zinging past everywhere, the last one I remember was actually COD 2 and only really the last level of that comes close to the battles in this one.
As much as it hurts to say it, this single player campaign has really shown what an unfulfilling Campaign Halo 3 had. The conclusion of the US Seals level where you save the downed helicopter pilot (Don't want to ruin it for others) was one the most dramatic I've ever seen/played, it was very well done and quite friggin dramatic. "

Indeed.

There were moments, actually lots of them, when the part of my brain that gets stimulated by movies was being spiked by the game. Peter Jackson/whoever wants to look at movie/game crossover could do a lot worse than check out Infinity Ward's talent in this area.

I'm gutted at how short the SP game was but my god did it ever push the bar higher for shooters. H3 isn't fit to wipe it's arse.

Yes, COD4 is more intense and, I think, more difficult than COD2. I guess they ramped it up a bit as the game is so short.

The helicopter pilot level actually frightened me - talk about disorientation and genuine shock etc at the end!

I don't wanna go through the pain of Hardened but I know I'm gonna be pulled back into it lol

Want to talk about more highlights (there are lots) but don't want to spoilt it for late-comers :)

God bless you Infinity Ward.

"The 360 disc can only hold 6.8MIB and it's stuffed"

???

Did any one else feel the level where you had to machine-gun/grenade/bomb the enemies using the helicopter camera was amazingly realistic? I actually felt sorry for some of the people I was gunning to bits with the machine gun lol...

There are no Multiplayer Achievements in COD4, wtf inifity ward.
:|

gr8 game tho
Plus US Marines No not EVER use RPG-7's, Should have put TOW's or something in.

Arwin wrote: "DVD is not good for next-gen."

DVD is more than good enough, and games like COD4 shows that.

There was nothing stopping the devs using two DVDs or more if they REALLY wanted extra content in the game, with the PS3 version on one Blu-ray disk. There was nothing stopping them creating high quality videos for the PS3 version (since it has the space on disk) and using lower quality video for the 360 version (as seen with games last gen on the GC). And the texture quality looks on par with anything I've seen in PS3 games, so whilst Blu-ray could have provided more variety overall, it doesn't mean the texture quality would be higher in game (as I think you accept yourself in your post).

Equally, there was absolutely nothing stopping them running the game at 720p natively on the PS3 if they wanted to, so obviously there were benefits to 600p to BOTH versions, with a lower fillrate for a better framerate being the most likely reason.

"How long this will hamper multi-platform games though, is anyone's guess. But it's a darn shame."

I doubt it is hampering multi-platform games anymore than the PS3's 40MB less ram for games is hampering them.

Multi-platform games have to deal with the pros and cons of ALL the formats involved, so it's pointless and rather unfair to single out one issue as 'harming' games whilst ignoring others.

IMO, the whole idea that DVD alone is holding back PS3 versions of multi-platform games is a gross exaggeration, especially as there are many factors affecting games (including time, cost, dev talent & experience, ram, CPU & GPU power, industry politics etc).

So let's quit pretending that PS3 multi-platform games being of lower quality than YOU would like is all because of the 360, please. :) ;)

i think you are gonna have to add one to the score once you play the multiplayer, excellent game