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Call Of Duty 4 – Xbox 360
Sat, 1st Dec 2007
FYI, this story is more than a year old

We interviewed Vince Zampalla of Infinity Ward last month and we played the online multiplayer beta of CoD4. And true to the franchise, CoD4 looked good then but it looks GREAT now that we’ve had time to scrutinise it and play with it out of the box.

I’ve debated with a few people about how CoD4 looks and let’s face it; it looks a darn sight better than it did. The graphics are a lot smoother, a lot cleaner and crisper looking. But it’s the game play that everyone is interested in, especially with a title like Call of Duty 4 where there are so many obvious and exciting changes to the way the game looks, feels and plays.

Single player campaign mode is pretty awesome. You begin as an elite SAS soldier code name ‘Soap’ – a newbie recruit. Your first mission is to infiltrate a cargo ship and take hold of an important manuscript. There are several different difficulty levels to choose from starting off as a Recruit and then moving to Normal, Hardened and then finally to Veteran. I suggest starting off easy if you’re not used to FPS games like Call of Duty. If you are experienced with games of this type, perhaps start on normal or even challenge yourself on Hardened.

Movement and camera angles in the game are a breeze. No dodgy camera angles to deal with and running, jumping and the like is all fairly straight forward. Push down the left thumb stick to run, B button to melee, Y to change weapon, right trigger to fire and left trigger to use your scope or aim with your weapon. The new move in the game is with the knife where you can easily cut your opponent’s throat with a simple push of the right thumb stick inwards. It’s a great move to use in multiplayer and gets the result you need quickly.

In single player mode you go through various training sequences, using different weapons and also jumping and running to get accustomed to the movement in the game. Again, all fairly easy to accomplish and you receive achievements on the Xbox 360 version for completing the training sequences.

And although the single player campaign is extremely diverse, interesting and challenging and definitely not something you want to miss, it’s the multiplayer aspect (and playing with your buddies on Xbox Live) that really draws people into CoD4 and keeps them there. The diversity of the classes, the weapons and the ranking system within the multiplayer game really gives CoD4 more substance and depth than any of the previous games to date. With so much to do in the game and with the ability to customise and create your very own class of soldier, Call of Duty 4 allows for even the casual gamer to jump in and make something out of a game that previously only really catered for the more hardcore FPS gamer.

Without a doubt, Call of Duty 4 will take the CoD franchise to new heights of satisfaction, especially for the die-hard fans of the franchise that were expecting something different and refreshing and have been given exactly what they wanted and then some. It’s extremely gratifying to see so much effort go into a game to produce a quality product worth shelling out your hard earned cash for, especially in time for the big Xmas rush!