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COD4

Call of Duty 4 Thoughts

By UltrViolet

Single Player Thoughts

November 26, 2007

I've been playing Call of Duty 4 for a few days. I played Call of Duty 2, but did not play Call of Duty 3 (since it was only available for consoles).

In a nutshell, most of my thoughts about CoD 2 still apply to CoD 4. On the plus side, the sound effects and graphics are awesome (you'll need a beefy computer, of course). The story and characters are great (if somewhat overused -- it's basically like watching a British episode of 24, with an unusual amount of dialog stolen from the movie Aliens ("I like to keep this for close encounters," "check those corners," etc.)).

Now for the negatives.

I finished the single player campaign in four days. And that was not four days of continuous playing, either. Two of those days I barely played it at all. I'll say I spent a total of maybe 12 hours, tops, on it. That is a ridiculously short playing time for a $50 game. It's pretty close to a complete rip-off, in fact. Casual gamers should not be able to finish a game that fast, even on the relatively low "normal" difficulty. (For comparison, it took me weeks to finish Doom 3 and Quake 4.)

As with CoD 2, it's almost entirely scripted gameplay. You're a subordinate in the story, so you spend a lot of your time following the main characters around and listening to them chat and order you to do things to complete the mission. This is punctuated by intense episodes of shooting hordes of attacking enemy soldiers. (And I do mean hordes -- expect to be heavily outnumbered.) Replay value is basically zero, because once you memorize where and when the bad guys pop out at you, it's exactly the same every time.

One notable change between CoD 2 and 4 -- they made the game harder. I thought CoD 2 was too easy, so I started CoD 4 on the highest difficulty, the "you will not survive" setting. That was a mistake. Apparently, on the highest difficulty, the enemies aim for your head and hit about 95% of the time. On the 3rd mission it became completely impossible to dodge the dozens of enemies surrounding me and shooting at me, so I had to restart on the normal difficulty. (By the way, it kind of sucked having to sit through the entire opening credits again when I restarted.) Because of the rather high death rate, CoD 4 can get pretty frustrating at times -- dying and repeating the same piece of scripted gameplay over and over and over again is not very fun, and I walked away from it in disgust several times. Sometimes it's just a matter of luck when you make it through a mission.

Here is another complaint I have with all modern shooters, not just CoD 4: Part of the reason the game is harder is that it's impossible to see the enemies. I guess this is supposed to be part of the "realism," but it's hard to pick out the enemies from the surrounding environment. The color and texture of the enemy models blends in exactly with the color and texture of the buildings. (Yeah, I know, it's supposed to be like that in real life, but hey, this is supposed to be a game.) Not to mention that the enemies and friendlies look almost exactly alike, so you sometimes end up shooting your own squad by mistake (especially when they inexplicably circle around and pop out in front of you).

I also have to mention a few words about the much-hyped game engine features. I don't find that "bullet penetration" does much to improve the fun of the game. What's the point of hiding when you can shoot through the walls? It's actually rather annoying that you can't hide behind a lot of the landscape because the enemy bullets still kill you. (And don't even think about hiding behind a car, because they tend to randomly explode and kill you -- and unlike grenades, you don't get any warning when a car is about the explode.) Also, depth of field doesn't do much to improve gameplay. It looks great in screenshots, but I just find it annoying when some of the screen goes blurry.. it's especially annoying if you're down in the grass. It's like a constantly changing auto-focus effect. Basically these are two features that only a geeked-out game engine programmer could love.

I've only played one map of a multi-player game, but it was pretty fun. I'll probably have more to say about multi-player later.

All in all, it's a fun game to pass the time, but I deducted points because it's basically the same as CoD 2 and the microscopically short single player campaign is a big disappointment. I give it a three... out of five.

Multi Player Thoughts

December 2, 2007

I have to admit that Call of Duty 4 multiplayer is fun. It's way better than Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, IMO, which got pretty dull fast.

CoD multiplayer blends in some elements of an MMO, which makes it a more compelling experience. Usually in multiplayer games, you jump onto a pub server and shoot people until you get bored and put the game away. That typically takes 1 or 2 minutes. But with CoD, you get experience points for shooting people, and then you progress in rank, and then the higher your rank, the more weapons and "perks" you can unlock and use. This gives you a reason to keep playing. (I don't know if this is a new concept in shooters or not, but it's the first time I've seen anything like it.)

When I first heard about the ranks and perks, I thought it was silly. But as it turns out, it's kind of fun. If you enjoy grinding in an MMO, you'll like this too. It's basically the same except you don't get any loot drops.

So far I've only played Free-For-All Deathmatch games (if you don't know, that means there are no teams; everyone is out to kill everyone else). But I'm having some trouble finding a winning strategy for CoD. In Quake FFA DM, your basic goal was to keep moving along a circuitous route around the map, picking up health and ammo and weapons along the way. I usually did pretty well. But in CoD, there's nothing to pick up, so there's not much point in moving along a circuitous route. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if moving around is even a good idea. I've been playing in pub games with 20-25 people, and the maps are so small that it's almost impossible to avoid people coming up behind you no matter where you go. But I've noticed that I get killed a lot by people camping in dark corners or staking out one area. On the one hand, I find that to be pretty lame, but on the other hand those people seem to end up at the top of the scoreboard a lot. (I usually end up somewhere in the middle.)

Keep in mind that because of my relatively low rank of 20 (out of 55), I don't have the best weaponry available to me yet. People at higher ranks definitely have an advantage. (The people at the top of the scoreboard are almost always ranked 45+.) The only reason I haven't given up in disgust yet is noting that I tend to be one of the highest scoring people at my rank. Yay me! Anyway, I'm hoping that as my rank increases, my kill:death ratio will also improve. Nothing bugs me more than dying a lot (though there doesn't seem to be any scoring penalty for dying).

Speaking of death, one very cool feature of CoD is the KillCam. I don't know if this is something that's been around for a while or not, but it's the first time I've ever seen one. After you die, the KillCam shows you how you died from the perspective of the killer. You'd think that you would already know how you died, but what you usually find is that you didn't get killed the way you thought. You'll be dueling with some guy and die tragically, and think "Aw dagnabbit, he bested me! I suck! Lag! Ping! Whatever!" Then the KillCam will show you that you were actually killed by a sniper half way across the map, and your dueling opponent was mowed down seconds later too. Incredibly, it seems like the person I'm dueling with almost never is the one that actually kills me. Sometimes it makes you feel better, sometimes it makes you even madder.

I haven't tried any of the other game options yet (eg., team deathmatch, domination, etc.). I'm a bit reluctant to try any kind of team game on a pub server, for obvious reasons. I'll try later on I guess, when my rank is higher. No need to go into a team game with any unnecessary handicaps.

CoD 4 Pros

• MMO-style ranks and perks provide a reason to keep playing.
• The KillCam is very cool.
• Nice selection of maps.

CoD 4 Cons

• As with other modern shooters, accuracy is a function of your choice of weapon and movement, not your reflexes and mouse pointing skill. You have to stop and crouch and use the weapon sight for maximum accuracy. I'm not really fond of that, but I guess n00bs need all the help they can get. :)
• Unbelievably lame pub players. Campers that crouch in dark corners, hide in buildings, stake out spawn points, you name it. If they can get out of dueling, they'll do it.
• A lot of the maps are too small for 25-player free-for-alls, which seems to be the default maximum player limit.

Other Tips and Thoughts

• I'm having the most success with assault rifles and machine guns. I'm having NO success with the shotguns and sniper rifles. I've never been much of a sniper, and the shotgun is very frustrating... you can take out people in one shot up close, which is awesome, but if they're more than 10 feet away you're toast.
• I like the grenade launcher attachment for the assault rifle. It's one of the few area-effect weapons. Unfortunately you only get 2 shots and it uses up one of your 3 perks. (Warning: L33ts call it the "noobtube.")
• Campers are everywhere. I swear, at least half the players in a FFA game are spawn camping or otherwise hiding out in dark corners. Damn lamers. It's particularly frustrating because some of them score pretty well. I'm starting to note common camp spots and fire into corners out of habit, but I need to learn the maps better so I can more easily hunt them down.
• Definitely put the "Melee" button somewhere handy. I started out with it on the default "V" key but it's too hard to hit while maneuvering so I put it on the right mouse button. Melee is almost always the best option when you're right on top of someone.

Further Call of Duty 4 Thoughts

December 15, 2007

Still grinding my way up the ranks in COD4 multiplayer. (It is just like grinding in an MMO... with all the hacks and snipers and campers, it's getting pretty tedious, but I'm determined to get to rank 55 before I quit.) I'm playing mostly Domination and Headquarters games now, which are kind of refreshing twists on the Capture-The-Flag genre.

I've seen a lot of suspicious behavior on Punkbuster-enabled servers. I don't want to say that they're all "hax," but I've been around online gaming for a long enough time to know what's humanly possible and what isn't -- even the best players I've ever seen still looked human, and it made logical sense when they killed you. There is always the luck factor but when you see these things frequently from a particular player, combined with all the Google hits for "cod4 hacks," it makes you wonder. Here are some things I've seen:

• Guns that have zero recoil. Not just low recoil, but zero recoil. When I get to rank 55 I'll be able to look at all the guns and tell for sure if this is a hack or not.
• People that shoot through smoke and walls. Not just your normal random spraying of bullets either, but tracking you as you move. There are times when you can guess where people will be, and I've occasionally hit people by luck or accident through a wall, but when you see someone tracking a target behind smoke and walls, it's hard not to think they've got help.
• People that aim precisely at multiple consecutive targets very quickly. It looks like a wrist-flick from one target to the next... not instantaneous, but fast. I can buy two in a row, but three or four is stretching credibility. It's the kind of behavior you'd program into an aim bot that you wanted to pass for human.
• People whose target crosshair remains fixed dead center on their target no matter how the shooter or the target moves. That's not normal. Usually the reticule wavers, and a lot of players sort of wave it left and right across the target. I saw one guy that seemed to fix on a point somewhere around the knees, which I presume was to hit the target regardless of whether he is standing, kneeling, or prone. Maybe that was just his style.. or maybe not.
• Some pretty amazing multiple sniper shots at moving targets. I can't say for sure that this requires assistance, because I suck pretty bad at sniping myself, but it's awfully suspicious especially when you take server lag into account.
• People who can somehow see you well enough to kill you at a distance, but when you look at the KillCam you can barely see yourself amongst the environment. Makes you wonder if they've altered their models so you appear brightly colored or something on their end.
• People who seem to be expecting you to walk around a corner even though they shouldn't have been able to see you. I don't play with headphones or the volume very loud so maybe they're just hearing footsteps that I can't hear... maybe.

There is one other (I think) network-related quirk in COD4 that is very annoying. Frequently, I'll come across someone unexpectedly and shoot them in the face two or three times, and then somehow get killed anyway. Then when I see it played back on the KillCam from the other guy's perspective, I see that I didn't fire at all and I look like I'm just standing there like a dummy. It's like my shots don't get registered by the server, even though on my client side I clearly fired and heard the gunshots and saw them hit the other guy. I'd much rather have more lag if that's the trade-off for snappy client response. What I see on my screen should be at least somewhat close to what really happened.