cactus i.v.

By ANDREW STEEVES
steeves(at)uwm.edu

There are a lot of great games that have been released this week, among them, Assassin’s Creed and Super Mario Galaxy.

Unfortunately, the time between their release and the deadline for this review is so short that I wasn’t able to play them thoroughly enough to write a good review. Next week, I have a special holiday shopping column planned, so I will review those two weeks from today. Nothing else good is coming out in the next two weeks, right?

What? Mass Effect is coming out when? Aww man…

I’ll give you a quick spoiler on Creed and Galaxy; they’re both amazing. Moving on.

When reviewing a first-person shooter these days, it’s important to keep three aspects in mind: the campaign, the multiplayer split-screen, and the multiplayer online play. As a rule, I don’t generally play games online. This may spark a large amount of distrust in many a gamer, but allow me to explain.

When given the opportunity to play an online game, I generally take it because I’m open to new experiences and interacting with people across the world while I play can be fun. I’ve definitely checked out and enjoyed World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2 (both fun games). However, the one thing I hate about online play, and specifically online play for first-person shooters like Halo 3 or Counterstrike is the collection of douchebags that play. It’s not that they’re bad people necessarily, it’s that they’re just really mean. They get so into the game that their adrenaline pumps through their systems, blocking out higher functions like rational thought and human decency.

Call of Duty 4 has a different sort of online play, combining elements from first-person shooters and RPGs, specifically the ability to level your character, which is an interesting concept. Really, COD4 does a lot of things that are interesting, but let me pull back briefly to the campaign setting, where all things must start.

A plot is being conceived between generic Middle-Eastern terrorists and Russian arms dealer involving coups and nuclear weapon detonations. What it all means is terrorists and, I suppose communists, are still the bad guys, American and Brits are still the good guys, and we will win because we’ve got moxy.

Interestingly enough, though several characters are playable throughout the game, the main protagonist seems to be a British soldier, as opposed to an American one, appropriately named John “Soap” MacTavish (because he’s so clean?). And amid a sea of detonating nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads being launched at the U.S. east coast and nuclear atomic super-monsters rampaging unchecked through downtown Tokyo (untrue), “Soap” seems to be the only soldier involved left alive, with the possible exception of mustache guy above, because… come on. Mustache.

Being used to the controls from Call of Duty 2, I managed to pick up how to do everything fairly easily. The game play is mostly smooth, although there are some visual glitches, especially in split-screen. Watching a person who was shot once and die twice is always an interesting sight to behold.

Speaking of the split-screen, it’s really fun. There are 10 classes to choose from, each with unique weapons and abilities. Usually, when a game is set up this way, there is at least one class that just isn’t worth playing or a class that is extremely overpowered, but they all seem pretty well balanced. Every player has a knife, and knifing someone is probably about the most satisfying thing in the world.

My only complaint is the use of “helicopter assists.” When a player kills three people in a row, he is given the option to use help from a helicopter. There are three levels of assistance, ranging from useful to ridiculous. My main problem with them is they provide a boost to people who are already doing well, like making the rich richer.

Back to online play. Not only can you level up your character as if it were an RPG, but you can also customize your class, taking special abilities and weapons from various classes that unlock as you progress and making them yours. The concept seems novel enough to warrant a try from anyone, but given the nature of this game, I suspect a high amount of internet douchebaggery.

All in all, Call of Duty 4 was an excellent game and a very well put together First Person Shooter, and although Call of Duty 2 will always have a nostalgic place in my heart, Call of Duty 4 is the superior game, as sequels (in theory) should be.

As always, post or email if you want to call me any of the following: wrong, right, boring, interesting, or a whiney n00b.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.