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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

First and foremost, let before you read this review, I have not played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or the PC. I don't have the systems to support it. I will not make any comparisons from the console version to the DS version. Anyways, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is first-person shooter taking place within the modern day timeline. I also must say, I'm rather glad that it strayed away from the World War II genre. Every mission within this game takes place within our current time period with situations between the Middle East and Russia. You play the American Armed Forces or the British Special Forces (depending on the mission) to stop terrorists from executing plan of unleashing weapons of mass destruction.

The graphics are both a hit and miss. The visuals themselves are quite impressive. The environment matches the theme of the game's setting. Character models aren't bad either. The only issue I have with the character model is it takes a while to eventually run into a different type of enemy. It seems like you're taking out clones of the same enemy as if one mother decided to give birth to hundreds of terrorists with the exact same trait. I guess I can't complain about it that much. There are almost no issues with collision detection. Issues that do pop up every now and then are frame rate issues. Sometimes during intensive firefights, you get an issue of stuttering for a bit. The screen will create a thin black line then eventually will fix itself. It's a very minor issue that pops up at different times but it isn't game breaking. The top screen is where all the action takes place. The bottom screen contains the map and weaponry, bomb disarmament, and terminal hacking.

The sound quality of the game actually took me by surprise. The music gives the game an epic feeling as every other war title should have. You can almost feel the danger when you hear a gunfight taking place. I was especially impressed by the amount of voice acting within the game. The American soldiers are spot on with their voice acting. Your allies actually give you locations of your enemies when they're in sight. The terrorists also have their share of voice acting as well. It's not intelligent. Different terrorists will eventually same the same thing, sometimes even at the same time. They also speak perfect English. The British Special Forces sound like blaring stereotypes. They also give you useful info but I can't help but think it sounds forced. With allied voice acting, there's little repetition. With enemy voice acting, there's quite a bit of repetition. Regardless of the complaints that I've stated, it still impresses me to know that the limitations of the DS won't hinder developers to start using voice acting in handheld titles.

Call of Duty 4 would play as you'd expect an FPS to play on a DS. You use the stylus to aim, select weapons, and reload. The controls have some minor issues. It's a little uncomfortable to hold the DS while playing the game. You hold it with one hand and with your other hand, you hold the stylus. That may not sound bad, but you're playing an action game like that. It takes a bit of getting used to. The touch screen can be kind of sketchy. You have to double tap the screen to get into precision aiming. No, that's not a complaint. Here's the complaint: a lot of the times, if you keep your stylus on the touch screen, it'll automatically go into precision aiming. It's not as easy getting yourself out of it. Double tapping it is not always recognized which can make firefights a bit of a hassle. That's one of the bigger complaints of this game. You can also use the touch screen (when the time arises) to disarm bombs and hack terminals. Disarming bombs is a fairly simple task of tracing one end of the wire to the other. Hacking terminals is more of a puzzle. You touch little pipe type things into different directions to lead them to 4 dots simultaneously to give you a code unlock a door. The rest of the touch screen is aiming. Aiming is what you need to be really good at to play this game. Enemies have a hard time dying when you regularly shoot at them. A lot of the times, it takes a full clip of ammo to kill an enemy without using precision aiming. So most of the time, you'll be using precision aiming (mainly because touch screen's awkward sense of sensitivity) to eliminate enemy threats. Another complaint I have about this game is that your allies will give you enemy locations but will let you do all the dirty work. The Call of Duty franchise was known for its uses of teamwork and intelligent AI except when it's not developed by Infinity Ward. On the rare occasion, they'll attempt to help out. Most of the time, they end up getting themselves killed or sometimes, they'll even throw a grenade at the wall they're standing right next to and won't bother to move. The enemy AI on the other hand will shoot at you as soon you happen to show up almost before you know they're there. That's where it ends. They stay right where they're as soon as you leave to recover. They won't chase after you unless you're in their sites. Yes, there's are quite a bit of complaints here but the single player campaign was pretty fun. It was an engaging experience. The replayability is minimal. The only other thing you can do after you beat the campaign is a wireless multiplayer game that could be done using multi-card or single card play. Or if you're feeling gutsy, go after the game in other difficulties. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare should've had Nintendo Wi-Fi support. That game really would've done well online. That would kick up its replay factor.

The game wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It could've been a lot worse. The gameplay was fun but sometimes strange. The controls are manageable but sketchy. The graphics are nice with a couple of moments of frame rate issues. The sound design exceeded many expectations. The game should've had online play. Otherwise, it's worth a rental. Also, don't pick up this game if you're expecting the console/PC version in bite size form. It's a different experience.

Grades
Graphics: B
Sound: A
Controls: C
Gameplay: B
Overall: C