CoD4 is a great relief from the first three in the series. First of all, it actually takes place in modern day, with modern weaponry and international conflicts. Needless to say, the graphics are significantly improved as well.

This review will be split into these sections:
Storyline
Gameplay
Graphics
Performance

Storyline:
The story opens with a scene in which you must land on a ship in the north Pacific, kill a bunch of bad guys, and retrieve a document. Toward the end of the opening scene, the ship gets hit by a missile and begins to capsize. You must escape to the helicopter while navigating a complex maze which is in the process of flipping over, all the while dodging obstacles of the destructible environment. When you jump off the ship, you nearly miss the helicopter; but a teammate grabs you and pulls you aboard.

The game then cuts to the opening sequence, in which you follow the President of BombedOutistan from his own first-person perspective. He is being driven to the site of his execution in a realistic representation of what appears to be an ‘89 Toyota Corolla. The scene lasts a few minutes and is used to give you a moment to admire the graphics without having to worry about getting shot; all the while the credits are rolling. I hate opening sequences you can’t skip.

Of course, the leader of some third-world country just got shot on TV, so the USMC and SAS can’t stand by and do nothing. So the Intelligence people found out who ordered the execution, a guy named Al-Asad, and send you in to kill him. The next scene opens with a series of helicopters oddly reminiscent of Apocalypse Now — I could almost hear Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background. Eventually you rappel from the helicopters and make your way to the building where you think the target is hiding. Alas, it was just a bunch of minions in need of fragging. So you head out and learn he’s in the TV station.

Dozens of good guys swarm the TV station, but in piddly waves of five or six; each wave waits for the previous wave to die before going in. Wave after wave of good guys battle wave after wave of bad guys, and eventually you manage to make it to the roof. You have a moment for some gratuitous sniping and move to the broadcast room, only to find it empty. The broadcast was a recording. Then you learn from CNN that Al-Asad Muhammed McGenericTerrorist is preparing to make his last stand in the Capitol City of WeAreSoPooristan, and they’re dug in deep.

So you’d think the next mission involves attacking Al-Asad in the capitol, right? Nope; you have to save some tank that’s under attack, and has nothing to do with the plot. You have to blow up three tanks and kill a few hundred bad guys to continue the story. During your egress, your helicopter gets shot down by a SAM two miles south of Waypoint 5. As you might suspect, your next mission is simply to shoot bad guys until you can pick up another ride. Then once again, for totally non-plot-related reasons, you get to my favorite mission: The AC-130 Spectre Gunship.

Your task as a temporary Aerial Gunner is simply to kill bad guys; but if you stick to the mission, you won’t have as much fun. What you have to do is to kill time by blowing up nearby buildings with the 120mm cannon. You can’t blow up the church because of the Law of Armed Conflict, despite the fact that hiding legitimate targets in the church makes the church a legal target. Their military advisor messed up on this one.

Somewhere along the line, the big voice on the radio finds out that Al-Asad has a nuke. You are dispatched to locate and retrieve it, but the mission just ends up being more shooting bad guys. On your way out, a neighboring helicopter is shot down and you have to retrieve the pilot. There are so many bad guys, you can’t possibly kill them and get the pilot within your 90 second window (90 seconds until the nuke goes off. How they found that out, who knows?); so you have to sprint to the pilot, pick her up, and run back to the helicopter. Your teammates take care of the Tango’s (terrorists / generic arabs). Of course, the effort ends up in vain…

… As your groups depart in the helicopters, you’re standing in the back of yours, shooting bad guys on the ground, when the nuke goes off directly in view. There is an obvious color bias to orange for a while, and you start seeing the helicopters behind you get hit by the shockwave, one by one. Then they delay a second and blow up. One after another, and eventually the one directly behind you gets hit. Guess who’s next?

Sure enough, yours gets hit and crashes. You recover from the impact just long enough to see the mushroom cloud off in the green distance and die a dishonorable death. Thus ends Chapter 1.The remainder of the game is pretty much a whole lot more shooting at people. There are no more fun Gunship missions. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that despite all the diversions and mini-games, the overall story is convincing and immersive.

Gameplay:
Bullets go through walls. Bad guys raise their guns over their heads and shoot sideways like in the movies. The physics are realistic. The gameplay is freaking awesome. As someone who has never been in urban combat, it seems convincing enough to me. The Arcade Mode, accessible after beating the game, is fun and exciting, while giving you a chance to continually compete with yourself for a higher score. See if you can beat my high score on “Fire from Above”: 1,670,000 points.

Graphics:
COD4 has brought us one step closer to participating in a movie. That is to say, the realtime in-game graphics look better than CGI movies that took months to render with a thousand computers. We are very close now to games that look photorealistic.

Performance:
I played this game on two configurations, because I upgraded my CPU in the middle of my evaluation. You know how these things go. My system isn’t tuned for incredible framerates or awesome detail, but it does a really good job for the hardware I have.

System:
Intel Core 2 Duo (Previously) / Core 2 Quad Q6600 “Kentsfield” (As of 12/27/2007)
The awesomest out-of-stock mobo: EVGA 680i
2GB Corsair XMS2
3x Sapphire ATI Radeon X1650 Pro / 512MB

I play in 1280×1024 at 2x FSAA and 2x Ansiotropic Filtering, with all other options turned up to full. I haven’t Frapsed it, and don’t know how to get a framerate counter in COD4, but I can tell you I’m getting more than 30FPS… And 30 Frames per Second should be enough for anyone. The performance is great.

Pros:
- Immersive gameplay
- Awesome graphics
- Great performance
- A good way to vent frustration toward real people you can’t shoot
- Frequent auto-saves

Cons:
- You don’t get to pick your weapons before you leave; but you can switch to enemy weapons as they drop
- You never get enough ammo.
- No manual saves
- Doesn’t cause free money to rain down from the skies

Summary:
COD4 is an overall great game, and redeems the horrible aspects of COD 1 through 3. It provided everything it promised, and hours of entertainment. It continues to be entertaining after you beat the game, which is a sadly uncommon aspect of modern games. I award the game a 95% and 5,000 arbitrary Cool Points. Go buy it today.