Warfare So Modern it Has a Moustache

Originally posted on 15/11/09

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - PS3 Game Review

Since the one I did last week was balls and I wanted to give it the credit it fully deserves. Because it's brilliant.

I played it first in May 2008 and I still play it today. Playing single player, everything is brilliant. The physics, the weapons, the story and the immersion draws you in and leaves you hanging on everything. From being led by a man with the most absurdly stupendous moustache ever, having a squadmate with a shotgun and no title and to all the rest of the morally questionable psychotic thugs that comprise the SAS that you're in. It even makes up for playing as a man called Soap who doesn't speak. It's quite realistic that the SAS mop up the mess made by the rest of the (America) world, hell it puts a right smile on your face knowing that they win in the end up.

Your American counterpart you play as however is stationed in Iraqistan (seriously, they don't even bother naming it, it's just "The Middle East") and both he and the rest of the fruitloops the Marines employ do the usual killing all the ragheads and non-whites with the huge penises they call guns in the name of Apple Pie and flag-saluting. Quite tedious as i'm sure you'll agree. Although it is picked up a bit, because when you're in Iraqistan you get to use a gun that I could only compare to the thing at the end of Die Hard 3, and here you get to know you're really in Iraq, because you get to blow up a granite statue of a dicator with one arm aloft. Original idea, no? If you think that by this point that you'll be getting sick of playing the Yank, then you're in luck. Iraqistan gets bombed the fuck out of soon after and you get to relive a Sarah Connor-esque nightmare of crawling through the wreckage of your downed helicopter whilst the sky is on fire.

This rather annoyed a few folk, notably a baldy guy with one arm who has access to yet more nukes. You do get to see (and play) how he ended up with one arm, going through Chernobyl as Leftenant Price rather than Captain, this time with Captaaaan Macmillaaaaan ken leading you. His voice is absurd but he has brilliant catchphrases so it's all good. What's even more fun is throwing stealth out the window, stealing a Kalishnakov and clearing out the bad guys the old fashioned way. Hell I even managed to get the two helicopters down in it, so beat that ;)

Back to Gaz, Captain Price, Soap and SSgt Griggs (if anyone knows how he managed to buggar off from Iraqistan, please tell me) doing what 30,000 Yanks couldn't do and STOPPING the bad guy and going into the nuke base after Zakhaev (the one-armed guy) and still you don't want to stop playing. I've played many a game and the fact i've played the campaign on COD4 so many times I know it backwards is a testament to just how good it is. Even if the ending is vaguely reminiscent of the last part of Black, fending off about 200 Russians on a falling bridge that's still getting bombed, and then everyone dying. That is my only bugbear about the game, that it ends in such a spectaular buttfuck of everyone you were with. Gaz shot in the face, Griggs shot in the face next to you, Captain Price on the deck not moving (fnarr fnarr) and the One Armed Bandit being Mr. Arrogant and not killing you. It makes you play it over and over again, surely the mark of a good game.

While the campaign is addictive, the multiplayer is even more so. Despite its flaws, and god they're numerous, anyone who plays it will be roped in, and you will not stop. The Weaponry choice means everyone is catered for, even if it caters for the scum who noscope with a Barrett, the scum who jump when you're shooting at them or even the scum who use a G3. Yes I can use it but it's a dreadful weapon. The challenges offer another level and reason to keep playing, the numerous game modes add plenty of variety (even though you normally find your best and stick with it) and Prestige Mode extends your game time to neglecting bodily function levels. I'm at 12+ days and i'm still not finished.

Get the game. Even if you just rent it, you need to experience it for its glory, and for it what is has started.