Why Call of Duty 4 Is Still King
Originally posted on June 21st, 2009
It’s been just over 18 months since the November 10th 2007 release date of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (in the UK) and yet, I still find myself unable to let it go - like Heather Mills with Paul McCartney’s fortune. I’ve tried to wean myself off the Infinity Ward branded drug by buying many other FPS games, yet to no avail. I still need a title with an online multiplayer component to rival it.
Christmas 2007 arrived; Valve’s fantastic Orange Box came and failed to steal my attention. Although Team Fortress was a thoroughly entertaining and unique experience, it included 6 maps of which only one seemed to ever be played. Can’t think which one that was (BLOODY 2FORT!). I adored the characters in the game and the character of the game itself, yet EA’s unforgivably bad servers undid all of Valve’s hard work, driving the final nail into the proverbial coffin.
Epic’s Unreal Tournament 3 arrived a week after, promising ground breaking graphics and amazing gameplay. It was my first foray into the series, knowing it was very much a twitch shooter dominated by mouse and keyboard wielding Epic fanatics - I held my breath and took the plunge. Safe to say that it was moral breaking at the very least, being sniped by rocket launchers repeatedly and pwned to within millimeters of my sanity. I thought that I’d be able to play easy level bots and pretend I was good, but I could not. UT3 had run it’s course.
November 08 came and with it Treyarch’s World at War. After the abomination that was CoD3 and the soul shattering bleakness of New York in Spiderman, my hopes were not exactly high. However I skipped down to the local Blockbusters and picked up a rental copy for a week. After being driven over by a tank whilst sniping in prone, being gang raped by dogs and listening to the same German phrase for the hundredth time, I was feeling low to say the least. I kept getting killed from under the map - no amount of shooting at the ground with the MP40 would solve the situation. After many hours of consideration (read: none) I returned to the glitch ridden, inferior-to-#4 game. I occasionally play a little zombie mode when round a friend’s, yet £30 did not justify that admittedly brilliant experience in my eyes.
Last contender to the Dan-specific time consuming crown was the critically acclaimed Killzone 2, developed by Guerrilla. I was sucked in for a around a week, clocking up a grand total of 28 hours in campaign and online modes in the first two days. I was engrossed in the immersive story with it’s stunning set pieces and awe inspiring scale, even if Rico did annoy the hell out of me (who didn’t want to throttle him?). I spent many a long night - and morning - honing my skills as a sniper, getting all the badges and laughing manically as I yet again sprinted into the enemy base and fired my rocket launcher at the floor. I attached c4 to my friend’s face then watched in hysterics as he leaped kamikaze style into the opposing team’s spawn point. I beat turrets to death with my fists, because I could. Yet for all this uncompromising, unadulterated awesomeness… I slowly drifted off the Killzone servers. I crawled made my way back to Activision, like Heather will to Paul when she realizes that he has all her false legs.
I can’t put my finger on what alone makes CoD4 more addictive to any other of my FPS games. It’s controls are incredibly responsive, the characters are so easy to connect to (well, the SAS are) and the weapons in your hand feel incredibly tactile. Even if the options for private matches are incredibly limited imagination can bring them alive; I have sunk many a day into zombie and jumping-knife-shipment games. Even if the server are teh sux, with “host ended game”s, “connection interrupted”s and “party full”s plaguing the system; I have played over 3 weeks of my life in ranked matches alone. Even if around 15,000 of my deaths are probably due to martyrdom and grenades thrown over a building, bouncing off a branch then rolling down a canopy before landing at my feet as I spawn (>_>). Even if the matchmaking system assigns all the the tenth prestigers to one side and all the newbies to the other. Even if it will happily put you straight into a sabotage match with 3 seconds left before you lose, or into the final round of a search and destroy where all but one of you team are eliminated. Even if Captain Price had to die (WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?!), he’ll be back in Modern Warfare 2 (he’d better be).
And I’ll be fighting alongside him, when the game releases in the UK on November 10th. But until then, you can find me on the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare servers.
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07-22-2009, 05:54 PM
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