Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Also known as: CoD 4

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Leaving real wars behind

Words: GamesRadar US

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The team-based multiplayer more than makes up for the typically brief running time of the singleplayer. The transplant to modernity has been embraced much better here. Kill-streaks earn you the right to call in support: radar coverage, air strikes and even AI-controlled helicopters to hunt down the enemy team. And all kills, damage, and objectives completed inch you closer to your next promotion, permanently unlocking new weapons and Perks. You use these to design your own custom classes: we favored a semi-auto sniper rifle, smoke grenades and the Juggernaut and Dead Silence perks. We developed a fondness for stabbing people, you see, so we needed to be tough and quiet, conceal ourselves and pick off the few people too far away to shiv.

This character progression is persistent across all servers - they don’t need to be special ranked ones. Infinity Ward figures any system will be hacked eventually, so they’re just trusting players to realize that it’s more fun if you progress fairly. And it is: the ranks come thick and fast, there are lots, and you unlock special challenges as you go.

The action is ridiculously fast and bloody. Every weapon is a more efficient killing machine than its WWII counterpart, and the frantic pace has the side-effect that you never feel pinned down or hopeless. Everyone goes down so easily that even the best player is killable, and respawn times are so fast that dying is never particularly frustrating. The previous games’ modes are all here, along with newcomer Domination, in which both teams try to hold three control points at once. Like the other modes, it draws everyone together into a messy melee, but is open enough to let you find ways around the usual chokepoints.