Call of Duty 4 : Modern Combat Demo Review

A bridge too far.

Call of Duty series has always been about WWII. In a crowded WWII FPS market, it stood head and shoulders above others - even better than the much praised Medal of Honor series. The missions were intense, combat chaotic and the games literally took you to the battlefields that are highly reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.

Call of Duty 4, aptly named Modern Combat leaves WWII behind and makes you part of the evening news. You are a soldier in the War on Terror and the final game takes you to the unspecified Middle East country as a US Marines or take you to Russia as a British SAS.

In the demo you get to play a US Marines, on a mission to rescue a trapped M1A2 tank in a bog, in a mission called, what else : Bog Rescue. If you have seen some of the earlier trailers, you will have seen the first few minutes of this level.

The massive 1.4 GB download took a while and the install almost as lengthy. We are then treated to a montage of scenes from the game (E3 Video) and are suddenly dropped on a exposed bridge with your squad (see image). Your mission is to get past a building full of enemies who not only have the high-ground, but also have a whole bunch of RPGs that they are just too happy to use. Then things get really intense.

The graphics are stunning. From the rising cloud of smoke, tracer fire, RPG trails, night vision goggles, dust from the ground, explosions are all very realistic and look great. The frame rates were smooth even on my two year old AMD X2 4200+, a 7800 GTX with 2 GB memory. I don't know how Crysis will look, but here is COD4 and it looks and plays great on a relatively old machine.

The sound effects successfully depict the chaotic and extremely noisy modern battlefield - from the different types of gunfire, to the exploding grenades, to the choppers flying overhead, to the swoosh of the RPGs, to the soft high-pitch whine of night-vision goggles and to some of the really great voice acting. Not only are the key characters voiced, but you hear a lot of cross talk and you even hear the enemy shouting at each other. Total immersion!

Over time controls for FPS games on PC have been standardized and there is noting really different here. The default control scheme works and is really easy to get into with just a few personal preference changes.

The Bog Rescue mission quickly takes you from the exposed position where you have to provide cover fire for each other to the confines of the building for some close-quarters combat and then back into the open space. Both enemy and your team's AI is pretty decent -- I didn't observe them doing anything weird. For example : the US Marines seem to follow building/room entry procedures and stack-up accordingly before entry.

I played at the second most difficult, difficulty level and while it was intense I got through this mission fairly quickly and died just once. For the next game, I tried the most difficult setting and here I got killed multiple times - but here it is the typical enemy AI that can take you out with a single shot at a distance problem rather than the enemy adopting superior tactics.

In the demo you don't get to choose your weapon set-up, however once into the mission, you can pick up any weapon and use it from your dead comrade's dropped weapons to the enemy AK-47, RPGs, Sniper Rifes and even fixed Machine-Gun emplacements.

Just for comparison sake, COD4 definitely feels different to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, controls are smoother and movement less cumbersome. In some ways it plays more like Rainbow Six : Vegas, except there is more outdoors combat.

Overall I was impressed with the mission and while I have not seen the Multi-player, which promises to be good, this is one game that I must add to my library.

Back To Top