Cory Birdsong Writer/Editor

Why I hate Call of Duty 4’s campaign

There are two very different games in the Call of Duty 4 package: the campaign and the multiplayer. This is underscored by the structure of the main menu, which features two totally different sets of choices that you have to switch between. It seems like two separate games, and it is.

The campaign is, in general, roundly mediocre. It's really the same sort of game that the other Call of Duty games are: Utterly scripted thrill rides through a few different war zones. Sure, COD 4 developers Infinity Ward made the first two, and they were slightly better than the consoled-out spin offs and Call of Duty 3, but they are all riffs on the same formula. Call of Duty 4 has famously jettisoned the series' World War II setting for one in what I can only assume is the near future. The player switches between an American and British soldier fighting in eastern Europe and a Middle Eastern country that is never explicitly named but is clearly Saudi Arabia if you have any amount of geographic knowledge and pay attention during the pseudo-Google Earth setting change animations.

The game's opening credits sequence has the player in the role of an ousted Saudi leader as he is taken through a city and then shot by the revolutionary that has just taken over the country, providing the conflict that fuels the rest of the game. The storytelling technique on display here is one of the game's cooler touches, and there are quite a few interesting devices used to tell the game's story.

The problem is that the story is really not worth paying attention to. It's sub-24 level crap, for the most part, with the same number of contrivances and utterly illogical occurrences. In one mission, where you have to capture a dude as the British SAS unit, you chase the guy across a series of small towns, with your commanding officer repeatedly making sure that you all know that you need to capture the guy alive. Then in the next cutscene, after torturing the fellow and getting some information (because that works), your commanding officer proceeds to shoot the guy in the face.

One problem with the series making the jump to modern day is that it really doesn't make sense to have your character being ordered around by an NPC. In the WWII games, the player is experiencing the Last Great War through the eyes of an anonymous soldier. Modern-day conflicts don't carry the same weight, especially considering the large-scale opposition to the kind of war on display for the American side of the campaign.

Politics aside, it sucks that your character is so helpless that he can't even open doors without the help of other soldiers - you have to wait for them to do it for you. Your character can't do anything that the other soldiers do. You can't push a dumpster down the street for cover, you can't lean out from cover or even take cover in the same way that Gears of War or Rainbow Six: Vegas characters can, and you certainly can't order your soldiers around to intercept incoming enemies.

Speaking of enemies, I hope you like shooting them, because they just keep coming out of these shacks and buildings like they're some kind of terrorist clown car. Your character is really just supposed to move down the preselected path and shoot enemies they see. The idea of saving grenades or other special weapons for large groups of enemies is irrelevant, since there's not a predetermined number of enemies per area - they just keep coming until the player manages to advance past an arbitrary line in the level, or kill an enemy inside the shack/house/damaged building that the other terrorists are apparently budding off of asexually.

The only reason this design works is because the levels are as linear as an arcade lightgun game. It might look like you were just dropped off in a warzone and told to get to a building on the other side, but you can't choose your path in any way, shape or form. You'll be following a preset path, and any attempt to deviate from it will result in you totally breaking the game's scripting or you dying. (In one area, to keep you on a set path, there are signs like the mine field signs in the first two games, but this time they are radiation warning signs - because radiation just stays in tiny pockets throughout the landscape.)

If you're willing to totally turn off your brain and just shoot at things that move in front of you, there are some fairly memorable sequences in Call of Duty 4. One sequence in particular offers a glimpse at another sort of game entirely, where the horrors of war are laid bare in a way I've never seen before. But, the ultrapatriotic 24-inspired Call of Duty 4 is not that game. Too bad.