Multiplayer

Multiplayer has always been a Call of Duty strength and CoD4 builds incrementally on that. Combat is faster, more lethal, and generally more urban than in previous games. Infinity Ward has traditionally focused on infantry rather than vehicles and this is the rule in the fourth installment in this franchise.

Combat classes are now present and also three customizable slots. The classes aren’t wildly different, mostly with some modest bonuses of various kinds and different starting weapons. The combat balance does really revolve around those weapons, as always, and that is of course startlingly obvious when someone with an SMG finds himself looking across the map at a sniper. The combat bonuses do come in handy but they never dominate the style of a character. If you began as a sniper and find yourself picking up an SMG or assault rifle, you won’t feel gimped, but you do feel more effective with a sniper rifle in hand. That’s a tough balance to reach and we applaud IW for achieving it.

Speaking of achievements, the game tracks them persistently throughout your career, unlocking various weapons. Not unlike Battlefield 2, these weapons become available on any server you play on. The unlockables tend to be more meaningful than in BF2 as well, since the game is based around infantry combat.


Call of Duty 4 has of course deathmatch, team deathmatch, objective based gameplay (rather like Counterstrike), and a domination mode. We played all three extensively and found them to work quite well on the maps available to us at the event. Of course, there was some imbalance as any team with a FiringSquad member on it tended to win! Actually, it’s rather amazing how well Call of Duty and CoD2 skills translate to the game, the consistency in the feel among the various versions of the game is remarkable. The game has a very high skill cap and though nobody will be going 100-0 like in NetQuake, it was painfully obvious when someone who’d played a lot of Call of Duty got warmed up.

On an interesting note, the Infinity Ward staff have the [IW] tag reserved and if previous meetings with them on public servers are any indication, expect a good challenge. They die hard.