Hot damn that looks like fun.

The last Spiderman game I played was the original Spiderman for the Xbox (I think). It wasn’t exactly amazing but this seems to hark back to what I loved doing the most in that game, finishing a web-swing then planting two feet into an enemies face. That’s how I started every combat, it’s still how I start every combat in Marvel Nemesis: Rise of The Imperfects when I play as Spidey. I really hope they don’t include a “web meter” which is a bit like a sprint meter or some such. I hope it has infinite web and judging buy the amount you seem to use in the combat, it’d better have or Parker is gonna end up being scraped off a New York sidewalk.

I’m definitely looking forward to this game and I hope it stays as good as it looks. Though getting better would be preferable. Go dev team! :D

P.M.

Fortunately I’ve bought it for the PC, which makes it immediately better. However, since Microsoft is run by a team of idiots that’s large enough to inhabit the moon, they had to bring their own brand of cocking it up to the table. They had to bring in the “Game(s) for Windows - Live” malarkey. Honestly Microsoft, why do you have to take a good idea and turn it into a device of Satan. The “Windows - Live” part of this game actually screws up one of the most important bits, the main menu. A game should not crash on the main menu, it should crash when there’s a bit too much happening at once, not while it’s just sitting there.This is one of few complaints I have about GoW but it’s probably the biggest. I really hate it when Microsoft do things like this, why can’t they do it like everyone else and just have simple accounts with simple server lists, it makes so much more sense.

Anyway, I should really get to talking about the game rather than about the idiots who published it.

In GoW you play a character called Marcus Fenix who’s been slung in the joint because he disobeyed orders at the beginning of the war against the Locust (who are surprisingly humanoid). Thankfully you’re broken out of jail by your good buddy Dominic Santiago and are quickly pressed back into military service. You’re mission for the first half of the game is to deploy a device called “The Resonator” which will map all the underground Locust tunnels. The objectives in the second half of the game are a little fuzzy and the story seems to meander around for several levels which is a bit disappointing. Of course, you probably didn’t buy/ weren’t thinking of buying this game for the story, you just saw a guy in armour and a gun with a chainsaw on the end of it and there you were, at the counter with the game in one hand, thirty quid in the other and a happy little smile on your face.

The gameplay in GoW is actually pretty refreshing, even now. The third-person perspective was a great idea and so was the interactive cover. You can hide behind practically anything in this game, and you actually properly hide. One quick push of the Space Bar and Marcus is up against a wall like a cheap hooker, though without the lady parts. A little thing that bugs me about the whole “One button to rule them all” thing is that if you’re “Roadie Running” (sprinting) and you pass too close to a bit of cover, Marcus will suddenly stick to it and you’ll either have to waste precious seconds getting him off or be killed by something large and ugly. Like most action games, Gears of War also contains a shitty vehicle section which can get pretty infuriating when you play it on your own and it’s almost as bad when you’re with a friend but it’s only one level so it doesn’t spoil the game too much.

Unfortunately I seem to be running out of things to say about this game. I guess it’s because I last edited it on June 4th, it’s now June 13th 0_o Oh well, lets talk about whether I enjoyed this game or not. Truth be told I did enjoy it but at only 18 to 20 hours of gameplay it’s a little on the short side, especially if you play it solid for a couple of days. The multiplayer isn’t as fun as it could have been with a pitifully small amount of servers with most of them being spawn-camp-tastic. There really needed to be larger multiplayer modes with a focus on more players, you really need more of everything in the multiplayer for it to become interesting. The Co-op campaign, which can be played online or offline is a fun aspect though as it means you can kick ass and take names with a buddy rather than just playing with yourself. The A.I. isn’t exactly smart so bringing along a friend is a better way to play the game and you can always chat or have little competitions like “Who can stick the most grenades” which can end in hilarity.

Overall, a good game with a weak story but fun gameplay. Also, be prepared to get pissed off by the Windows Live part of things, if you can survive that then you’ll probably do alright in the game. Buy it, if only to tide you over till a release your really looking forward to.

P.M.

I was a little dubious at first about this fourth instalment in the Indiana Jones series, mainly due to George Lucas’ poor attempts at finishing off the Star Wars saga using only CGI and Green Screen. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg has managed to keep Lucas on a short leash and there’s minimal use of CG in this film. It’s a good thing too since most films that are released now consist of mostly fake backgrounds that are a little hard on the eyes.

When the film finished I was left a little confused and I think this was due to the fact that I haven’t seen a film in this style for quite a long time. Crystal Skull actually went on a journey across half the world, there are always new environments and situations for the characters to encounter, not just the same stagnant places. There was actually an interesting story to follow and all the characters had their own motivations for being there, though the story could have been a little stronger.

The acting was great by everyone, except perhaps Cate Blanchett who’s accent slipped from Russian to English and the end of some of her lines which kind of impacted on her character and didn’t make her seem quite so evil. That was the one thing that irked me about this film, the baddies weren’t as dark or as evil as they could have been, there wasn’t the same sense of malice from the Russians as you got from the Nazis in the originals. Ray Winstone (Mac) kind of steals the show from Blanchett as the main evil character, though his motivation is purely selfish he just back-stabs so well. Harrison Ford has lost none of the charm that fits so well with Indy and the fact that he’s still doing all his own stunts brings more realism to the film. Shia LaBeouf was a great choice for the role of Mutt Williams and does much better acting than he did in Transformers. Karen Allen makes a return as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders though doesn’t add too much to the film.

Overall, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a good film, it’s not quite as good as the originals but then sequels never are. It’s a solid addition to the series and isn’t the total let-down that some critics said it was. Apparently Lucas wants to make more Indy films, though I think they should quit while they’re ahead. I’d recommend Crystal Skull but only if you’ve seen the other three as you might be left a bit confused by its return to “classic” sort of film making.

P.M.

There’s really not much more to add to Yahtzee’s thorough raping of this game in his review of Clive Barker’s Jericho.

I’ll give you a quick run down of the basics though, just so I have something to talk about.

You basically control a team of 7 retarded and obnoxious twats who are members of, and I quote: “An elite military team who specialises in the paranormal.” So they’re a bit like the F.E.A.R. team only less under-funded and without a guy who can slow down time and nail enemies to walls.

The story is apparently atrocious but fortunately I couldn’t experience any of it because the demo instantly thrust me into brown castle number one and gave me no explanation as to why I was fighting un-dead gladiators. 0.o

In this particular section of the game I was only controlling three members of the team, thank God. For some reason you have the ability to switch between your team members, which takes more time than I’d like it to and when you’re finally seeing through their eyes all they were looking at was a wall. The first character I started as was a female with a reasonable sized…gun. “Ok”, I thought, “I’ve got some kind of assault rifle here.” Oh how wrong I was. It turned out I was armed with a sniper rifle that had an under-slung grenade launcher.

“Wait a minute, we’re inside a building, a sniper rifle will be totally useless” I thought to myself. It was. I could have got more use out of a soggy ice-cream cone. Anyway, after figuring out the controls to switch characters, I chose the guy with the mini-gun. Memories of Team Fortress 2 flooded my mind as I walked through brown corridors hosing the un-dead with hundreds of round a minute. That is until I was inexplicably killed by a fire-ball that was apparently hurled by a set of stairs.

The first person camera is terrible, it’s constant bobbing means that half your shots go wide and the other half hit your team-mates who seem to always be two feet away from the enemies. Also, when you get hurt your screen gets covered with blood, dust, muck and fire for no apparent reason. It’s just an infuriating distraction that will most likely get you killed faster as you run blindly about looking for cover. The lack of any kind of health indicator doesn’t help this situation at all, it just makes it all the more frustrating.

Overall, this was an atrocious game. I can’t recommend it, I can’t even give it a score (for what little that means anyway). My advice, stay away from it. It has AIDs.

P.M.

Iron Man

It’s amazingly hard to not like this film, it’s excellent.

I could stop there and let it lie but I wouldn’t be a very good reviewer if I did so I’ll have to soldier on. It’s really hard to critisize a film which has almost no faults. As this is also my first film review it’s probably going to meander a bit anyway and should be pretty short, thankfully.

Robert Downey Jnr. plays an excellent Tony Stark, his line are delivered with great timing and he really fits the part well. Man, this all sounds corny but seriously, he’s a great actor and does complete justice to the Tony Stark character. The visual effects are brilliant, Stark’s suit gets chipped, dented and broken which makes the film feel alot better because in the end Stark is just a man. A cool, rich, wisecracking man but a man none the less.

I’ve always been a fan of Iron Man ever since I watched the cartoon series, he’s a really awesome character because, despite not having super powers he can still has super strength, super speed and the ability to fly aswell as having some really cool gadgets in his suit. Seriously, what other superhero has a cell-phone in his suit?

Anyway, back to the review. I went into Iron Man hoping it wouldn’t be another terrible Marvel film (see. Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spiderman 3) and I came out knowing that it was one of the best Marvel films to date. This is probably because it was produced independently by Marvel and that’s great. The only thing that niggled me was the cameo by Stan Lee (he appears as Hugh Hefner of Playboy). That’s the one thing I don’t like about Marvel films, the Stan Lee cameos. Yes, we know you helped create all the Marvel characters but I don’t want to see you in every damn film, it was cool in Spiderman, now it’s just annoying.

So should you go see it? Well, I can’t tell you whether to go see it or not, that’s your decision. What I can do is say that I thought it was an excellent film that’s really enjoyable. I also think you should go see it ;)

I just hope that “The Incredible Hulk” is just as good.

P.M.

So, what about the gameplay. It’s repetitive and un-imaginative. You have to collect “Thermal Energy” to stop yourself from freezing to death. This “Thermal Energy” is obtained from killing enemies, there’s no explanation as to why the enemies drop these glowing orange blobs, they just do. That was my first beef with this game. It’s really very easy to kill everything, far too easy in fact and you actually end up with an excess of “Thermal Energy” meaning you can dither about for as long as you like before moving on. I thought this was supposed to be “Extreme Condition(s)” not “Average Conditions”. You can only carry two guns but you only ever need one, the machine gun, because there’s so much ammo either lying about or on the disappearing corpses of your enemies that running out never becomes a problem.

Upon starting up the demo I immediately checked out the controls, only to find that they were displayed as Xbox 360 controls. Hello CAPCOM, I’m playing this demo on a PC, console controls are useless to me. The least they could have done was change the controls screen so that it actually showed keyboard controls rather than things like “Right Trigger = Fire”. MY KEYBOARD HAS NO “Right Trigger”!!! It was then that I threw caution to the wind and set about picking one of two levels.

My first impression was “Oh dear” as I moved the character around in a clunky and boring fashion. The animations aren’t brilliant, neither is the AI and the environments felt dull with their un-inspired graphics. In fact, the whole demo was just 375MB of dreary mediocrity. Thankfully STEAM has the option to “Remove all local content.” Which I quickly did upon finishing the demo. Well, when I say “finishing” I actually mean getting so frustrated at the stupidity of the game overall I gave up.

The worst part is that it could have been good. Great even. If only CAPCOM hadn’t made stupid decisions and employed simpletons to design and make the game. Here’s what I think they should have done. Instead of “Thermal Energy” being dropped from enemies, they should have put things like burning barrels in certain places so that you had to stay near them to warm up before you could move on. The enemies should have been harder rather than the push-overs that most of them are. There really needed to be more imagination in the design stages. Then again, this is CAPCOM and they’re aren’t known for their brilliant imagination (see; Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter).

PC Gamer threw an 81/100 at this game, I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion but after all, they are the “Frat Boys” of the PC gaming demographic so a proper review wasn’t really to be expected. My advice, don’t buy this game unless you’re looking to be bored or annoyed out of your skull. It’s weak attempts at being good are over-shadowed by the fact it’s a total let down. Spend your money on something better. Like Gears of War.

3/10 = Pitiful.

P.M.

The trailers for BLACK were quite impressive, though this could be because that part of them was in reality and the other part was in-game. Suffice to say the trailers left me excited…at the time, but time is a fickle thing and having only obtained BLACK sometime
last year it had mostly been forgotten by myself and the gaming world. So why review it?
Because we need something to fill the site up and if you’re actually looking to buy this game :O then I thought you should know a bit about it.

The main character, Keller, is an elite Black-Ops soldier who appears to have been arrested for…something. Frankly, the story is as clear as mud as you’re playing through events that have already happened. Not the best storytelling technique in my eyes as you know that Keller is at least going to survive, due to the cut-scene (live action I might add) at the start where he’s talking to some guy from some government. As I say, it’s not too clear. The main objective of the game appears to be to kill the leader of some-sort of group, named Seventh Wave, who are doing something naughty somewhere in the world. The Ex-Soviet Union looks to be the likeliest country as all the enemies shout loudly in Russian, immediately giving away their positions, allowing you to shatter their precious cover with an un-healthy dose of bullets.

Speaking of cover-shattering, BLACK focuses mainly on a few things: blowing stuff up,
shooting stuff up and blowing out doors. “But surely that’s the point of every FPS game?”
you say. Well, yes, but BLACK does it bigger, better and more repetitively than any other
FPS out there. The graphics are really very good, around “next-gen” quality. The
environments look battered and dirty, the weapons are sleek and smooth and the characters are quite good too. If you’re going to be killing terrorists of any kind then you want to be doing it in a very destructive and Rambo-ish way using insane amounts of ammunition and breaking almost everything that gets in your way. BLACK came highly praised for its ability to destroy the environments. It deserves the praise, it really does. Though the environments tend to look very similar toward the end of the game.

The weapons are another thing that BLACK focuses on. Though it seems to only focus on a few, mainly the G36C, MP5, AK47 and Remmington (shotgun). The assault rifles all seem pretty equal in their accuracy and power so it doesn’t matter which one you pick up. There are other weapons such as sniper rifles, machine pistols, HMGs, RPGs and one or two pistols though they seem to be bolted on as extras rather than being a key part of the weapon choices. The RPG can come in handy for blowing open emplacements, though they only seem to be there to block your path. The shotgun is only good for blowing doors off their hinges (as well as blowing holes in weak walls), which can be quite good if you blow the door, pop a grenade in, whip out your assault rifle and the hose the survivors with automatic fire.

There’s almost no shortage of ammo in BLACK, as the standard enemies carry similar weapons, so you can spray-and-pray through some of the smaller levels. The only beef I have with the weapons is that they seem to take ages to reload, especially the Magnum. Yes, it’s a powerful gun but I’d rather it was able to fire 6 shots off with reasonable speed than firing one, then having to wait for Keller to pull back the hammer with the speed of an arthritic bear. Sometimes you’ll spray fire into a room, fall-back to reload where-upon a particularly clever enemy (which are few and far between) will come running round the corner and put a clip into your chest as you stare gormlessly at the magazine of your gun. The reload animations feel drawn-out which can be frustrating in the middle of a gun-fight.

The enemies aren’t the smartest I’ve ever encountered but they’ll be a challenge in a confined space, especially if their are lots of them. There are only several types of enemy
for the whole game so you can quickly master how to defeat them and which weapons will work best. This isn’t that surprising as BLACK seems to be Criterion’s first game with anything other than cars in it.

The controls are tight and pretty intuitive but the complete omission of a “jump” button (and action) seems a little odd, though I suppose it stops you falling down massive holes in floors about 3 stories up. Actually, no, wait, invisible walls stop you doing that. To be honest, not having a “jump” option is actually quite good as it means you can’t go bunny-hopping around like a retarded BF2 player before leaping to the ground in front of your enemies and filling their groins with hot lead.

The addition of a multiplayer to BLACK would have been lovely, even a co-op mode would have been welcome. I like the idea of being able to run through the levels, tearing up the scenery with a buddy while legions of enemy troops fall before you eventually creating a
stylish carpet of corpses. The game almost begs for a multiplayer because the levels are
very linear which means almost no replayablitly and I can imagine that things like Team
Deathmatch and Assault would have suited the game brilliantly, oh well, hopefully in the
next one.

Well, people seem to have been throwing scores of around 8 out of 10 at BLACK. It’s good but it’s not great, I wouldn’t give it 8. Probably about 6 due to the lack of coherent story and lack of multiplayer. Otherwise it does everything else reasonably well, except graphics and ’splosions which it does brilliantly. We’re going to have to work out some kind of rating system here…maybe next time. ;)

P.M.

After several hours of play I’d flown through three “systems” and become bored out of my skull. The developers, Egosoft, obviously missed the point of single player RPG games and that is that they’re supposed to be fun and actually have things to do in them. They should not be megalithic constructs of confusion. Egosoft seem to have the largest ego I’ve ever seen in the gaming world, apparently they think they can make three games with “X” in the title and then use their profits to make a MMORPG (Mumorpuger) based in the same universe.

Excuse me if I’m wrong but X3 WAS a Mumorpuger but only for one person at a time. It has all the things that identify a Mumorpuger. The universe is huge, the AI is limited and only seems to stay in its original “system”, you have to grind to be able to get anywhere in the game. It’s a MMORPG, but without the Multiplayer Online part.

Anyway, now I’ll try to talk about the games good points…ok, it only has one. The graphics are pretty. That’s it. I can find nothing else that is good about this game.

Now the bad points, and there’s alot of these. It’s long-winded, the HUD has more data and buttons than the starship Enterprise, the manual is huge and the ships have no consoles in them, they’re just a camera floating in space.

Ok, I can’t summarise anymore. According to a piece of text in the manual, which occupies most of the box, you can do the main story whenever you feel like it, you can drop in and out of it. So the point of this main story is what? It becomes a side quest…the main story becomes a side quest. Seriously, what incentive is there to see the story play out if it’s not that important. In my opinion, the main story of a game like this should always be hanging over your shoulder like an annoying sibling.

I couldn’t even keep hold of the story, and I was actually trying to do it. Having been talked at by a man who my character apparently knew, I was immediately told to go on a patrol. Ok, I thought, it’s only the first mission so it’s bound to be easy. Eventually, I reached the West jump-gate of something like the second “system” only to find that my patrol buddies were no-where in sight. I checked my objectives, yes I was in the right place, but where were they?! This was about the point I gave up with X3, I hadn’t even fired a shot or seen anything that looked remotely hostile.

The “systems” in the game aren’t actually systems, they’re planets. One planet in fact where everything is in orbit. When you bring up your system map it’s an un-inspired 2d jobbie with little pictures of space stations and stuff stuck higgledy piggledy over a black background. It looks like a 3 year-old made it.

Alot of reviewers apparently called this game “deep” and I agree with them. It’s so deep that everything, even peoples sanity, seems to drown in it. Overall, I think it’s a bad excuse for an RPG and an even worse excuse for a game. Well, that’s a little harsh, it’s not a bad game, it’s mediocre, boring, tiresome and many other words for bad.

Here’s the thing Egosoft, if you’re going to make an RPG then give it a story that is interesting, propelling and always there. Make the interface easy to understand and easy to use. Make the universe easy to navigate. Basically make things a little simpler. If you’re going to make a game the manual should not come to 85 pages, ever. If I can put shelving together with two pages of instructions then a game should only require one page. The controls and some back story.

Going back to something I mentioned earlier, Egosoft are planning to release an MMORPG. A proper one at that. Just one question. Why? Is there really any point? EVE Online already exists. Also, this GOTYE of X3 is a re-release, the game was made in 2005, being re-released in 2007 makes it only 2 years old. Why was it re-released? had it been 5 years old then I would have understood but 2 years. Man, Egosoft must be laughing at all those people who bought the game again because it was “patched to 1.4″. That’s right, they released a patched game…which people paid money for. I despair at the gaming community when they allow companies to sell a patched game for £30.

I’ve digressed quite alot, so I’ll try to finish off. I found X3 to be a boring, over-hyped, long-winded game with none of the fun or finesse I first imagined it would have. It was a big disappointment for me personally, but apparently some people think this game is the best they’ve ever played. If you’re one of those people you should buy the game but chances are you have already. If you don’t think you’ll like this game then you’ll probably be thinking that the 260,000 people of the “X” community are idiots and you’ll go spend your money on something better…like Mass Effect.

P.M.

But I digress, I’m here to talk about 3D editing programs, two in particular though. I consider them to be the most main stream and if I were to review all of the 3D programs out there then I would be here far longer than I’d planned, though some may be mentioned in passing.

Ok, firstly, I’m going to talk about 3DS Max (3DS Max 8/9 in particular). Now I’ve had some bad experiences with this program, mainly because it’s so difficult to understand and the majority of tutorials seem to rely on you knowing what the hell they’re talking about, rather than explaining it to you.

I have to start with the UI as it’s the first thing you’ll notice when/if you open up Max. For want of a better word, it’s cluttered, don’t get me wrong, I applaud Autodesk for cramming so much stuff onto one screen but surely there’s a simpler way. Use tabs or something for Pete’s sake. To be honest, the UI in Max 9 is slightly better than in Max 8 but only because they’ve removed a set of buttons that were only useful if you’d been working with the program for years. To a newbie it’s just more confusion.

In my experience lots of people tend to harp on about how ‘powerful’ Max is as an editing tool. It is powerful, bloody powerful in fact, but no matter how powerful something is, if it’s confusing or difficult to use then none of that power is actually accessed. It just sits there doing nothing remotely awe inspiring. Another thing I’ve found, particularly with my dabbling in the modding community, is that many requests for modellers/animators have the addition of “3DS Max Experience required”. Unfortunately, no-one, especially in the mod community, seems to have realised that 3DS Max 8 costs over £2000. Way more money than many modders have. Basically, some people are asking for the nigh on impossible, unless you work for a company who uses Max or have obtained it through less legal means then it’s bloody hard to get the experience.

If you actually know how to operate Max effectively, which generally requires going on a course of some kind, then you can be modelling and animating in about 10 minutes. If you don’t know then you’ll probably try it out for a few minutes before deciding that it’s too much confusion and hassle before buggering off and doing something else.

Right, onto another 3D program, this one is for all of those people who want experience in 3D modelling but don’t want to fork out enough money for a small car. The program happens to be called Blender, just Google it for the official website, I’m not doing everything for you. I’ve had a good years experience with Blender and have found the community and tutorials to be very helpful and easy. This is probably due to Blender being FOSS (Free Open-Source Software).

When you travel about the internet you’ll certainly find people who claim that FOSS programs are not properly developed and have terrible technical support. This might be the case with some small and recently released FOSS but it’s not the case with Blender. Then again, when was the last time you used Microsoft’s Tech Support? I certainly haven’t recently, due to it’s poor development and general badness. Anyway, this isn’t a review of Microsoft, if it was I’d have exploded by now.

Blenders UI feels a little friendlier than Max’s, mostly because it’s far less cluttered and it doesn’t feel like you’re peeking through a tiny hole in your screen just to see a cube. The fact that Blender splits up alot of it’s interface into different “tabs”, for want of a better description, means that they can actually fit more stuff into the program and make the tools more versatile. The sections within sections can be a little confusing at times but as long as you know what you’re generally looking for then you should be able to find it.

The tools are quite powerful, despite the large amount of them, and there is always one for the job. I’ve found that Blender tends to be overlooked by many recruiters, probably because it’s not in the limelight as much as Max is.

Ok, I’ve been trying to review Blender in the same way as I reviewed Max but it’s actually extremely hard to not compare them, so I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway.

Max is more cluttered and feels less refined than Blender, though some of Blenders tools are in odd places or even non-existent, though this is rare. Both are almost equal in power though Max is only slightly more powerful, probably due to being produced by people who are paid. But then, if that’s the only difference then why should you use Max? or why should you use Blender for that matter? I think it comes down to your preference, if you like paying for stupidly expensive software (XP and Vista I’m looking at you) then get Max. It’s more mainstream but far more daunting and confusing than Blender. On the other hand, if you like free things and are all for easy-use then get Blender.

I’ve just realised that I haven’t really reached a conclusion with this review. Then again, I’m glad I haven’t, as to do so would mean I’ve made a decision which is probably wrong in one way or the other. Now, I happen to use both of the aforementioned programs and find that they both have their advantages and dis-advantages, many of which gladden and dishearten me, in that order. I think I’ve found that Blender is a far simpler program, it doesn’t force everything to you at once, like Max, it allows you to find what you want when you want it. However, Max gives you all the options at once, which is more complicated, but can be very good at doing what you want.

I think the best way to sum up this review is like this: 3DS Max is like city-life, all busy and fast, whereas Blender is like country-life, quiet and slow. In the end I can’t tell you which one to use, it’s up to you, but I hope you’ve found most of this review useful in helping you reach your decision.

Enjoy.

P.M.

To start off with I’m going to review Call of Duty 4. Having played through the campaign and played a fair share of multiplayer I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a damn solid game.

The AI is much better than many previous FPS games, rather than running straight into your line of fire, they will move quickly between cover and generally never advance too close to your position unless “persuaded” by a grenade or two. They work together aswell, covering an advance and looking out for each other, most of the time at least.

The graphics are beautiful, even on my steadily ageing machine. They make the game far more dirty and gritty, you can practically feel the sand under your flak vest as you fight through streets in an un-named Middle-Eastern country, than any previous CoD or war related FPS.

I found Call of Duty 4 to be an enjoyable and exciting experience the first time I played it
but I think it’s biggest downfall is the replay-ability. As with most shooters
CoD4’s single player replay-ability is almost nill, unless you happened to miss the story first time round.

Now don’t get me wrong, CoD4 is a brilliant game, but it does have it’s faults, though they are few.

The multiplayer seems pretty solid though, with a nice easy ranking system to unlock more kit.
CoD4 succeeds where the Battlefield series seems to have failed. The environment is very interactive,
with the ability to jump over walls, through windows and such like. Grenade spamming doesn’t occur like it
does in games of BF2 (this is the only suitable game to compare it to.) due to the fact that you can throw them back, a wonderful little addition to some great gameplay.

Overall, I’d have to say that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best FPSs out there at the moment. It’s solid gameplay, excellent graphics, good story and terrific multiplayer make it a good investment, no matter what price you get it at. Though getting it for £150 or something is just stupid…

Anyway, I hope you found my first review reasonably good, feedback is always appreciated, just make a thread on the forums.

Thanks for reading.

P.M.