Best selling game of last year:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7213009.stm
... and you couldn't really begrudge it that. Single player is very linear, and perhaps a little dull at times because of that, but CoD4 is extremely well produced, written, and acted all the same. There are some really great set pieces here and there, with the military gung-ho nicely muted by some dead-pan dialogue and well chosen you-are-dead quotations. The usual niggle of a tightly scripted FPS hampering any worthwhile AI applies, but it doesn't hurt the game a great deal - story and set pieces take priority.
Visually CoD4 is exceptional, thanks in the main to the artfully reduced colour palette and subtle lighting, smoke, and dust effects that decorate decaying buildings and bombed up environments. The effect is of a desperate, washed out war zone, which clashes nicely against the can-do attitude of your squad. Ambient sfx are also very impressive, expanding the atmosphere with distant military rumbling. The experience is unusually involving and unsettling. Previous CoDs felt like mooching around an unlikely movie set to me, but here the tone is spot on and pulls you right in. Somehow what should have been a generic military FPS shmup becomes a mood piece. NPC characterisation is less memorable, although there is some great moustache work on the SAS lead.
Where COD4 really flies is the online multiplayer though. I have barely got started here, but it very enjoyable indeed. The weapons balance is fair, with steady unlocking of improved and more specialised kit as you go along with a peculiar yet satisfying level system. Keeping the game fluid for simple team deathmatch is cleverly managed by roving spawn points, so that a team on the back foot is relieved by 'reinforcements' pincering the enemy from the rear. This must have been done before (no idea where though?), but it works very well here. The feel is very much of a super-slick Counter Strike, which is about as good as this type of game can get for me.
Good analysis, the single player which I went through on toughest level with a buddy... now on that level each initial encounter with enemies can be percieved as an arcade game, as the enemies have specfic starting locations and movements, and react identically each time, and your respawn / retry location is the same and resets the enemies... so its probably accidentally classic memorising of enemy locations and techniques to dispatch asap... obviously it disintegrates once you sink into the level, but on a per respawn / death and the resets its quite interesting.
The online is great stuff, old school FPS stuff aka Counter Strike but with the interesting class system and XP points lathering everything up. But its balanced in such a way that you aren't playing to level up or leveling up to play, its just a natural reward for playing well, somehow they've manage to balance it just right. Just right. Frightening.