Moody Gamer

There are numerous FPS games out there. Many which are very similar in terms of experience. Below I list the ones that I believe give the player very distinct and unique experiences. Do note that they are not ordered by any sort of rank, the numbering is just a count:

1 – Aliens vs Predator 2

This game allows you to play as a marine, a predator and an alien, each with their distinct play styles. The marine is your normal human with rifles, machine guns and a motion sensor. The predator has stealth, multiple vision modes and fun weapons which appeared in the movies. The alien has only his claws, tail whip and bite. The alien also can crawl around almost anywhere in the level. Add some nice use of scripted events, story and spooks and you got one incredible package to experience.

2 – Call of Duty 4

I had to choose between this and Half Life and even though HL was a great single player experience, CoD4 was a more engaging one. CoD4 has a modern warfare setting, so you get to see and use lots of current age weapons and gadgets in the hope of stopping a madman from using nuclear missiles. The game is the best cinematic war FPS game you can ever find, even one of the best single player experiences to date, lots of action, variety in the missions and twists. Add to that great AI who are very aggressive in using cover and flushing you from cover. They are so good that one might show up from behind you without noticing. To even enhance the experience you get music composed by Harry Gregson-Williams. If you ever played a Metal Gear Solid game, you will know how the music can make the game more thrilling and cinematic.

3 – Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Based on Vin Deisel’s movie but with a different story and setting, you are caught and in a maximum security prison. The game has an incredible feel to it since the environment and setting is very unique and you get Vin Deisel playing as himself (Character model and voice that is). You can interact with the NPCs around you, great stealth elements, impressive fist fights and more as you try to fight your way for freedom. The game sports a nice graphics engine that looks very similar to the Doom 3 engine.

4 – Dues Ex

This is a game that isn’t affected by time. You play as a nano augmented super agent who gets involved in a mysterious conspiracy that involves a plague. One of the best use of RPG elements in the game since you can increase your characters stats. The game also allows you freedom of choice in tackling a problem, be it stealth, brute force or even negotiation. The story itself is great and deep and is shrouded with mystery and conspiracy with multiple factions that can be your enemy or ally. No matter how old this game, I strongly recommend it if you never tried it before.

5 – Crysis

Was going for Far Cry since it was a close call, thought aliens beat mutant trigens anytime for me. Oh and a nano suit is always a plus, but it is a close call really. You are on an island; you get an objective, choose your path, choose your approach and get it going. Crysis though sports the most cutting edge graphics and physics to date, it brings a lot of PCs to their knees. You first face off against the North Koreans and later the Aliens. A strange artifact was found on an island that got the North Koreans interested and curious. Your job is to get to it before they do by any means necessary. Really the main points about the game are its sandbox style gameplay and some of the action stages, coupled with impressive graphics, huge environment and fun vehicle sequences.

6 – Hexen 2

Another old game that deserves attention since it is one of the unique experiences. The game has a medieval setting and you control one of the multiple character classes: Assassin, Paladin, Crusader and Necromancer. Playing the game with each class is a new experience since they are very diverse. They gain levels and with that improve their skills. You get to fight Imps, Golems, Hydras and more. The game has a nice amount of stages with some nice puzzle elements thrown with background music that fits the setting very well.

7 – Serious Sam 2

If you ever liked mindless action, then the best you can get is offered by Serious Sam 2. You fight against hordes, literally, of enemies from the start of a level to the end. No time to breathe since you are always on the move. The levels are vast and sport different environments. Each setting also has a boss level which generally gives a new meaning to big or huge.

8 – Tron 2.0

Who said games based on movies always fail? This is another one that is based on the movie Tron, a game that has a very unique level setting like no other. You are in a computer world, as in inside the computer. Levels span the internet, network, graphics cards, processor, memory…etc. You get to use the famous disk and ride on those bikes on a grid. Throughout the game you fight viruses and increase your chances of survival via upgrades. One of the best worlds re-imagined from a movie to a game. Another strong recommendation if you never tried it before.

9 – FEAR

From the same people who brought you Aliens vs Predator. The game is about a squad name First Encounter Assault Recon (FEAR) who investigates about a general who has gone rogue in a mysterious way. This game is more about spooks and creative use of blood effects to create a thriller game. The character you control has a special ability that allows him to have super reactions, in other words, the world around him slows down to an extent of seeing bullets in air, which is a great effect. Add to that some of the best AI enemies who communicate with each other, flank and use squad tactics to flush you out. Wrap that up with a mysterious story about a little girl who goes killing people in even a more mysterious way.

10 – Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

This is the other best adaptation of a movie in a game after Riddick. You play as Jack in First Person view and get to explore the island which has all sorts of creatures. The design is great and controlling Jack is thrilling as you have no HUD (Head up Display) to tell you about his health or ammo. Instead Jack talks if he is low on ammo or you see the screen become disoriented if he is low on health. Such touches really add up to the experience. There are portions of the game where you control Kong himself in a Prince of Persia style of platform jumping and wall climbing plus the occasional boss fights.

11 – Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

You investigate a cult who worships a sea creature in a mysterious and isolated town. The game is another thriller but focuses on emotion rather than action. Your main character view gets disoriented, shaken and whatnot while he tries to survive from being killed by a mysterious group and to uncover this mystery. Some puzzle elements are thrown in with a lot of notes to read that deepens your involvement in the story.

12 – Condemned: Criminal Origins

A setting with psychos and serial killers, this is your common cop who is chasing a psycho serial killer and in the process gets framed for killing a cop. The game staple highlights are melee combat and the reactions that come with the hit. Just seeing how an enemy staggers from a pipe swung in his face is painfully realistic. Again another thriller who focuses on psychological manipulation and some creepy criminals that are so twisted when you meet them. Imagine the panic when you are alone in a dark building where suddenly someone pops up blabbering weird sentences and is so close to you swinging a steel pipe.

13 – Call of Juarez

An FPS game based around the western theme, you play as Billy Candle where you mainly go stealth and use your whip to navigate through the levels. In the other half of the levels you play as Reverend Ray, an ex-outlaw who became religious. His portion of the game is very action oriented. The game also has a lot of duels that are implemented in a satisfying way. The story revolves around these two as the rush to find Juarez legendary gold goes on. Hardly any western themes games out there and this is the best one out there yet.

14 – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

You are an artifact hunter who searches for artifact around the Chernobyl power plant. The place is filled with radioactivity, anomalies, mutants, mercenaries, thieves and soldiers. You lost your memory and only have a picture of someone you must kill. The game has a huge world with a lot of side quests that are linked to time. A truly dynamic world since NPCs and enemies fight each other and take territories whether you are around or not. The developers have truly managed to bring their vision of the area around and in Chernobyl in this amazing FPS game.

15 – Portal

Wielding just a gun that opens two portals in which you enter one and end up popping out from the other, in addition as acting as a physics manipulation gun. Hardly any story but rather you are faces with levels. Each level increases the puzzle difficulty a notch. It is up to you to think how to use what you have in your disposal in addition to the portal controls to get through. Simple idea but playing through this will want to crave for more since it is so much fun and challenging at the same time.

I am sure there are more FPS games the offer unique experiences but I had to limit myself to 15 games that I think are the best ones in offering that distinct experience. You think I missed something important? Or don’t agree with what I selected? Then let us know.

Probably the only one too that focuses on PC Games here in Oman. It is Al-Emad Computer Shop. These guys were in Oman since the days of pirated software was rampant in the area. Even now that PC software piracy has been almost squished in Oman, this shop has been doing well with their original PC Games sales. Considering that the demography of PC Gamers is low here in the country compared to the console gamers. Of course, nowadays you got other places to get PC Games such as Emax and Carrefour. But they are always extremely late in getting new titles and their prices are questionable.

Unlike Al-Emad who, as of writing this article, already have a copy of Devil May Cry 4 for the PC which was only released a few days ago. That is considered an achievement within Oman. I still remember the day they had Warcraft 3 on the same world wide release day. Their prices are also very quite reasonable too that makes you think how the hell do they do it.

If you are new in Oman or never thought of such a place existed, then you can check it out by going to Jawharat Al-Shati in Shatti Al Qurum (Next to DQ restaurant). This is in Muscat the capital of Oman. You can even call them on +968 24695964.

I will keep you updated of any new stores that retail PC Games in a serious manner (No thanks to Carrefour or Emax). As for the question of why I am not covering consoles and handheld stores is simple, they are everywhere thanks to piracy, partially. Though everyday that is becoming less and less due to the ministry trying to fight it in addition to the counter measures that developers use to stop it. Maybe that will increase the sales of PC games in the country and eventually someone will think of opening another PC Games Store.

Codemasters are very well known for developing racing games that lean to simulation instead of arcadey gameplay. Known for their Collin McRae Rally games and the TOCA series. If you have ever tried any of these games, you will know how hard for a casual player to get into them. That is why Race Driver GRID, or simply GRID, was made.

Recently, the Need for Speed series was taking control of the arcade racer segment and the latest offering was a huge let down in the form of Need for Speed: Prostreet. It is very obvious that people will be looking for alternatives and the best one there is was GRID, which is by far a more superior experience that Prostreet.

The game allows you to race in real world circuits around the world categorized as USA, Europe and Japan. The cars themselves are categorized the same way. The career mode offers three parallel race tiers. By racing you get reputation which allows you to gain licenses (also categorized by USA, Europe and Japan) which opens up the next tier. Gain enough reputation and you open up the Global license which opens up races that have mixed cars and tracks from the three categories.

GRID offers a lot of variety in terms of race types. You can race in F1, Touring, GT, Drift and even Demolition Derby with other race types as well. You get a set number of cars to select per race type and the car range from Touring to LeMans Prototypes. There are no can performance customizations which personally I think is a good thing. Reason is that GRID really is focusing on the driver and the actual race instead of the car since most of the fun about racing games is in the race itself. Something NFS series need to learn.

Now the graphics is really on a level of it’s own. You got realistic lighting and reflections coupled with some great use of motion blur (though I know a lot of players hate this feature) and the best part is, it runs very smooth even with AntiAliasing used. Of course the PC version offers higher frame rates and resolutions and I had no problem running this at Ultra settings on my 8800 GT card.

Another thing that was refreshing was the music. No more hiphop or rap tunes. You get nice movie like scores here and it specially makes the replays fun to watch.

There is alot about this game that I can talk to lengths about such as the best damage physics in a racing game, very fun and humurous online experience (thanks to the previous feature), AI racers that are competitive and make mistakes too and the flash back feature which allows you to replay a portion of the race if you ever crashed and redo it again. These are some of the highlights that really add up to a thrilling racing experience that is by far the best on the PC. There are even comparisons being done with GT5 on the PS3. Can’t say which is better and I think it ends up to preference.

Update: Check out my full and extended review of GRID at MEGamers.

What you get when you slap Prince of Persia gameplay with Grand Theft Auto freedom, historical setting and DirectX9/10 graphics? You end up with Ubisoft’s new and ambitious game Assassin’s Creed.

Ambitious as the game may be, it ended with a big flaw I will address later in the review. The game is set around Jerusalem (Al Quds) and just around the third crusade war. You play as an Assassin who works his way to take out key personnel to make sure that the war is under control. Of course Ubisoft are using fictional characters and story even though the setting is historical and so are some characters (Saladin and King Richard). They did a very good job of blending such a setting with a story of their own. So whatever you will be doing in game, it really didn’t happen in reality. In addition, you are actually playing in a simulated history kind of way. The main character is put into a machine that allows you to go back into the characters past, up to whatever grand-grand father memory and few his memory. In our case, the memory goes back to the third crusade era and your great grandfather is actually an assassin. The story might seem complex but it really is simple and there are hardly any twists in it.

If you have ever played Prince of Persia (The Sands of Time Trilogy) then you will be right at home with the controls of Altair (The assassin you control). The idea is that you are give names to go and assassinate but you aren’t pointed to who or where they are. So it is your task to look around in the city for clues. They are given by other assassin’s who work with you in your Creed. A step before that is to find where they are and is done by climbing a View-Point. These are tall buildings (Marked on your map) that you can scale in a remarkable way to get a view of your surroundings. Which also allows you to see any information giver that allows you to get closer to your assassination target in addition of getting more details about how to get to them with the least trouble. The View-Points also allow you to see other “side quests” such as helping citizens, roof-top race against time, assassinating some guards. The missions span three major cities and each city is literally huge with a lot of people going about their daily lives, preachers, guards and even pigeons.

The game graphics is marvelous and so are the character animations (at least the main character). The graphics support high textures and awesome use of HDR and bloom effect. This game is one of the very few that properly implements these settings so that they really contribute to the immersion. You really just can’t believe how well a city looks with all the people in it until you see the game in motion. This brings us to the animation part of the game which is so smooth and realistic that walking in the cities is jaw dropping. Add to that some great roof top maneuvers and jumping and you can see how much fun it is to move around in the city without doing much anything.

The visual effect is combined with some great music that really fits that game and changes based on the event, whether you are being chased, stalking someone or fighting.

The biggest flaw in the game, and I am sorry to say so considering how much I praised it, is that it is very repetitive. You can argue that most games are repetitive, but Assassin’s Creed repetition is so obvious. The main mission asks you to gather information and assassinate a person, which is almost the same every time. The side quests are worse. Hardly any variety from the same scale that tower, help that citizen, get that flag (which is useless for both the PC and PS3 versions), kill that templar and so on. If you do all of these quests, you can easily clock over 50 hours of play, though you will feel that you are forcing yourself to do them rather than trying to have fun doing them.

So a great game with great ambition but plagued with hideous repetition. I still recommend this game but don’t force yourself to do all the side quests after you experienced the main ones, since it gets repetitive after that.

I don’t think there is a game recently out there that can give you a good laugh like Sam & Max.If you want a game like that and is a point and click type of game, then you are in for a treat.

The story is about a detective dog in a suit named Sam and his sidekick, a rabbit with an over sized head and mouth and dots for eyes, named Max. They are the freelance police. Naturally, they get to solve cases but not in a traditional way. Instead, they do it in a wacky and seriously funny way.

An old two dimensional version of the game was released in the 90s which I missed. Then Telltale (the developer) announced they will make a new Sam & Max game using 3D graphics with the same old, and loved, point and click system. That game got scrapped and then reintroduced as episodic releases. Currently, Seasons 1 and 2 are out each containing five episodes. Each episode is worth about 1-3 hours of gameplay (depending on how good you are in solving problems in weird and stupid ways). I won’t be talking about Season 1 but most of what is talked about here applies to the first season. It is a good idea to pick up Season 1 before delving in to Season 2 but not necessary. The season’s episodes have their own story (case) which are connected together to form the season story, so playing in sequence is prefered.

The game is played, as stated earlier, in a point and click fashion. You mouse over an object and will get a tool tip about it. Click it and either Sam or Max will comment on it, in a funny way, or will interact with it. The inventory system used is so simple and basic even a young kid can understand it (kids these days understand even more complex games!). The idea is to connect the objects to the right elements, be it a person, a machine or whatever that makes sense (or doesn’t) to get a solution. There a lot of times you will get stuck wondering what to do or how to move forward. Honestly, I myself rushed to look into walkthroughs which can save you the time but no recommended. Especially when you figure out that the answer was so close if you had a little patience to look around more.

The requirements for the game are very forgiving almost all current and last generation (even two generations) of PC hardware can run it at maximum settings. What is nice about the graphics is the art style which maintains a very cartoony element. The animation is also nice and it is this combination of art and animation that makes you feel connected to the plot and the game world overall.

Sam and Max themselves are great characters in addition to the other characters you will interact with in this helarious world. From start to finish of each episode you will continue smiling and will throw in a lot of laughs until the season ends in which you get hinted to a third season coming soon. I must say when that point is reached, you will want Season 3 sooner than later.

Here is an exciting topic which will drive a lot of you WoW players crazy. Since I started playing WoW and during my continuous play, I found out that having gold (which is the currency used in the game) will pretty much do a lot of stuff for you in short amounts of time. Things like: Getting that epic flying training, special epic mounts, rare receipts, epic items being sold, your daily consumables,…etc will be much easier to attain by having enough gold flow. Below I will list the professions and techniques I used to get steady streams of gold and the amount of time needed to spend to achieve that.

Alchemy: Ah my golden profession that allowed me to make thousands of gold when I leveled it to maximum level, which isn’t both hard or gold consuming. For me I went ahead and chose Elixir Mastery because it gives you a chance to produce up to 5xflasks/elixirs with materials of a single flask/elixir and that flasks/elixir sell really well due to all the raiding. One general method you want to use is simply check the mats for most of the important elixirs and flask and compare to how much they sell. Generally I expect that you will break even or sometimes the flasks/elixirs sell less than the mats. In any case, what I did was simply buy the mats for the flasks, mainly Flask of Supreme Power and Flask of Pure Death. I sometimes make Flask of Blinding Light and Flask of Mighty Restoration but these don’t sell as much as the first two. The kicker is that these flasks sell between 30g (for the Flask of Supreme Power) and 50g (mainly for the rest of the flasks). Now imagine you got 2xflask using single flask materials, that’s free 30-50g. Now imagine getting 5x if you were lucky enough, then that’s 120-200g without breaking a sweat. On the negative side you might not get a single proc (proc is a term used that means that the roll for an effect to happen has happened, in this case getting multiple flasks/elixirs), which case by then it depends on the materials versus the product costs. Though even in the worst case scenario, you will only lose a small fraction of gold if you never proc’ed. For me, this was my main way of making gold and it only takes me 15 minutes to do. After I discovered this method, I never bothered making gold any other way. For your information, this method allowed me to get my alts epic flying training within 2 weeks!

Herbalism: Herbalism is a powerful way to make money if you have the time to spend in gathering herbs. Though you can be most efficient if you use an add on called “Cartographer” with the routes plug-in. If you manage through the configuration, it will calculate the best route to herb certain herbs that you select in each zone which as you can see, can save a lot of time. Personally, I didn’t rely on this much and just went herbing when I was bored or waiting for a group to be full for an instance. If you want to follow this path you might want to considering farming the following: Nightmare Vines at Shadowmoon Valley and Mountain Silversage and Dreamfoil in Hellfire. Reasons is that they are close to Shattrath, go into important potions mainly “Flask of Supreme Power” and “Flask of Pure Death” and you can get Nightmare Seeds and Fel Lotus on the Nightmare Vines.

Enchanting: Unless you have the will to spend a lot to level this to maximum level and then go farm the best Formulas, chances are you won’t make a lot of gold but it helps to do a few enchants while you are at a city. It is also a good idea to have a macro ready that when you click will show what you can do on the trade channel as long as you don’t spam. Though enchanting is mainly prefered to be used as a personal mean of a profession rather than a income one.

Tailoring: Only one sure way to make money with tailoring and it is making Netherweave bag. These babies sell like hot cakes, I literally mean “sell like hot cakes”. Generally the mats cost about 4-5g and you can sell the bag for about 6-8g. Now think about making 50 or so each day or whenever you are sold out and you can make about 100g minimum per 50 bags. It takes about 30 minutes or so to make almost that amount of bags and you don’t need to go farm or anything so it it so easy to do. I managed to raise gold from 10g to 2200g in about 1-2 weeks purely on selling these bags. Why you ask they sell that fast? Beats me to be honest, I guess lots of people make alts and they want to equip them with 16-slot bags.

Cooking: If you manage to level your cooking, then one of the most wanted food items sought by casters is Blackened Basilisk which only requires 1xChunk-O-Basilisk and some cooking fire to make. The materials are really easy to get or even buy in the AH then make a stack of them and sell them to AH or other players. Most raiders will have to have this for their caster players so it will definitely sell out. Again not the best way I made gold but a nice addition. Plus if you are a caster yourself then you can save yourself buying the food.

Dailies: Probably the worst way to make gold simply because it takes a lot of time and effort to do the dailies. Since the number of daily quests you can do has been increased to 25, then if you manage to do that much quests (which I approximate, can take about 2-4 hours, assuming you have access to atleast that much number of quests), the amount of gold you can make can reach to about 400g per day. Counting all the stuff you loot (grey, white, greens and possible blues). If you have the time to invest in such a method then by all means do it. It is still a worthy amount of gold you are getting.

I recommend getting the addon “auctioneer” since it can automate putting up your auctions faster rather than doing them one by one. You can get it at wow.curse.com. You can get “Cartographer” at the same website in addition to many up to date addons.

Oh and a small final hint, maybe you want to look at the mats and selling price for the Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer

Square-Enix surprised everyone yesterday when it announced AND released its first game on the iPod. The game titled ‘Song Summoner: The Unsung Hereos‘ is a strategy RPG that looks and plays very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and can be fully played using the iPod’s scrollwheel. The thing that makes this game unique is that the player creates his party members from his own songs, where each song can be transformed into a ‘tune trooper’ to be used in battle. The player will be able to power up his tune troopers in-game and outside the game by playing the songs of his troopers.

Gamers had never seriously considered the iPod or the iPhone as a real gaming platform because no proper gamers were made for it from traditional game developers, but on the other hand, Square-Enix and many other Japanese developers have taken mobile gaming more seriously and had released innovative and exclusive games for the mobile platform that were only available in Japan, such games include Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7 (a game that makes use of mobile phone cameras to take photographs of colourful objects to create materia gems), Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday, and some Front Mission, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest remakes.

Song Summoner is available on the iTunes music store – this is the Apple online store for purchasing the music, videos, and applications for the iPod and the iPhone. The iPod does not allow installation of application through any other means. The game was instantly released for Japan, the US and European iTunes music stores for the low price of $4.99, £3.99, or €4.99 depending on where you are living.

The strange thing about this is Square released it for the 5th Generation iPod and the iPod nano with video, but not for the iPhone or the iPod Touch. The build of these two models obviously differs from the scrollwheel iPods, but it is strange that Square-Enix is targeting an older version of the iPod instead of going for the most powerful one. Is Square-Enix just testing the waters before properly investing in this platform? Should Sony and Nintendo start to worry now?

However, it is such a shame that we will not be able to play this game anytime in Oman because we do not have an iTunes Store. The iPod can only install new games and application through the online store and you will need an address/credit card issued from a country that has an iTunes Store to be able to use one. The UAE very recently gove its iTunes Store, I doubt that this means that WE will be getting one anytime soon.

You can check out the video of the game and learn more about it by visiting its official website.

Since I am a big fan of Street Fighter series, I keep tracking what’s happening after the last SF, which was Street Fighter 3 Third Strike. Capcom have recently (Ok a few months ago, I was busy to write about it) announced Street Fighter 4, which is already released on arcade as of writing this article and is scheduled to be released on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

They are planning to ditch all SF3 new characters and go back to the roots of SF2. So almost all SF2 characters have made it back such as Rye, Ken, Chun-Li, E.Honda, Guile, M.Bison, Sagat, Vega, Zangief, Dhalsim, Blanka, Balrog and Akuma. in addition to new ones: Abel, C.Viper, Rufus, El Fuerte and Seth (Boss). The list is already nicely long yet rumors say that more characters will be added to the ones already available on the arcade version.

Capcom are going back to 3D with this version while maintaining the traditional 2D fighting system. As long as this isn’t another Street Fighter EX, then I won’t be worried. Though from watching some videos, it seems the art is unique and has it’s own style and the animation is fluid and at the same time fast to cope with the furious fighting.

The game is said to play more like SF2 than SF3 and parrys have already been thrown out (was introduced in SF3). After reading a few articles, it seems the move to 3D did not affect the old and yet satisfying 2D fighting system gameplay which is always a good thing. You still got your Super combos in addition to Ultra combos which, as it’s name suggests, is a more powerful version of the super combo.

In terms of Story, the game’s timeline is after the Alpha (Zero in Japan) series and before SF2. As much as I wanted something totally new, Capcom made a wise decision of where to start the story for this version of SF. Lets see how it turns out. Do note that the home versions will have cinematic cutscenes (anime) to show more of the story which is a great move and something totally new in a SF game.

The nice thing is that you can also play online with this version of SF which will make it’s lasting appeal pretty long (I hope we in Oman don’t have problems with latency by then, hopeful but doubtful).

For more in-depth details of the game, checkout www.streetfighter.com (There are some awesome must-see fight scenes using a mix of the game engine and stylish art animation). I also stumbled upon www.streetfighter.org which also has a little bit if nice information.

Infinity Ward (the developers) just can’t stop surpising us with their war FPS games. Just when you think that this genre has been done to death with the hundreds of WW2 and/or modern war variants, they come and prove that there is still lots of room for improvement and excitement. After missing on Call of Duty 3, which landed only on the consoles, Infinity ward comes back with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The new sequel is based, from it’s subtitle, on modern age war. Using everything you ever know about current weapons and tactics. The game uses an updated version of the graphics engine used in previous Call of Duty games. Simply put, it is brought to current age graphics with up to date shaders and effects. Simple reason, and good one too, of updating from a previous engine is that you get access to a wider configurations of PCs when focusing on that market only. Optimized graphics engines that don’t have to be cutting edge is always a plus (Take a hint Crytek). Graphics can keep the wow factor for an hour or so, gameplay can keep it as long as the game lasts. Which brings me to probably the only annoyance in CoD4, it’s length which is about 4-6 hours long for it’s single player campaign, that is if you are slow. Other than that, you are in for a heck of a ride.

I never played a realistic FPS war game that is so engaging. As soon as you start a level, you get the feeling of really being part of a team that are storming, ambushing, defending and whatever other means of actions you get to do in the different levels of the game. The enemies also put you on your edge and going guns blazing rambo style won’t work here, and it never worked in real life too. Taking cover and being non static is the way forward. Stick too long behind a single cover and the enemies will swarm on you or will flush you with grenades. The missions themselves have interesting variety in them, from one of the best sniping missions to spectacular base assaulting missions. You also have to always check your flank, the enemy is so good at this that you can easily get carried away by focusing on the ones infront of you and then suddenly get killed be someone from behind. The thing is, when you are going through the single player campaign, you get that cinematic feeling that you might find in a Metal Gear Solid game which is of course nice to have a little of. Maybe because the music is composed by the same composer that did the music for MGS series, Harry Gregson-Williams.

One small thing I noticed is that rag-doll physics are absent almost throughout all Call of Duty series. The physics when it debut, was of course silly and funny but current implementations are far more realistic that before so it might have been a good time to have it implemented. It isn’t a big issue but rather a slight note that won’t affect your experience in this amazing game.

Now from all the three versions: PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, getting the PC version is best if you have a good setup simply because of the keyboard+mouse control which is almost always better than the controllers used in consoles for FPS games. Still, whichever version you get, you will be sure that you will have a blast playing this game.