Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Overrated"

Review For Call Of Duty 4! With My New Approach To Reviews. Long Detailed Ones.



This game is absolutely incredible, and I can say one of my all time favourites, and online multiplayer's been such good value since I bought it in early December. I could play this for three or more hours every night, it's just so much fun!

So why just 8? Well, there's no need for many more raving reviews to convince the masses, I'm sure. I'm just writing this to comment on the incredible problems some people are having with this game at present on the PS3, so that potential buyers are aware.

At best, this game's an incredible multiplayer experience. Unfortunately the online works via P2P rather than having dedicated central servers. You don't need to understand this jargon - what this means for the user is that this title more than others experiences a lot of lag and problems connecting to other users. Rather than matchmaking you with people just in the same country or even continent to reduce these problems as much as possible, people from all over the world are grouped together in games. The lag sometimes makes COD4 unplayable online. Quite often you'll be shooting at a player when he isn't there - he or she has already moved to another place, but the information hasn't travelled across the world fast enough, so on your screen it still looks like he's there! Other times you'll see people 'teleport' from one place to another as data on a player's actions finally make it around the world to the other players consoles!

Worse than that, because of something about the way this game's been set up, many users have had to spend a great deal of time (me included) fiddling with their internet connection, routers etc to even be able to get this game to work. It took me a good day of research and tinkering with things I didn't really understand to achieve a good connection. In contrast, most other console games work right out the box.

Luckily I don't have this next problem, but despite similar efforts many users report not either having to wait many minutes, even up to an hour, to connect to a game, and still others report that they cannot connect at all, ever! This has been the case for weeks now, but despite many appeals on their official forums the PS3 community has been given no explanation, no quick 'sorry guys we know there are problems and we're working on it' - not even an explanation! Xbox users, in contrast, do from time to time receive replies to their messages. It pains me to say it but, if you have an Xbox, get that version instead!

(At the time of writing this the Infinity Ward forum has been taken offline for the last couple of days. Ostensibly for 'upgrading' but many in the community are noting that it's just a day or two before the additional map packs are available to purchase for Xbox - us PS3 users must wait a few more weeks! - and just as the snowball of technical complaints about the PS3 was becoming an avalanche. Public relations damage limitation? You decide!)

If you have either an Xbox 360 or a PC and can't wait to see if the PS3 version's fixed in the near future before you purchase this otherwise great game, I'd recommend getting one of those versions. The Xbox also has some issues I hear, but not as many as PS3. It's also much better supported than the PS, and with more communication from the developers Infinity Ward on how issues are being addressed (at least it was when the website was up). The PC version (if you have a good gaming machine) does have dedicated servers running COD4, and so should have the best online performance of all in theory. They also have many user made maps that the consoles don't have - a big plus - but there is no definite news about when the extra map pack that the consoles soon see will come to PC.

In short an incredible game but knowing what I do I wouldn't purchase this for the PS3 until all problems are fixed (including support from the developer!)