Danger! Incoming TEXT ATTACK!CUS wrote: Blow me, COD4 is an awesomely excellent game in online multiplayer. After 30 mins or so of 'getting used to it', I loved that. Fantastic stuff. It must be good because it's even bearable on public servers despite the high level of cuntery Live continues to enjoy. Not that I ever play much beyond Team Deathmatch on public Live, admittedly, as I don't credit most of the houseplants playing to co-ordinate themselves on a more tactically difficult gametype.
The gaming last night was top notch though. I was particulary impressed with how solid the matchmaking and party systems were, and how well the game scaled. Early on with four of us we could go onto 6v6 public servers, top our team up with some randoms, and still feel like it was us-versus-the-world (I do feel slightly sorry for the randoms who have to put up with our occasionally vile banter though). Later as people came online we could move up to the 9v9 public servers, and when even more people appeared that meant just as we were overflowing the max team size on public servers we had enough for some sensibly sized team games on private servers. That's very good game design.
I particularly enjoyed Domination, we should play more of that. It has the same appeal as CTF in most other FPSs: there are distinct roles (defense, offense, flag runner, hassling the enemy, sniping) that you can switch between as the mood takes you but give you a different experience of the game. It injects some variety.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the ranking up system is pretty clever. You're never more than an hours play away from the next rank up (well, up as far as level 18 where I am now anyway), the next reward is always something useful, but they are not so game unbalancing that playing as a n00b I felt utterly helpless. There is an element of that but it's not overwhelming. It's the first time I've played any sort of shooter with this faintly MMORPG aspect and I do think it's a good idea.
Quote: *looks at box, remembers awful singleplayer campaign, looks baffled* I quite enjoyed the single player. I don't care for Infinity Ward's structure, specifically the endless-respawn-until-you-push-past-this-line thing common to all the Call of Duty games. To me it's just too artificial; I'd prefer Half-Life, which is just as linear but does a much better job of hiding the rails. I also found it intensely frustrating at times, where getting past a certain bit required me to essentially learn that I couldn't go this way, it had to be that way, crounching, then sprint past that bit, turn, shoot two guys. I find this rote learning aspect, this bare, exposed game mechanic, jarringly at odds with the very cinematic presentation.
However, it certainly had a number of awesome moments, like crawling through the grass in the sniper level while an armoured platoon walk by only a few feet away, or the end of the middle Eastern campaign (avoiding spoilers), or, well, any number of other bits. On the whole it felt better than the (admittedly limited amount) of the other CoD games, and was probably much better being 5 hours or so in length.
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A shame, I was really enjoying saying 'Sheepeh' too.