E3 2007 Preview
The Call of Duty series has
been well founded in the World War II theater of operations through three major
franchise releases. That is about to change.
Call of Duty 4: Modern
Warfare is something that Infinity Ward has “been working on for a long time.”
Activision showed it off at a Pr-E3 media event in Santa Monica recently and GameZone’s Steven Hopper also had a chance to
see the game.
The game involves global
conflict with the villain being a Russian ultra-nationalist. The gameplay itself
promises to be challenging as players take on a variety of roles, from soldier
to manning a machinegun on a Cobra helicopter to clandestine operations.
CoD has always been a very
accessible game and that won’t change with Modern Warfare. The game will have
unlockables and one of those is the create-a-class, giving players the freedom
to create a character from the ground up.
“We’re very excited about
what we are doing with multiplayer,” an Infinity Ward rep stated. “Multiplayer
will have depth. We feel it (CoD 4) is one of the best multiplayer first-person
shooters to come out this year.”
The game has two main story
arcs and while it would be easy to say that this is a brand new approach to the
franchise, that would be wrong. The adage about ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it’ applies here with CoD4 having some classic CoD game mechanics as well as
some new.
Players can use night vision
and thermal targeting in the game, and while it has different looks, the overall
graphical quality of the game is very high.
CoD4 was merely a
demonstration at the event, but from the way this is shaping up, it looks to be
a worthy successor to the vaunted franchise.
