Finally finished COD4’s campaign mode on the Xbox last night. I thought I was up to the challenge of going through it on Veteran difficulty, and it turned out I was. It wasn’t difficult, it was severe punishment. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game. From the intro boat scene to putting the final bullet in the terrorist leader, it was an amazing, cinematic experience. It’s extremely linear, to be more precise it’s an FPS on a rail. A very, very beautiful rail.
I think the hardest difficulty exposes the (few) weak points in the game’s design. The most obvious one is the few places where there is infinite respawns of enemies in combination with the pretty obvious “tripwire” triggering of new waves of enemies. I thought this was pretty obvious fault in COD3 (nothing more awesome than watching a NPC pop into existence), which was considered a low point in the franchise. It’s not too noticeable on default difficulty, which I’m guessing Joe Gamer will be playing on, since you would move through levels fairly consistently, minimizing the number of respawned waves of enemies.
The tripwire triggering of infinite waves in a few places in combination with the increased difficulty (you only take 2-3 shots before dieing in Veteran, plus everyone has superhuman sharpshooting skills) makes it some of these sections incredibly tough. In a couple cases I think it came down to luck more than anything that allowed me to survive. Add the sometimes microscopic Checkpoint triggering, you can make your way pretty far into a firefight and completely miss checkpoints.
On the flip side, I can also easily argue against the above. With percise enough timing between waves, you could make it through the infinite respawn area with quick enough shooting and sprinting to the next checkpoint. The only problem with that is you aren’t really taking a moment to really admire the world that Infinity Ward built.
All things considered, it is a well crafted experience, and I’m saying that after hours of swearing at the TV after dieing for the 50th time in the same place. Now, tonight, I subject myself to the hell that is known as the Epilogue mission on Veteran.