Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (DS)

Are you happy to see me, or is that a cinematic spectacle in your pocket?
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 2 Comments | Page 2 of 2

You sometimes get friendlies tagging along with you, but you're mostly solo. The action is occasionally put on hold for bomb disarming and hacking mini-games. Disarming bombs is a matter of quickly tracing wires. Hacking is a tile game with pipe sections that will reveal a four-digit code, which you then tap into a number pad. The number pad is an entirely superfluous step, but it's a nice touch that shows a little love for the DS' touchpad.

On precious few occasions, the game will attempt something resembling spectacle. An air strike takes out a bridge; a water tower topples onto a truck; a train plummets into a canyon; or an ICBM roars out of an underground silo. These are efforts towards Call of Duty's cinematic scripting, but they don't really work. It's like watching a school play with kindergarteners and cardboard backdrops. You're reaction might be "Aw, look how cute," but unless that's your kid up there, the whole thing seems silly and slightly precious. That's probably not the effect n-Space was going for.

Blame it on the DS. You could say the little system barely even does 3-D -- at least not what you consider 3-D these days. The low polygon count and the low resolution textures make the PSP look like a next-gen marvel of holodeck-level photorealism. DS shooters like Bionicle Heroes and Metroid Prime: Hunters work around this with stylized graphics and varied gameplay, but the Call of Duty formula doesn't lend itself to that approach. Instead, it's stuck imitating its bigger brothers.

Metroid on the DS also shows up Call of Duty 4 by demonstrating that the little system is perfectly capable of multiplayer support over the Internet, as well as bot matches against the artificial intelligence. But you get neither in Call of Duty 4. There are a good variety of game types for up to four players locally, and the weapon choice adds a bit of tactical finesse missing from the single-player game. There's an option to set up games for other players who don't own Call of Duty 4, but you're limited to team deathmatch on only two maps. On the whole, the multiplayer support is a disappointing missed opportunity.

It's a shame the single-player can't take up the slack. The storyline is too short, and there's no incentive to replay it. The game would have benefited from some sort of achievements, or even something simple like high scores or hidden collectibles. Instead, it's a stripped down fire-and-forget experience, demonstrating that if you want to develop for the Nintendo DS, you can't just treat it like any other system. Minus its spectacle, this Call of Duty turns out to be a disappointing shooter with very little to recommend it.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.