Call of Duty 4

1 Overview

Call of Duty 4 is a game that falls into the category of First Person Shooter (FPS). When you start the game you can choose an offline campaign which follows a story. Most people aren't playing this game because of it's single player aspects so I will mostly focus on the Multiplayer aspects.  While online you have to first join a game, one thing I love about CoD 4 is that it automatically plugs people together who are all looking for a game all into one bunch so the Matchmaking is very quick. Once the game starts you have weapons and perks all setup for your specific preference and play style. We will come back to those later. Their are two different teams, OpFor, and Marines. The many different Game Types of Call of duty 4 help with this game not getting old; well focus on one called Team Deathmatch. Basically it is the OpFor vs. the Marines, and each kill gives 10 points along with a UAV, Air-strike, and a Attack Helicopter you can call. Once one team gets 750 points the game is over. The maps offer many area's to position yourself for your own

 advantage, also knowing the game also can help out in many situations.

Key Idea #1: Perks

Now these you see are called perk's. Each player gets to choose one of each color as a perk they 

want to use, so three total. These things called perk's give your soldier a Heightened skill, so lets take Stopping Power for example. Well take one from each row and I will describe what they can do. Stopping power is a red perk that makes your bullets do double the damage as 

they normally would. The next one we will choose is Last Stand from the yellow row. When you get shot dead with this perk you don't die right away, you fall over and you have about fifteen seconds to use your pistol to try to kill who killed you and maybe some others if you are lucky. The last one is the Munitions perk, you can choose different perk's that can give you increased Frag Grenades, Claymores, RPGs (for helicopters) etc. Now all of these perks aren't unlocked right away you have to work your way through the ranks which comes from winning matches and getting kills and what not. Many things come from being unlocked in this game which makes it a great game of customization for most.

Key Idea #2: Weapon's

In Call of Duty 4 the selection of weapons is a very decent sized amount. All weapons you can choose from come from ranking up. The weapons you receive have many customizable features. Most guns can upgrade with some basic things, a Red Dot Sight, an ACOG scope, a mountable grenade launcher, or a Silencer. These customizations also work very closely with the games 

perks and I will explain how. If you chose the perks UAV jammer (You do not show up on radar), Dead Silence (You do not make noise while walking) and then a Silencer on the end of your weapons, you will be off of the radar no matter what. You can do this with many other perks and weapon customizations. The point being is that the weapons that they have a selection from is so vast that their is no way someone could go through the multiplayer game and not fine a weapon that they enjoyed using. I have four different set ups I use. They are all for different play styles I use and if one doesn't work I switch to another one. What makes COD 4 such a successful game is the customization in all aspects, you can unlock skin colors for your guns which doesn't sound like much but it does add in customization for the hardcore COD fans like myself. All in all it is the small customizations in COD that makes the actual game itself so big on a competitive game standards. It out-reaches games like Halo 3 and Counter-Strike by so many things. And soon we will all have COD 4:2 which add much more customization. I will be doing a review of that when it comes out.

Bioshock

One of the great reasons for Bioshock's success was how it put you in awe when you first looked at the city after traveling down from the crashed airplane. You see a massive array of towers and buildings underwater that has never been seen before by your character ( or so you think ). The city of Rapture was supposed to be a Utopian society created by a man named Andrew Ryan. What ryan was trying to do was to create a society where everyone was allowed to spoil themselves and reap the reward of life itself. The definition of Rapture is an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion, which is what Andrew Ryan was trying to create with his city. Although his plan was to make an ultimate city, he ended up making a place where chaos runs free, and right around the corner could be some junkies that would love to kill you. All in all the game based in the city of Rapture gives off an eery perspective and feeling while playing through it.

Although the city and story do make the game a work of art, their are a few more details for myself that make this game something more than a simple First Person Shooter. When you start the game you are introduced to something called Plasmids. These are special powers that allow you to do certain things. You can get fireballs that you can shoot out of your hands, or electricity to shock enemies in water, or something that allows you to swing harder with a melee weapon. This type of character customization allows a deeper and more intricate playing scenario for anyone. It doesn't just send you through the game doing the same old stuff but instead you can customize your character with certain plasmids to make your trip through Rapture an easier time, or more entertaining at that. I believe that having this amount of customization; although small it still gives depth and personality to the game.

Last but not least, we have the weapons customization. Their are several weapons in Bioshock all of which are customizable, excluding the ratchet. You find weapon upgrade machines through out Rapture, they are only good for one time use, but they upgrade the weapons you have to be more powerful and will eventually help you when you start fighting harder and harder enemies. This is also another nice little piece of customization which I think puts a little more kick in the game. You can play it different ways using different customized weapons and it doesn't get boring. Bioshock two was a success because of three basic things, The story, the setting, and the customization. When Bioshock 2 hits stores any fan of Bioshock will be crossing their fingers for more customization and an even deeper and captivating story but only time will tell.