This one seems to have slipped under our radar somehow...
The Call of Duty 4 demo (link to Fileplanet) is now available.
The Call of Duty 4 demo (link to Fileplanet) is now available.
Call of Duty 4 Demo
- Thread starter Ronin Storm
- Start date
Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
Caution!
I installed the demo, fired it up, checked out the (very cool) intro, then immediately went into change my settings to up my resolution and refresh rate. The game restarted and then crashed with a DirectX error. "DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error."
I tried updating DirectX from the MS web updater but that didn't fix it.
dxdiag was reporting problems in both DirectDraw and DirectX. Serious stuff.
I have upgraded both my graphics card drivers and downloaded the full August 2007 DirectX redistributable and installed that (it does a more complete job than the web updater).
Now, at least, my computer passes all the dxdiag tests. Now to try CoD4 again...
I installed the demo, fired it up, checked out the (very cool) intro, then immediately went into change my settings to up my resolution and refresh rate. The game restarted and then crashed with a DirectX error. "DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error."
I tried updating DirectX from the MS web updater but that didn't fix it.
dxdiag was reporting problems in both DirectDraw and DirectX. Serious stuff.
I have upgraded both my graphics card drivers and downloaded the full August 2007 DirectX redistributable and installed that (it does a more complete job than the web updater).
Now, at least, my computer passes all the dxdiag tests. Now to try CoD4 again...
DirectX is still okay but the demo is still throwing me out when I try to change the settings from the "safe" mode settings (that specify "Dual graphics cards" as "Yes" by default... uh, no!)
I think this demo is probably heading towards the bin real fast.
I think this demo is probably heading towards the bin real fast.
Right!
Broken DirectX notwithstanding, I can get the game to work now and our friend Xfire was the problem. When the game restarts Xfire must do something weird because it causes the DirectX crash. Turn Xfire off and magically the restart works.
So, play without Xfire for now.
Broken DirectX notwithstanding, I can get the game to work now and our friend Xfire was the problem. When the game restarts Xfire must do something weird because it causes the DirectX crash. Turn Xfire off and magically the restart works.
So, play without Xfire for now.
After all the farting about, the demo was actually pretty good. I'd forgotten that the CoD game ethic was to throw dozens of enemies at you at once and expect you to forge forward (albeit using cover from time to time) blasting as you go. Lots and lots and lots of ammunition and weapons are available at all times. There's just no excuse to not be firing at something (even if it is your own team 
).
Somehow, though, the demo doesn't inspire me to buy the game. Sure, it's pretty and it's all modern looking and sounding. Nothing technically wrong with the game design. Just, uhm, no "wow" factor. The intro movie had plenty of punch and lead me to expecting something more thrilling, I think. Perhaps the demo is a bad place to be looking for that?
).Somehow, though, the demo doesn't inspire me to buy the game. Sure, it's pretty and it's all modern looking and sounding. Nothing technically wrong with the game design. Just, uhm, no "wow" factor. The intro movie had plenty of punch and lead me to expecting something more thrilling, I think. Perhaps the demo is a bad place to be looking for that?
Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
Well, I played a little bit of it there and I find it pretty enjoyable! Essentially, it's just the same underlying game as CoDs 1 and 2, cept with a new look and new enemies to shoot. For me, this is a great thing - more CoD please! - but it's understandable that some people will be put off by the same kind of gameplay over and over again. Anyway, with that in mind, it shares a lot of the same kind of action as the previous titles; swarms and swarms of enemies pouring toward you and loads of tracers flying everywhere, confusion, explosions, high rates of fire, all wrapped up in the arcadey smoothness of the CoD engine.
It resurrects the same health system as CoD2, where if you get rattled by some bullets you run for cover and wait until your health is replenished. When they first used that feature in CoD2 it took me a while to get to grips with it (it makes it quite easy), but given time it really grows on you and keeps you in the firefight for longer. The weapons all have that same elastic crosshair system that the earlier CoD games used, and it works really nicely (one of my favourite aiming systems in FPS games), but this time the tommy guns, PPShs and (my personal favourites) old single-shot bolt-action rifles are replaced with versatile automatic weapons avec underslung 'nade launchers, and tactical semi-auto sniper rifles (Dragunov SVDs!!!). Although the weapons share the same kind of characteristics (and sounds, it seems) with the old ones, they do seem to be a lot more raw and gritty now - a lot of the time I felt the need to expel long bursts of suppression fire just for the hell of it, it's really fun.
Story-wise, I think it's standard anti-terrorist and American interference fare, but the intro video, as Ronin mentioned, is really blistering and makes me want to explore it a little more ... especially the nuclear war aspect, that was nice. The demo itself is set in a Ukranian town, but I think we can expect the story to do a bit of globetrotting as is typical of CoD games - I wouldn't mind a trip to a wintery Russia Which reminds me, it aint Nazis you're popping anymore, it's [strike]Russkis[/strike] (actually, on second thoughts, I think they're rag heads. It's in Ukraine, they should be Russians!)They're pretty neat, but don't seem to share the same in-your-face personality of the Nazis (no more 'Ach nein! Scharfschutze! Granaten!' anymore, the emphasis seems to be mid-long range combat. Barely heard one 'Comrade!') but it's nice to have a change for once.
Graphically, it's really nice. Not quite bleeding-edge immersion, but really slick round the edges and I especially loved the NVGs There're a lot of shimmering heat effects, bullet air warps and big explosions for eye candy, and the 'down the sight' aiming has a really nice depth-of-field fuzzing which I liked. The problem is that it comes at a bit of a price. On optimal settings (around medium/medium-high for me I think) and 1280x1024 resolution I was getting about 110fps indoors, but in big nasty outdoor firefights with large bodycounts and the NVGs on, it dropped as low as 35 (which, by CoD standards, is pretty darn low). It still looked really smooth and nice, but there're a lot of nuances in CoD games that require decent amounts of FPS to take full advantage of (a classic in the previous games was 'strafe-jumping'. With the right FPS and mouse/keyboard movements you could jump nearly twice as far as someone without) so I'm hoping they can rectify that a little in the full game. Also, that was the singleplayer game - frame rates in multiplayer tend to be a little higher again.
I also noticed a couple of little negative points. The first being that the sounds, whilst loud and atmospheric, really haven't come on a lot since CoD2. No subtle clacks and putts like in BF2, it's all generic auto-fire stuff. Not enough bass kick on the sniper rifles, and the mounted machineguns sound a bit dull. Maybe a little nitpicky.
The other is that the weapons REALLY need a lot of work on the recoil balancing. On the M4 I could fire full auto down the scope, standing, and have the rounds hit almost on top of each other, whilst the Dragunov sniper rifle could put down rounds almost as fast as you can click with very little recoil penalty (they certainly need a lot of that now that the snipes are semi-auto).
So, overall, I am really excited about it. Needs a little bit of work still on squeezing out more FPS (CoD games have always been silk-smooth) and the weapons balancing but all in all another potential multiplayer classic.
It resurrects the same health system as CoD2, where if you get rattled by some bullets you run for cover and wait until your health is replenished. When they first used that feature in CoD2 it took me a while to get to grips with it (it makes it quite easy), but given time it really grows on you and keeps you in the firefight for longer. The weapons all have that same elastic crosshair system that the earlier CoD games used, and it works really nicely (one of my favourite aiming systems in FPS games), but this time the tommy guns, PPShs and (my personal favourites) old single-shot bolt-action rifles are replaced with versatile automatic weapons avec underslung 'nade launchers, and tactical semi-auto sniper rifles (Dragunov SVDs!!!). Although the weapons share the same kind of characteristics (and sounds, it seems) with the old ones, they do seem to be a lot more raw and gritty now - a lot of the time I felt the need to expel long bursts of suppression fire just for the hell of it, it's really fun
.Story-wise, I think it's standard anti-terrorist and American interference fare, but the intro video, as Ronin mentioned, is really blistering and makes me want to explore it a little more ... especially the nuclear war aspect, that was nice. The demo itself is set in a Ukranian town, but I think we can expect the story to do a bit of globetrotting as is typical of CoD games - I wouldn't mind a trip to a wintery Russia
Which reminds me, it aint Nazis you're popping anymore, it's [strike]Russkis[/strike] (actually, on second thoughts, I think they're rag heads. It's in Ukraine, they should be Russians!)They're pretty neat, but don't seem to share the same in-your-face personality of the Nazis (no more 'Ach nein! Scharfschutze! Granaten!' anymore, the emphasis seems to be mid-long range combat. Barely heard one 'Comrade!') but it's nice to have a change for once.Graphically, it's really nice. Not quite bleeding-edge immersion, but really slick round the edges and I especially loved the NVGs
There're a lot of shimmering heat effects, bullet air warps and big explosions for eye candy, and the 'down the sight' aiming has a really nice depth-of-field fuzzing which I liked. The problem is that it comes at a bit of a price. On optimal settings (around medium/medium-high for me I think) and 1280x1024 resolution I was getting about 110fps indoors, but in big nasty outdoor firefights with large bodycounts and the NVGs on, it dropped as low as 35 (which, by CoD standards, is pretty darn low). It still looked really smooth and nice, but there're a lot of nuances in CoD games that require decent amounts of FPS to take full advantage of (a classic in the previous games was 'strafe-jumping'. With the right FPS and mouse/keyboard movements you could jump nearly twice as far as someone without) so I'm hoping they can rectify that a little in the full game. Also, that was the singleplayer game - frame rates in multiplayer tend to be a little higher again.I also noticed a couple of little negative points. The first being that the sounds, whilst loud and atmospheric, really haven't come on a lot since CoD2. No subtle clacks and putts like in BF2, it's all generic auto-fire stuff. Not enough bass kick on the sniper rifles, and the mounted machineguns sound a bit dull. Maybe a little nitpicky.
The other is that the weapons REALLY need a lot of work on the recoil balancing. On the M4 I could fire full auto down the scope, standing, and have the rounds hit almost on top of each other, whilst the Dragunov sniper rifle could put down rounds almost as fast as you can click with very little recoil penalty (they certainly need a lot of that now that the snipes are semi-auto).
So, overall, I am really excited about it. Needs a little bit of work still on squeezing out more FPS (CoD games have always been silk-smooth) and the weapons balancing but all in all another potential multiplayer classic.
Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
CoD4 recieves 2 thumbs up from the younger brother.
Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
After a generous helping of multiplayer, I'm here to tell you - buy CoD4! I haven't played any single player yet (unless you count the demo), but only because the multi is so god damned addictive! Where do I start?
Well, firstly, it is just essentially CoD with a lick of paint. The game modes are the same, the design is the same, the health mode is the same, the guns fire the same way, S+D is still the best AND it has Captain Price again complete with big moustache and everything. You've got your various weapon types (though, it's not just 'pick a weapon' anymore, it's 'pick a class', a little bit different, but I'll come on to that), good guys - bad guys and swarms and swarms of targets. The lick of paint I mentioned happens to be in a modern Counter-Terrorist pallette, with M16 rifles, angry Russians, Muslim fanatics and a hell of a load of C4. On the face of it, I think that if you liked/loved either the CoD series or Battlefield 2 I highly recommend that you check out CoD4.
Anyway, the first thing I noticed about CoD4 is that the maps are, well, the best multiplayer maps I've seen for a long time (not since the heady days of Carentan and Railyard on CoD1). You've got your big, wide-open maps (and some of them are pretty big) with plenty of sniping spots and maybe a couple of isolated buildings for flashpoints. You've also got your small, cramped CQB maps with corridors, fences, metal containers and vehicles (which you can now blow up and score kills from). However, there is a broad spectrum of maps in between the two extremes (the two extremes being 'Bloc', a snipers dream, and a loading-bay type level which is teensy) ranging from a bog surrounding a gutted tank (from the demo) to an elaborate mosque with awesome catwalks running round the outside. In short, you'll never be wanting for maps. And the maps themselves look fantastic, some of them saturated with cars, trees, destroyed tanks, fences, houses ... and they're all beautiful. The aforementioned bog level comes to mind here where the place is littered with pools of water (which makes sense, because it's a bog) and the fire off the tank is reflected in the pools, whilst in the background there are explosions going off and anti-aircraft tracer fire stitching the sky. Really immersive.
Now, like I said earlier, it's not a simple case of 'choose your weapon' anymore to suit the map, not just your simple Thomson SMG for Carentan or Springfield rifle for the Brecourt fields, oh no. This time around there is a customisation/unlock implementation (very similar to BF2/2142, of course) which allows you to manipulate your weapons and equipment in the way you see fit. At the very beginning, as a lowly private rank 1, you are given access to 5 pre-set kits of equipment which consist of Assault, Special Ops, Light-Machine Gunner, Demolitions and Sniper. Now, they're pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into detail, however there are 5 additional slots which are left free for you to customise (think along the lines of the CounterStrike Source quick-select kits).
You can set each of these 5 slots to whichever presets you like to suit each map and playstyle.
First, you'll be asked to select a primary weapon ranging from bog standard M16 assault-rifles to powerful semi-auto snipers (but not over-powered to the same extent as CS. You need some skill to handle these ones.) and any unlockable upgrades you want, like red-dot scopes and silencers for instance. Next, you can decide upon your sidearm, initially from just two choices, an M9 beretta and a USP, but you can unlock more later on (a Desert Eagle for instance). After that, you can decide upon which type of special grenades you take with you - flash (makes the enemies screen whiteout), stun (makes the enemies vision swim and makes aiming slower) and the old CoD2 anti-favourite, smokes (smoke grenade, quite useful this time round though).
Now here's a new bit, after selecting grenades you are asked to choose which 3 'perks' you want. These are special abilities which you can select to further improve the effectiveness of your kit in certain situations. For example, if I were to create a sniper kit then I would choose the claymore, improved bullet-penetration and radar cloaking perks which would allow me to defend my position, countersnipe and cloak myself, all 3 being very helpful to a sniper. Other perks include a bigger healthbar, better hip-firing accuracy (useful for SMGs) and improved sprint distances; there are plenty others available for unlocking, of course.
The unlocking system itself is fairly simple, basically the more you fight, the more experience you gain, the more you rank up and the more stuff you unlock. Each 'level' you go up assigns you an unlock automatically, so you can't cherry-pick unlocks yourself here for the ultimate CQB soldier or sniper. Obviously all the best kit is saved til last so you'll need to apply yourself a lot to reach the big guns.
Also resurrected in this game, from CoD: United Offensive, are the in-game bonuses you recieve for getting kill streaks. After a 3-kill streak you can call in a UAV to make enemy positions appear on your radar, and at 5 you can call in an airstrike. Although I haven't gotten one myself yet, I think a 10-kill streak allows you to call a helicopter gunship to any part of the map, which does some serious damage.
Another new feature to CoD4, and one I really like, is bullet penetration. Basically, your bullets can travel through certain solid objects depending on how thick or sturdy they are. Flimsy things like sheets of plywood and corrugated metal will let bullets pass through fairly easily, but more resilient objects like thick brick walls or concrete tank traps might require a high-powered sniper rifle and perhaps the bullet penetration upgrade to really punch through. The penetration element itself never becomes annoying when you get killed through walls, but it encourages people to search for better cover and makes the health system a little more forgiving in the sense that you used to be able, in CoD2, to pop up, shoot, take a couple of hits and duck down to recover fully before popping up again, but in CoD4 if you land a hit and they duck you can try to maximise the damage by spraying their cover. Really good fun
One thing I don't quite like so much about CoD4 is that, due to the nature of the weapons available, a lot of the time you are using automatic fire which really isn't quite so competitive when compared to the bolt-action rifles of the earlier CoD games. The only real single-shot weapons in the game are the proper sniper rifles, and no-one uses them anyway because of their inaccuracy. It's all carbines and autosnipes in the modern age.
Also, because of the unlocking system, there are no guns unique to each side anymore now. It used to be Kar98k and Stg 44 for Germans and Thomsons and BARs for the Yanks, now the British SAS apparently have access to Dragunov sniper rifles and AK74-Us, whilst some dirty terrorists can get their hands on an M249 SAW or an M50 Barret rifle! Still, you tend to find people choosing guns appropriate to their team's nationality for continuity and immersion's sakes.
One more thing, I'm running the game on a dual-core CPU with an X1950XT - and it's a bit messy My younger bro had to do some trickery to force the game to play at 800x600 on ultra-low settings to get his precious 125fps. I put it up to 1024x768 at least and it gets a bit sluggish (and the X1950 gets really noisy!) in big firefights and beauty spots. So, low-end PC users beware is all I'm saying.
Anyway, i'll leave it at that. If you need ant more convincing, I'll say this - the Mini Uzi is an unlockable weapon Nobody can resist that.
EDIT: Here's an IGN review, too.
Well, firstly, it is just essentially CoD with a lick of paint. The game modes are the same, the design is the same, the health mode is the same, the guns fire the same way, S+D is still the best AND it has Captain Price again
complete with big moustache and everything. You've got your various weapon types (though, it's not just 'pick a weapon' anymore, it's 'pick a class', a little bit different, but I'll come on to that), good guys - bad guys and swarms and swarms of targets. The lick of paint I mentioned happens to be in a modern Counter-Terrorist pallette, with M16 rifles, angry Russians, Muslim fanatics and a hell of a load of C4. On the face of it, I think that if you liked/loved either the CoD series or Battlefield 2 I highly recommend that you check out CoD4.Anyway, the first thing I noticed about CoD4 is that the maps are, well, the best multiplayer maps I've seen for a long time (not since the heady days of Carentan and Railyard on CoD1). You've got your big, wide-open maps (and some of them are pretty big) with plenty of sniping spots and maybe a couple of isolated buildings for flashpoints. You've also got your small, cramped CQB maps with corridors, fences, metal containers and vehicles (which you can now blow up and score kills from). However, there is a broad spectrum of maps in between the two extremes (the two extremes being 'Bloc', a snipers dream, and a loading-bay type level which is teensy) ranging from a bog surrounding a gutted tank (from the demo) to an elaborate mosque with awesome catwalks running round the outside. In short, you'll never be wanting for maps. And the maps themselves look fantastic, some of them saturated with cars, trees, destroyed tanks, fences, houses ... and they're all beautiful. The aforementioned bog level comes to mind here where the place is littered with pools of water (which makes sense, because it's a bog) and the fire off the tank is reflected in the pools, whilst in the background there are explosions going off and anti-aircraft tracer fire stitching the sky. Really immersive.
Now, like I said earlier, it's not a simple case of 'choose your weapon' anymore to suit the map, not just your simple Thomson SMG for Carentan or Springfield rifle for the Brecourt fields, oh no. This time around there is a customisation/unlock implementation (very similar to BF2/2142, of course) which allows you to manipulate your weapons and equipment in the way you see fit. At the very beginning, as a lowly private rank 1, you are given access to 5 pre-set kits of equipment which consist of Assault, Special Ops, Light-Machine Gunner, Demolitions and Sniper. Now, they're pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into detail, however there are 5 additional slots which are left free for you to customise (think along the lines of the CounterStrike Source quick-select kits).
You can set each of these 5 slots to whichever presets you like to suit each map and playstyle.
First, you'll be asked to select a primary weapon ranging from bog standard M16 assault-rifles to powerful semi-auto snipers (but not over-powered to the same extent as CS
. You need some skill to handle these ones.) and any unlockable upgrades you want, like red-dot scopes and silencers for instance. Next, you can decide upon your sidearm, initially from just two choices, an M9 beretta and a USP, but you can unlock more later on (a Desert Eagle for instance). After that, you can decide upon which type of special grenades you take with you - flash (makes the enemies screen whiteout), stun (makes the enemies vision swim and makes aiming slower) and the old CoD2 anti-favourite, smokes (smoke grenade, quite useful this time round though). Now here's a new bit, after selecting grenades you are asked to choose which 3 'perks' you want. These are special abilities which you can select to further improve the effectiveness of your kit in certain situations. For example, if I were to create a sniper kit then I would choose the claymore, improved bullet-penetration and radar cloaking perks which would allow me to defend my position, countersnipe and cloak myself, all 3 being very helpful to a sniper. Other perks include a bigger healthbar, better hip-firing accuracy (useful for SMGs) and improved sprint distances; there are plenty others available for unlocking, of course.
The unlocking system itself is fairly simple, basically the more you fight, the more experience you gain, the more you rank up and the more stuff you unlock. Each 'level' you go up assigns you an unlock automatically, so you can't cherry-pick unlocks yourself here for the ultimate CQB soldier or sniper. Obviously all the best kit is saved til last so you'll need to apply yourself a lot to reach the big guns.
Also resurrected in this game, from CoD: United Offensive, are the in-game bonuses you recieve for getting kill streaks. After a 3-kill streak you can call in a UAV to make enemy positions appear on your radar, and at 5 you can call in an airstrike. Although I haven't gotten one myself yet, I think a 10-kill streak allows you to call a helicopter gunship to any part of the map, which does some serious damage.
Another new feature to CoD4, and one I really like, is bullet penetration. Basically, your bullets can travel through certain solid objects depending on how thick or sturdy they are. Flimsy things like sheets of plywood and corrugated metal will let bullets pass through fairly easily, but more resilient objects like thick brick walls or concrete tank traps might require a high-powered sniper rifle and perhaps the bullet penetration upgrade to really punch through. The penetration element itself never becomes annoying when you get killed through walls, but it encourages people to search for better cover and makes the health system a little more forgiving in the sense that you used to be able, in CoD2, to pop up, shoot, take a couple of hits and duck down to recover fully before popping up again, but in CoD4 if you land a hit and they duck you can try to maximise the damage by spraying their cover. Really good fun
One thing I don't quite like so much about CoD4 is that, due to the nature of the weapons available, a lot of the time you are using automatic fire which really isn't quite so competitive when compared to the bolt-action rifles of the earlier CoD games. The only real single-shot weapons in the game are the proper sniper rifles, and no-one uses them anyway because of their inaccuracy. It's all carbines and autosnipes in the modern age.
Also, because of the unlocking system, there are no guns unique to each side anymore now. It used to be Kar98k and Stg 44 for Germans and Thomsons and BARs for the Yanks, now the British SAS apparently have access to Dragunov sniper rifles and AK74-Us, whilst some dirty terrorists can get their hands on an M249 SAW or an M50 Barret rifle! Still, you tend to find people choosing guns appropriate to their team's nationality for continuity and immersion's sakes.
One more thing, I'm running the game on a dual-core CPU with an X1950XT - and it's a bit messy
My younger bro had to do some trickery to force the game to play at 800x600 on ultra-low settings to get his precious 125fps. I put it up to 1024x768 at least and it gets a bit sluggish (and the X1950 gets really noisy!) in big firefights and beauty spots. So, low-end PC users beware is all I'm saying.Anyway, i'll leave it at that. If you need ant more convincing, I'll say this - the Mini Uzi is an unlockable weapon
Nobody can resist that.EDIT: Here's an IGN review, too.
Ki!ler-Mk1
Active Member
When is called of duty 3 coming out?
Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
It came out on console only, I've got it for the X360 and it's really good.
Nanor
Well-Known Member
Well considering 4 comes after 3 would it not lead you to believe 3 is already out? You could even check google if you really wanted to know.