Call of Duty 4 Gripes

[vnf4ultra]

Call of Duty 4 is a pretty good game, and has a better storyline than most fps games, but some things about Call of Duty 4 really annoy me. These are the things I found to be very annoying about the game.

-How linear it is (walk down this pathway, go through this door...)
-How if you replay a checkpoint the same enemies come from the same place and do exactly the same thing.
-How enemies in some buildings/areas will just infinitely re-spawn if killed.
-How enemies spawn on "trigger points." Walk through a door, enemy spawns and attacks you, when he was not in the room before you walked in.
-The whole long cutscreen/credits where you're just executed anyway.
-The part where your aircraft goes down, and you can barely move/see, and then you finally die after a few minutes(which is apparently the goal, because the game progresses once you die).
-How hard it is on max difficulty.
-And finally, the auto-aiming unmanned machine guns really make me mad (click to see a video of what I mean.) If there was a gunner, they could be stopped, but they can't be stopped.

I don't think the game deserves all the "rave reviews" it's gotten, I'd say it's more "average." Crysis is definitely in a different league and much better IMO. Maybe these "annoyances" don't bother other people, but as a very detail oriented person, they tick me off. If the game is designed to be realistic, it shouldn't have enemies spawn on you and shouldn't have guns shooting by themselves.

 

[samjohnson]

Oh dang that kinda turned me off to it a little. After playing the demo of COD4 I kinda liked it better than crysis but after hearing what you had to say I don't know. I guess I will wait till I get them both to decide. Though the online play of COD4 has to be pretty sweet. Ya that auto machine gun thing is really really dumb. I don't know what the people where thinking when they came up with that... they must have been on crack or somthing??
I have been shooting at those things every time I played the demo... no wonder I couldn't kill em!

 

[pcnthuziast]

Something that bugged me that wasn't mentioned is how rare it is for friendly NPCs to actually kill enemies... don't get me wrong I didn't want them to takeover, but if I had to guess I'd say I do about 90-95% of the killing! As for those "auto guns" I didn't realize they weren't manned, but somehow instinct told me not to bother shooting at them which I almost never did. On normal I beat the game in 1 sitting 1st try and only died about 4-5 times(2-3 times by grenade and 2-3 times by exploding cars, never by enemy gunfire).

 

[kirock]

Ya that auto machine gun thing is really really dumb. I don't know what the people where thinking when they came up with that

Well HL2-EP2 has an auto machine gun "level" in it. You eventually get close enough to nade it though.

 

[pcnthuziast]

The "autoguns" in COD4 are an entirely different matter as they are meant to be percieved as manned guns. You either didn't watch the video clip in the 1st post or... nevermind (~resisting the urge to flame~)!

 

[k.jacko]

Hmmm..... as with samjohnson, i too only played the demo and thought it was excellent. But if what you say is true, then thats crazy! Because what separated CoD from MoH were the very things you point out. MoH did suffer all those points, with enemies just appearing before your eyes at trigger points and unrealistic AI, etc. The earlier CoD's were written much better than that and didn't have the same problems, or if they did, they were far less obvious.
Its a shame that the quality may have done an about turn, because i thought MoH Airborne was fantastic, so was hoping for great things from CoD4. Maybe not, now!
Dang-nabbit!

 

[vnf4ultra]

Something that bugged me that wasn't mentioned is how rare it is for friendly NPCs to actually kill enemies... don't get me wrong I didn't want them to takeover, but if I had to guess I'd say I do about 90-95% of the killing! As for those "auto guns" I didn't realize they weren't manned, but somehow instinct told me not to bother shooting at them which I almost never did. On normal I beat the game in 1 sitting 1st try and only died about 4-5 times(2-3 times by grenade and 2-3 times by exploding cars, never by enemy gunfire).

I agree on that point. I've thought to myself while playing..."what the heck is he doing...why is he not shooting." At times it seems as if you single-handedly have to beat the enemies even if you have "help" from other team mates.

 

[kirock]

The "autoguns" in COD4 are an entirely different matter as they are meant to be percieved as manned guns. You either didn't watch the video clip in the 1st post or... nevermind (~resisting the urge to flame~)!

Hmmm? I DID watch the clip, thus my comment about being able to nade the auto machine gun. In the clip it doesn't appear nading them would be possible or even if the game allows them to be naded (i.e destroyed).

My point was it's NOT unheard of in an FPS game to have an auto gun of some sort and maybe Infinity Ward got the idea from games like HL2.

Well I haven't played COD4 yet, but I do own COD2 and I saw in that alot of what vnf4ultra is talking about here in COD4.
ie. infinite enemies spawning if you just stay in one spot. (I think that's I.W's attempt to keep you moving and keep the game fast paced)
i.e. the sense on linear progression (go here and only here, then here ..etc.)
I'm not sure I recall enemies spawning at trigger points, but that's been done since Doom, so I might just have not noticed.

Anyhow I really liked COD2 and have heard almost nothing but good things about COD4 until I read this thread. I think I'll still buy it (after my new build early in the new year), but thanks for the heads-up vnf4ultra.

Cheers.

 

[Myzz617]

yes i agree kirock, COD4 is great especially the Online part is the best. The Jan issue of MaxPC declares the MMO part of the franchise that really deserves some recognition. A must own game. Love the Level where your the ariel bomber

 

[link590o]

the other call of duty games had the exact same problems that you described above.

i'm an avid call of duty 2 fan, and i've done the campaign so many times i know exactly where the krauts are every time. i managed to pull some weird spawning cancellations. if i do certain parts too fast, i can reach an area where krauts are supposed to spawn, but because i reached the area too early, they never did.

and in call of duty 2, the krauts there ALSO spawn in the same place every time.

that being the case, there isn't really much that was different in COD4.

as a matter of fact, i'd like to suggest you change your gripe to "that problem still hasn't been fixed". and the only other new problems you suggested were the autoguns and infinte spawn.

aside from that, every other call of duty game has had a very very linear sort of story line. and to advance you HAVE to do certain things first. so i wouldn't necessarily complain too loudly about it unless, again, you suggest it be changed rather than suggest its a new problem.

everything else is a gripe with the story line.

 

[vnf4ultra]

By no means am I saying the game can't be fun or that a person shouldn't buy it, but considering how people were saying it was "the best game ever" and "better than crysis" I had expectations that weren't met. I think it was worth the $30 I paid for it. I'll repeat what I said before, it's an "average" game. Not really better than other games I've played, but also not really worse than others.

As a side note, the dog attack aspect is a cool new idea for a fps game...even if it does make it a bit harder.

 

[link590o]

hm...perhaps that sounded more malicious than it was meant to...

well..just for the record, that wasn't really an attack. more of a suggestion. i'm just sayin...i mean...the other games had similar problems. that's it.

you're probably right. it'd be right on par with cod2. just...modernized. cod2 was pretty damn good, so it's hard to top it really. cod4 was pretty much cod2 with a few aforementioned differences.

i think that the only real way to top either cod2 or cod4 would be to...as you suggested, get rid of that retarded autogun feature, have enemies spawn more sporadically and not just when you enter a given room, and not have infinite enemies. if you kill say 20 or 30 people, that would be just about all in that given area. so there has to be a cap.

and perhaps a slightly less linear storyline would be nice. some freedom in what you can do would be appreciated. for instance, doing one thing, and causing it to skip a mission altogether, or bringing in a new mission as a result of your actions.

and having your character die?

that was just....no. BAD IW!! BAD! in a call of duty game, your character is superman. kill them off, and you'll just upset the player. perhaps they were trying to do something new and shocking. but that was a bit retarded.

and relying on death to advance the story line?

thats a bit of a turn off as well.

what i'm saying shouldn't be new to you. i'm just venting for the most part and suggesting possible changes for COD5 when they make it.

 

[samjohnson]

This is all very interesting, I will still buy the game though.
I don't pay attention to small details very much so I bet I won't even notice all the little weird things they have in there. Still it was a good game. I can't wait till I get that and crysis.

 

[be_patient]

-The part where your aircraft goes down, and you can barely move/see, and then you finally die after a few minutes(which is apparently the goal, because the game progresses once you die).

This scene is wicked. I did not notice the first time but you can slowly move out of the chopper and see the actual nuclear explosion. Check it out man. It looks absolutely wicked!

 

[jtickner1]

Those guns aren't auto, the people just had invisibilty cloaks

I'm under the same impression with HL 2. It got good reviews basically everywhere, but it's a pretty lame game i reckon. The vehicle bits are so stupid and ****. Drive for a few seconds STOP do a gay puzzle, drive for a few seconds STOP, do another puzzle and so on. But CoD 4 is a good game although those guns are pretty lame

 

[Myzz617]

I have not completed it yet. The Nuclear scene tho is awesome i must say. I did climb out of the chopper and see it all for myself, great Scene.

 

[vnf4ultra]

I climbed out of the chopper but I don't remember seeing anything spectacular. Hmm...maybe I was looking the wrong direction.

 

[themainlegend]

To be honest after reading all of this topic i feel abit annoyed. All everyone seems to do on here is go on about the problems with games instead of praising them. You pay around £30 for a game which to be fair is nothing. I've got Crysis, Call Of Duty 4, Gears Of War and they were all awesome. Yeah the games are not perfect to the last little detail but look how far they have come over the past few years. Stop moaning about them or go buy a 360. Simple as that mate.

 

[be_patient]

^^ i agree with you... but how would buying a 360 stop people from complaining.

Also note that every review i have read about those 3 games you listed gives them nothing but praise. It is good to see some negatives get thrown about every once in a while.

 

[link590o]

if we started praising it a crap ton, all we'd be doing is writing a review...and there are thousands of them already. besides. the whole thread was supposed to be about the gripes. this thread was aimed at showing the problems with the game and perhaps even to offer a constructive idea to how it could be fixed in future games.

we're not the only ones reading this. for all we know, there's an Infinity Ward member reading these posts looking for ideas.

but anyway...as much as i wish these problems could be fixed, i doubt they will be. if the company wants its market share, they have to release their product in a timely fashion and leave as few bugs as possible in the process. not every little detail is going to get sorted out. even though i think they have the money and the manpower to fix these little details, i highly doubt they will. but it's nice to wish and hope.

i personally think it would be great if...and this is based off my earlier post...i think it would be great if they carefully designed each mission with the following specifics in mind:

have the game function somewhat in realtime. y'know how you go sequentially through various missions? you go to the next one under the impression that there are already people there, fighting.

have the game keep track of various details like that. start off each map with a given number of people, and have the outcomes vary depending on your actions in the game.

when you enter a specific mission in a given area, have all the enemies start off immediately, and have a limited number of them. and have their movement patterns be randomized, but tactical in some way shape or form if you can understand what i mean.

like say the group spawns...40 men. just having them run around randomly to different places each time isn't enough. it has to be coordinated so that they still have a tactical setup. so in one random spawn type, they would surround and block off different escape routes and funnel you into a killzone. in another spawn, they would line the streets with machine guns, take up positions in apartments, and try to have some sniper warfare going on.

see what i'm saying?

in this way, they never show up in the same spot each time, and it forces the player to think on their feet.

and as i said, have a limited number of people. once you kill all of them within a given area, don't have anymore of them spawn. because technically you've now won the battle.

and as you fight, if you complete the mission in a different way, then your friends fighting a battle many miles away might have a different outcome. like say you capture a radio transmitter and you can radio in bombing coordinates. and if you don't capture it and instead complete a different objective, then the bombing won't take place and your friends might get killed and lose.

that's the sort of realtime aspect i'd like to see, and that's the kind of enemy movement and manpower limit i'd like to see.

no infinite enemies, no unmanned guns, no constant respawns in the same areas.

constantly changing, not quite as linear a story line, and probably overall much more enjoyable.

 

[vnf4ultra]

That would be a really sweet game if someone could pull it off. I'd buy it for sure! I do believe that the goal is to make the games more realistic...and making it more open-ended and less predictable is a good thing.

 

[link590o]

here's the challenge. have it come down to maybe 2 or 3 endings even WITH all that unpredictability.

 

[Myzz617]

Well I think based upon the players actions should determine the sequential order of the missions you are deployed in. Kinda inter-personal thing like Splinter cell and Strategical like C&C but none of that base buidin crap..I think I get the Jist of what you talking about.

Well the Nuke Scene was kinda Different like i was moving and it was so slow...IDK mayb it my T.V or cuz my brain cells get depleted when I game lol..But in all aspects nothing is perfect and people are goin to talk about the issues that they would like improved. I just wish I cud actually make time to beat these damn games..They seem no lose my interest and i end up spending another $60.

 

[link590o]

no game will ever be perfect, i understand that much. but at least fix the major problems. the things we mentioned weren't fixed in ANY of the games. they were in every single game. the least they could do is fix those details until we find the next major problem. in which case we'll complain about it for a few games and then have them fix it again.

 

[samjohnson]

If they made a game like link was describing it would be a good day!
That would make for an awesome game. But ya they will never take the time to fix all the little issues that makes it annoying to play. But still COD4, Crysis, etc etc, they are still some awesome games to play. I am looking forward to buying them.