The single player campaign is stunning, cinematic action from start to finish. As is traditionally the case with Call of Duty the single player campaign can be comfortably completed in a few hours but they are amongst the most action packed you’ll spend gaming. Working for the unpleasant General Shepherd you’ll take on five different roles and join ops in Afghanistan, Rio, Washington and Siberia. War has broken out thanks to a nasty Russian nutjob and you have to finish it and unravel the conspiracy behind it. The story is well handled but completely secondary to the action.
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The gameplay is standard first-person shooter stuff. Strafe and shoot, cover the angles, hold right mouse to aim and left mouse to fire. The controls and mechanics of
FPS games have been incrementally improved over the years and they work perfectly here. The linear environments feel anything but thanks to some clever level design. The enemy AI are reasonably intelligent and they will take cover and even throw back grenades on occasion. The real effect of ramping up the difficulty is higher numbers rather than smarter play but some of the missions are definitely challenging.
The campaign is stunningly cinematic with superb direction, visual effects and animation. It is very much like taking part in an epic action movie. Once you’ve completed the missions you unlock Special Ops which offers a series of one off tests: clear a favella, defend a spot in a map or rush through a sequence as fast as possible. You can earn 1, 2 or 3 stars in each challenge and as you complete them you unlock more. These challenges distill the fun gameplay and offer some excellent replay value for single player fans finished with the main campaign.
The gameplay is really a joy. It feels fluid and exciting. You don’t often control vehicles directly: though there is a memorable sequence where you have to escape on a snow mobile, more often you are in the gunning position and zoom through on rails. The exhaustive list of available weaponry is awesome. The usual suspects are all present and correct but the variation in shotguns, sniper rifles, RPGs, pistols and even machine guns means you’ll be able to find something suited to you. Since ammunition is limited you’ll likely change guns frequently as you pick up a fresh one from one of the corpses littering the streets and you often find weapon caches.
