Captain Price you sexy man, you.
It's no suprise to me when I read and hear about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's crazy sucess. Even with the smallest amount of advertising, the beta caused quite a stir between gamers. The extremely high demand when the game first game first came out and the ability to brag about being the only game that has been able to over take Halo3 on XboxLive showed this. I will admit though, when I first played the Call of Duty series it didn't sparked any of my interest -- COD4 reinvented the FPS for me. It's safe to say that the Call of Duty is a series that is consistently changing FPS's and how they are played, and the fourth installment has completely changed what we can expect in a FPS.
Now the "power" of COD4 is it's not limited to the 360, but for the sake of this write up I'm going to focus on the 360 version. Microsoft was quoted a while back that Halo3 was going to help them sell consoles, it did just that -- sold consoles. With Halo3 everyone knew what to expect, it finished a story driven trilogy and served its purpose in the grand scheme of things. As a fellow gamer told me, COD4 carries a sense of realism that Halo3 doesn't. Don't get me wrong, This article isn't here to bash Halo3 -- I'm merely trying to prove a point. I'm not a numbers person so you can't actually hold an debate with me on soley numbers, Halo3 may have sold alot of games and alot of consoles, but the majority of those gamers already owned or planned on owning the console. Real changes are the ones that aren't expected, and COD4's sucess came out of left field.
Call of Duty 4, compared to Microsoft's overly advertised baby stood well above from the online gameplay, graphics and over all gameplay. One thing that has always bothered me about most FPS's is the power ratio of weapons. I felt it was always a battle over the biggest best weapons, in COD4 I was able to always find a weapon I liked and just stick with it. All of that, and COD4 resembles closely what's happening currently in the world. As much as we all want to be the brave macho men saving the hot large breasted women from the evil Zoltar(Designers:The idea for your next game right there), there are just more fans of realism than science fiction. Now off of the cod4vshalo3 -- because that's not what this is about.
I've been selling video games since I was 16 at GameStop and I'm currently the manager of a Hybrid-Gaming RadioShack store. I've seen some huge wins and some horrible flops in the past 3 years. I work in a town with an extremely large military base, and I've seen more 360's leave our stores with the sole purpose of COD4 than I've honestly ever seen with any other game. I ask when they're about to leave if there are any other games they're looking forward to playing, and the answer is always along the lines of "I've been playing COD4 with friends. I'm hooked. That's it." The majority of games typically have a love-hate relationship, COD4 has a solid level of love across the board-- and that's why its' unexpectedly selling consoles. Can we see a Call of Duty 4 Limited Edition Console in the near future?
Even if it isn't actually helping to sell consoles, it's just helping to create a stronger game lineup on the 360. (Gears of War, Bioshock, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, and the new edition? Call of Duty 4.)
EXTRA I'll be on COD4 everyday after 8PM EST this week. gamertag bunnyxablaze
