- The Chevy Chase Show
- Cheese curds left on dashboard of car on hot summer day
- Ford Edsel
- Crystal Pepsi
- German invasion of France, 1940
- Cop Rock
- Julia Ormond’s career
- Tiger’s Game.com
- Flavor in average piece of chewing gum
- New Coke
Difficulty settings aside (I went through on Normal) I can’t recall the last time I played a game so fricking short. The rumors are true – you can blow through this in about 6 hours. I find it strange this isn’t taken more into account in all the sky-high ratings it’s been getting – this is the first time in quite a while where I’ve felt like I didn’t get my 50 bucks worth (PC).
I don’t care how good the multiplayer is, or how good the [albeit short] action is – whatever happened to a good 15-20 hour FPS? You know, like Medal of Honor Allied Assault, or the first Call of Duty? It’s kind of sad that either of the Half-Life 2 episodes takes as long or longer than this full retail game.
Let’s hope this isn’t a trend – short single player that is “excused” by having really good online. I wouldn’t even count that – anyone that doesn’t play with every free minute of their time will get “outclassed” by those who do and subsequently get their asses kicked = no fun. Discuss below!
number is freaking classic.
yeah you would think they added the single player action as an after thought to the online content.
opps number 5
When games are made only for online content they are bound for a fate of a coaster. Give me quality. Give me something with enough depth that I can respect it enough to remember it. Give me a game… ~Sensei~
I was standing in Best Buy today debating if I should wait one more day for Assassin’s Creed or buy COD4.
Obviously I made a better choice.
I don’t know about that. Assassins Creed looks like it would get incredibly dull and boring after a few hours, the kind of boring like endlessly shooting out light bulbs in The Darkness.
Mass Effect comes out next week anyway, no time for Assassins Creed.
Eyegasmic space RPG FTW!!
Try playing it on hard – you will find it’s a much more satisfying and challenging game.
LMAO so true!
i love you ben but you are so wrong on this one. i loved the single player campaign even though it could be beat in one sitting. I beat it in 2 days. the multiplayer is just so much fun it would be worth the 60 bucks just for it. i for one enjoy it more than halo 3.
COD4 sucked. But then again I only played it on the 360 and I think all FPS on consoles suck (im a PC/Wii FPSer more on the PC side). Just I played this game already and it was called BF2. Couldn’t get into the campaign at all.
There is something about WWII video games that will all ways be in my heart. Viva la BF42!
I’m not sure whether to get it on PC or 360. My PC can handle it, but most of my friends are on Live. Oh, and what’s your Steam name, Ben?
Excuse me, but what is said “Steam name” if you may…
Hey I beat COD1 on Veteran, but only after I’d gotten a solid week of time on the main game on Hardened. I don’t think you should have to set a game to frustrating difficulty levels to get a longer playtime out of it.
I think my Steam name is ben_heck (some a-hole took “benheck”) but I haven’t played TF2 much at all, sorry.
Yeah man I gotta toatally agree i wish games had deeper single player…. I dont got live ( i do have a 360 though) so I NEED deep single player…. halo 3 was a little short tooo…. AWSOME game though!!!
“I can’t recall the last time I played a game so fricking short”
What, you didn’t play portal?
As the saying goes… “Now I know how my girlfriend feels.”
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/12/02
HEY Portal only costs $20 (less in Orange Box) and had companion cubes.
Considering each HL2 episode also cost $20, Portal might seem short. But of course each HL2 episode was about as long as COD4, at less than half the cost!
I have been getting a bit of online use out of COD4, but again, most nights I’d rather play Oblivion.
i played it on hardened and beat it in 9 hours, the only “frustratingly difficult” part was the very end of
“One shot,One Kill”… sorry but the Call of duty single player in my opinion was some of the best i have ever seen, they damn near perfected the genre. i strongly disagree.
P.S. I own assassins creed and COD 4, assassins is great, but it can get a little repetitive and doesn’t have much replay value. where as COD 4 has Multiplayer(split screen + LIVE), and arcade mode which allows you to replay any mission on any difficulty for points which are posted in the leader boards.
It’s a sad truth, the fact is game developers have been getting away with this now for quite awhile. I’m sorry, I know I’m probably not the most hardcore of gamers out there, not by a long shot, but I don’t have all the time or the energy in the world to sit through online Halo battles just to get my rank up so I can stretch out the replayability of the game. I’m a firm believer in what developers like Bethesda have done with their Oblivion title, by adding more content online to extend the replay of their title. Most FPS out there, however, add new maps. I’d like to see chapters or something added. Whatever, not enough for me to gripe about
You guys can comlain I paid £50 for COD4 ($100)!! Games are so cheap in the US in comparison.
Finished it in about 5.5 hrs, now working through veteran, which to be honest is so hard in parts that it’s more luck than skill that’s getting me any progress. Still loved the single player game but it should have been twice the length.
I agree the campaign is a little short. But I believe I read a interview somewhere with IW that they just ran out of space on the disk, already pushing the game to 360’s graphical limits. Just playing this game sets a standard for graphics and gameplay in a game. 60 fps is phenominal. After Playing this and going back to games like Rainbow six vegas and Graw2 those games just aren’t the same.
I agree that the COD4 single player is way too short and like you said, I don’t have the free time to get to the standard required in multiplayer to avoid every 14yo kid fragging me every time I spawn. The HL2 episodes were too short too.
The best value for money I’ve had this year was Bioshock. Okay there’s no multiplayer, but the single player really does seem to go on forever and it’s very pretty.
As for Portal, I never get tired of replaying it and it’s perfect for adding maps to. I hope they seriously consider Portal 2.
why the f**k would you play it on normal, go onto veteran if you thought it was easy.
Well I’d agree that it’s very short, but I must say that they have made a lot of varied and memorable levels, and it’s better than a lot of repetitive levels. But ofc I also would’ve liked some more play time, but still my first reaction when I was done, was “damn, this is f*cking cool”.
there are so many unique levels (and it looks soo good, even on my older pc). and some very fun moments (I once hit a guy in the head with a grenade and he fell down or something. 😛 )
Ah, Julia Ormond. She was a hottie.
LMAO!
This game is great, if you thought it was too e-z and you were “whizing” through it, why didn’t you play it on a harder difficulty, I’ve been playing for about 4 days now 1-2 hours each day and I found it really difficult (playing it on the hardest difficulty).
I didn’t even try normal because I know game like this are not simulators and would be even less so by playing it on a easy difficulty. So I jumped straight to the hardest difficulty and had some insane fun 🙂
This game ROCKS 😀
_____
Mike B.
“you can blow through this in about 6 hours” Same could be said about Halo 3… In my opinion CoD4 takes longer… Also, what does it matter if you are outranked? Its not that hard to beat people 2 or more times your rank.. just because they play mroe doesn’t mean they are better
I see where you’re coming from Ben, but if you think about it, the campaign for MoH:AA wasn’t as in depth as COD4 either. Also, I think the shorter campaigns have a lot to do with the fact that everything is next-gen now and expected to be significantly better then the older games. Everything has to be better, especially the graphics, and so a 15-plus hour campaign probably takes a lot longer to make. The solution, of course, is an increase in price, or no multiplayer at all, as in Bioshock or Mass Effect (both of which are amazing). Oblivion is different when you think about how long Bethesda spends making their games; rumor has it that their next project won’t come out until the next xbox does.
I’m playing through on the highest difficulty and I tell you nothing is more boring than the CoD4 campaign, and I’m being honest. I just want it to be done, but the difficulty has me playing the same checkpoint about fifteen to thirty times before advancing. On lower difficulties the game is a blink and not worth the price tag.
I’d call this game an average shooter with mediocre multiplayer.
I haven’t actually had a chance to play COD4 yet, since my fiance is completely addicted. Well, part of the problem is that we finally killed the old analogue TV (which made an intolerable noise no one else could hear, so I endeavored never to spend much time in the apartment while it was on) replacing it with a shiny new 40″ LCD Sony Bravia W…. which is great. Totally replaced an old school stereo hub with monster tower speakers in the process as well. It’s only been a couple weeks and already it’s hard to remember what it was like before 1080p, HDMI cables, and pure digital sound.
Anyway, back to gaming. Now that I don’t have to deal with migraine inducing media, I can actually enjoy some of the games we bought months ago.
I completely *heart* Assassin’s Creed, but I’ve always favored adventure games with fully explorable environments and looser plot structures. I especially dig the variety of objectives, although I’d have liked to see a little more variety with the voice overs and/or the ability to abbreviate long repetitive dialogues. I mean, the people you can rescue get really annoying once you’ve heard the six or eight different things they say four or five times each. As wicked cool as the leap of faith is, it becomes very mundane after too short a period, because they made something really crazy a little too easy to access. There is a couple ridiculously high vantage points you can jump off of that just feel suicidal, and some so short that it doesn’t seem worth the flourish. Actually, the leap of faith reminded me very strongly of Lara Croft’s swan dive, and how magical that felt until I got the hang of it. I’m about half way through the story line now, and already kind of mad that they just hand you objectives, when I feel like I should have to work harder to find them. I LOVE the entire concept that this guy goes around stealing flags, and they are just the sort of thing I was hoping for with this game. It gives you an extra bit of motivation to thoroughly explore each area. The fight animations rock, the blood splatters are pretty, movement through the world is very smooth, but the focus on blending slows everything down to a crawl. I’m action, action, action…. I think the only thing this game is really lacking for me is explosions. Even good things are better with a good explosion or two. Assassin’s Creed and Kingdom of Heaven on Blueray go hand in hand, so if you’ve got a PS3, the combo is recommended.
COD4 sort of blew me away, since it was our first PS3 game. Even on the old TV, the graphics were beautiful. Watching the first level play out was like watching a really intense movie. We were all yelling and laughing and heckling, it was a lot of fun, even though I got skipped when the controller got passed around. Oh well. After months of listening to the online action (my fiance has gone through the ranks twice already) I think my best impression of this game was seeing it played through in one very long afternoon with half the neighborhood crowded into our little apartment eating chips and trying not to spill salsa and cola on each other. I might eventually get around to playing it solo, but I’ve never been overly fond of first person shooters. I played a little Half-Life and Counter Strike in high school, and went mano-e-mano with Ryan on Time Splitter’s 3 six months ago or more (he dusted me for the first couple hours, but stopped wanting to play once I mastered the controls… funny how that works.); I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I prefer third person. Seeing my avatar results in fewer collisions with objects, like walls and bullets.
In my opinion, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is the perfect medium between Call of Duty 4 and Assassin’s Creed. It’s more structured than I like, but not as demanding as COD4’s single player action. I don’t like that the little bonus treasures and ammo sparkle, because it makes it too easy for kids with shiny object syndrome (like me), who are already prone to picking up anything that glitters. Granted, a subtle shine is coming a long way from the goofy boxy equipment and corny discovery music of the early TR games. I absolutely hate the targeting system for this game, and feel like an idiot any time I’m being shot at and can’t get a good fix on the baddy (which is a lot). Needless to say, I die with alarming regularity. Fortunately the checkpoints are very well placed. Unfortunately, my allies shoot better than I do, so I probably won’t be replaying this game on a suicidal setting any time soon. Actually, the story was kind of ruined for me because Ryan played ahead of me while I was away for a week and spoiled it long before I ever saw my first freaky dude. I guess it gave him nightmares, but it just gave me the creeps. To each his own I guess. I did have fun coming up with random theories on what exactly they are, and was not disappointed with the end. I don’t think enough people have picked up this game, in spite of the controls being a little wonky.
Stupid thing is, we aren’t even playing that much on the higher end games since we picked up Eye of Fortune with the intention of using the PS Eye as a mic for COD4, because the array and noise canceling is actually far superior to any wireless headset we’ve seen, used, demoed, or reviewed. That was about three weeks ago. It was supposed to be something I could dick around with when I got bored, because I was curious to get my hands on some augmented reality and 2d barcode fun, and this didn’t strike me as a bad shot at something approximating both. We’ve since bought four different basic decks (we have the starter, biolith, wood, earth, and water… we’re still on the hunt for fire, but no luck so far) and at least thirty booster packs. This is Ryan’s first trading card game, and he’s really gone bananas over it. I’m less impressed after too many years of watching my older brother play magic with guys you’re pretty sure still live in their parents’ garages (we don’t have basements in So Cal, not really sure why that is… but I’m not the only desert rat that spent their early years living in their grandparent’s garage). It’s an interesting enough game for a novice, but it’s not going to be very gratifying for the audience it’s actually targeting. Even with a library of about 400 cards between us, I think my favorite cards came out of my first booster pack, which was included with the initial setup. Ryan’s picked up some cards since that completely thrash my more modest collection. One of our neighbors is talking about picking up an entire crate this weekend, because it’s dirt cheap. Each basic deck costs 15$, which is 50¢ a card. Boosters seem to go for 3.99$ on average, but Ryan picked some up for 2.75$ at a hobby shop that had apparently received a box without knowing what they were getting exactly. So, anything from 35¢ for a steal to the standard 50¢ each. Robert found a place online that sells cards by the crate for 114$, but I forgot how many cards you get that way, so I can’t tell you if it’s as good a deal as it seems. However, considering some of my cards are going for 35$ or more on ebay, a crate might pay for itself.
Um, well, that’s me cracking out for the morning. Sorry about making a huge comment on an older post, but you seem to attract a lot of people who have big opinions and not a lot of actual substance… for that, you might as well take a poll, because it isn’t a real discussion.
Now I feel dumb. It’s Eye of Judgement. I’ve just got fortune on the brain or something lately. I guess it’s not as bad as when I kept calling Second Life Half-Life over the phone when some of my ex-roomies were cracking out on it last year.