LiveBlogging Call of Duty 4

A couple days ago, I used my Twitter feed to liveblog my thoughts on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Since it was the first time I'd either A) played a Call of Duty game or B) liveblogged anything, I thought it might be fun to recount my limited thoughts on what was supposedly one of the best games of 2007/2008. For my part, I enjoyed it, and might do it again if the mood strikes. Who knows, maybe I'll turn it into a running series?

3:26 PM: Just started playing Call of Duty 4. Never played one of these before. First impression: Why play Syriana when I could just watch the DVD?

3:28 PM: Wait...I just witnessed a tertiary character's execution from a first person perspective? WTF?

3:45 PM: The "Protect person X" mission is the clear sign that a game has run out of ideas. This is only level 2.

3:47 PM: Third world country? Helicopters? Are we ripping off Black Hawk Down already??

3:49 PM: I love how I unlock achievements for doing things that the game requires me to do anyway.

3:58 PM: Wait... "1/30 of enemy intelligence retrieved"? Is this a fetch quest?? (Edit: It wasn't.)

4:09 PM: I love how for all of CoD4's supremely impressive graphics, 90% of the shrapnel flying around is still crappy 2D sprites.

4:31 PM: Stuck in a firefight at some TV station. No snarky comment for now.

4:37 PM: The game's strict "Friendly fire is bad" restriction apparently only applies to officers. Privates are fair game. Good to know.

5:11 PM: The game just quoted Robert McNamara; reminded me that he died a couple days ago. Guess I'll play this one for him today.

Early on, I made the mistake of convincing the game I was up to playing on hard mode. Eventually, I got a little too into the game and ended up getting stuck on a number of levels where, if I played the level for too long, I'd forget what I was even supposed to be doing. Suffice it to say, liveblogging was no longer the priority.

This all culminated in a mission called "One Shot, One Kill", where I botch an assassination, only to have to flee from a city's worth of soldiers with a wounded douchebag of a partner in tow. At level's end, you're tasked with holing up inside a fairground (ferris wheel and bumper cars and all), waiting for the chopper to pick you up, all the while wave upon wave of enemy soldiers keep trying to pick you off. Thanks to "Hard Mode", I got stuck on this level for a good 3 hours before giving up and taking the game back to the store with the excuse that it was 'defective'.

Stupid Call of Duty...