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I’ve been playing a lot of COD4 this week and it really is an outstanding game.

Offline, I’m about halfway through the campaign on Hardened. I had heard the campaign was a little short so decided to up the difficulty to give me a challenge and stretch the game out a little. I almost went with Veteran but online reports lead me to believe sections can get very frustrating and hard at Veteran level.. I’ll save that setting for my replay for Achievements.

Online, I’m having a blast.. really has that “just one more game” aspect to it, keeping me up till 2/3am trying to rank up again and unlock some of the goodies you can only get access to by climbing up the ranks.

The guns are well balanced in that, the starter assault rifle is just as effective as the assault rifle you unlock at level 55, giving new players and experienced ones somewhat of a level playing field in that respect. Maps have dynamic respawn points, moving you around the map as areas are overrun with enemy players.. really helps stop base rapers. All the guns have extra features such as new camo’s, silencers, increased range scopes.. all unlocked as you rank up through online play.

All the above come into play in the ‘create-a-class’ feature unlocked at level 4. This option allows you to pick a weapon, attachment (grenade launcher, silencer, scope), camo, and a selection of ‘perks’ to fill 3 available slots.

These perks are the meat of the custom class creation. Your character has 3 available slots for perks which are passive abilities that boost your combat in various different ways. For example, if you equip a grenade launcher to your gun, the first perk slot will be taken up with grenade ammo. You could instead choose to take an RPG, claymores, C4, or extra ’special’ grenades (flashbang/smoke/stun grenades).

Perks 2 and 3 are a little different. Perk 1 is usually ammo of some type as you can see, Perks 2 and 3 contain combat boosts such as, increased bullet damage and/or penetration (allowing certain guns to shoot through walls if thin enough), a sprint boost allowing you to run for longer, steady aim for when you have to fire from the hip, last stand allowing you to pull a pistol out in your dying breath and even the score with whoever took you out before you ‘bleed out’. I wont list them all but you get the general idea.. using combinations of these perks, weapons and attachments its possible to alter your playstyle greatly to suit your needs. For example, I have a silenced MP5, extra stun grenades, UAV Jammer, Extreme Conditioning as my primary loadout.

The thinking behind this is, with a silencer you do not show up on the map when you fire as you do with non-silenced weapons, the UAV Jammer stops the radar picking me up when the enemy team calls it in, Extreme Conditioning is the ’sprint for longer’ distances perk which allows me to quickly move around the map. The stun grenades are for immobilising the enemy quickly in a pinch.

Using this loadout I can get around the map fast, flushing out snipers and campers to great effect. UAV Jammer makes me invisible to all, giving me the drop on people who expect to see a red dot on the minimap when an enemy approaches The silenced gun means that when I do find some snipers holed up, its possible (as long as no-one see’s me enter the room) to sneak up on them, shoot the first guy without showing up on the minimap (which seems to fool people to think there buddy was sniped from somewhere else) then I’m free to either gun down whoever is left, drop a nade and back out firing, or my fave lately, take out the trusty knife and shank that sniper

When I started using this technique I managed to come up behind 4 people on Vacant and shank the lot of them, one after the other before someone realised and threw a grenade at my feet….

The other reason behind this loadout is the knife. Sometimes its more reliable to sprint up on an enemy and slice em’ up so the Extreme Conditioning perk really lets you get up close and personal fast.. most people still back away firing from the hip (reduced accuracy) when you surprise them so I’m all too happy to hit sprint and slam a knife into my opponent Fast and satisfying!

Watch this space for more COD4: Online diary entries…

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