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Call of Duty 4 is set in "Modern" times and features a mix of missions from air-support from a C-130, to assaulting a city with Abrams support to a way-back mission where you snipe a future Terrorist in chernobill.

It's also famous for waves of enemies, good AI, lots of guns, and attention to detail. On Normal and even Hardcore difficulty it's a fun game where your in an action/war movie and your the star, constantly storming trenches and killing them dirty Brown people, and shooting up those Cossack's.

However on Veteran difficulty(I'm 2/3 through the game now) the game changes, instead of a fun action move your playing a Rainbow six game, even two bullets can put you down, now your enemy's have X-Ray vision and the reflexes of Spider man to dodge gernades, also they are wearing lots and lots of body armor as head shots are the only reliable way to get a one shot kill. Shoot them five times in an arm and they flinch and are perfectly able to use that arm to aim a rifle and shoot you in the left eye from 200 meters in the dark in a driving rainstorm.

In short the game becomes a constant memorization and trial and error game. Run into a room, die, memorize the locations of all the tango's, then reload, try shooting tango 1, then tango 2, duck behind pillar B to deal with Tango's, D,E,F, then turn around to grab Tango C's gernade and throw it back at him, then kill Tango G and H, then turn and kill Tango C and move on to the next room.

Screw it up? Miss a shot? Time to do it again! The only part of the games that are "easy" are when the enemy has an equal number of US soldiers as there are enemies. There are never enough Commando's to shoot at it, and it seems the AI on Veteran knows that Captain Price is set to be unkillable so they don't bother shooting at him. I've even seen two instances when I did a building entry, I peaked in, nearly get my head blown off, duck back, Price runs Leroy Jenkins style into the building, but the enemies ignore him and focus on lobbing grenades and putting gunfire over my head to keep me pinned down. None of them shooting at the target just ten feet from them not bothering to take cover named Captain Price.


If it were not for the fact that Price kills people I'd not have beaten some missions. OAN Thank you CoD-4 designers, my AI team-mates are so helpful, but why oh why do you keep taking them away? I can't count the number of times my "squad" (IE one unkillable NPC+4 or 5 cannon fodder marines) have faced off against twenty plus Tango's.


Oh and did I mention respawning? That's the best part, if you get shot you die, but if you take to long(IE more than 5 seconds per enemy) your going to be stuck as fresh enemeys respawn nearby and rush to join the fight. On Veteran the respawning is turned down, but not done away with. One bad instance was on "War-Pig" there were enemys in a burned out shop, I throw in a grenade, killed five, shot the lone survivor, then turned my attention to the building across the street killing all of them in a long drawn out fight as my AI buddies helpfully ran down the middle of the street and were mowed down in under a minute. And then, I charge the cleared out shop to move down the street and WTF? Like a clown car there are six fresh enemy's who mow me down INSTANTLY.

Seriously Veteran mode on Call of Duty 4? If you enjoy pain? It's for you, if you thought Legendary Mode in Halo-3 was to easy, then by all means try out Veteran Mode on Call of Duty 4.

Both Veteran and the one previous to that (Hardened?) are stupid and only fit for people who think challenge = running into 20 guys that respawn 10 seconds after you kill them, shooting you, and only you, and good luck, your teammates are retarded and will NOT advance unless you do.

Really, i get no joy or entertainment from playing such nonsense, it crosses the line of frustration at poor difficulty settings, it's stupid game lengthening. I got about half the way to the game on Veteran and couldn't take it anymore, restarted the game in normal and it was actually fun.

...Ah. Maybe this is why I thought CoD4's single player was total shit. I ran through the tutorial thing and it recommended veteran.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:...Ah. Maybe this is why I thought CoD4's single player was total shit. I ran through the tutorial thing and it recommended veteran.

Yeah, you should tune that shit down and go back through it. CoD4's single player is actually pretty damn good.

Ford Prefect wrote:

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:...Ah. Maybe this is why I thought CoD4's single player was total shit. I ran through the tutorial thing and it recommended veteran.

Yeah, you should tune that shit down and go back through it. CoD4's single player is actually pretty damn good.

Quick note, I've gotten 14.4 seconds on that run-through. That was on my ten or so run, my first topped out at 40 seconds, 23 seconds the third time I hit 19.3 seconds then went through the game on normal. After being the game I re-ran that and got the 14.4 time, but it's taken me 50 lives to get through anything beyond the third level. I'd like to see someone beat the game on Veteran without dieing, I'm thinking the twelve minute N64 run through is easier than that.

I've personally noticed these issues in all of the single player campaigns of CoD regardless of difficulty. It's just that in veteran, it becomes so blatently apparent because you're killed by one essential cheap shot after another. Even the original game had the stupid never ending legions of enemies that the player ended up slaying 90% of anyway.

In Call of Duty 2 and on, they just decided to make those enemies pay more attention to you than anyone else. (Which is why it was common for enemies to throw 3-4 grenades on top of your exact location the moment you exposed so much as your pinky.)

Yeah, i've never liked Call of Duty's single player. If it wasn't for the multiplayer I don't think I would have bought any of them after United Offensive.

Shogoki wrote:Both Veteran and the one previous to that (Hardened?) are stupid and only fit for people who think challenge = running into 20 guys that respawn 10 seconds after you kill them, shooting you, and only you, and good luck, your teammates are retarded and will NOT advance unless you do.

Really, i get no joy or entertainment from playing such nonsense, it crosses the line of frustration at poor difficulty settings, it's stupid game lengthening. I got about half the way to the game on Veteran and couldn't take it anymore, restarted the game in normal and it was actually fun.

Hardened is actually fun, I don't want a game where the team AI is neccesarily doing the job from me, sometimes the fun is storming ahead, taking a position.

Normal or Hardened is what you need to play on for enjoyment.

Veteran is only for achievement whores and masochists. I'm not sure which I am, exactly... I got everything but Mile High Club cleared.

Veteran was a real pain in the ass, but I stuck with it until the sniper section where you've got to hold off a million guys in at the Pripyat ferris wheel. Had I known I had C4 I might have been able to do it, but it was damn hard and I found the rest of the game on normal to be a lot more fun.

InnocentBystander wrote:Veteran was a real pain in the ass, but I stuck with it until the sniper section where you've got to hold off a million guys in at the Pripyat ferris wheel. Had I known I had C4 I might have been able to do it, but it was damn hard and I found the rest of the game on normal to be a lot more fun.

Yeah, that was probably the worst section in the game. I got through it but sure as hell didn't enjoy it. I'm honestly really tired of the artificial challenges that FPS games manufacture these days. "lol don't bother thinking of a clever scenario wherein the player's poor decision making has doomed him, just spam him to death with dumbshit zombies".

It's also famous for waves of enemies, good AI, lots of guns, and attention to detail.

I was totally unimpressed with CoD4, attention to detail wise. Russian troops being equipped with the exact same archaic weaponry as random Middle Eastern badguys was unforgiveable laziness.

As for Veteran, I abandoned it at the Ferris Wheel as well. Drove me nuts.

yes the ferris wheel level of waiting for the helo to rescue you is insane.

I was able to beat Mile High Club on Veteran, but not able to get to the chopper at the ferris wheel.

The multi-player is indeed where COD4 is a monster at.

I'm supprised no one's mentioned the rescue of the Cobra pilot before the nuke as the most artificially hard and utterly frustrating moment in CoD4 in Veteran. You have no control at all, you can spam both hand and rifle grenades, it doesn't make any difference, your pals are USELESS and there are 20 guys aiming at you and you must expose yourself to get the pilot from the wreckage in a painfully slow manner and the clock is ticking. All you can do is hope that the AI somehow trips on itself and doesn't kill you as you pull the pilot out (or shoot you in the back as you run back to the chopper), really, it's the stuff that makes a game go from challenging to bad.

And Hardened is just as bad, be honest, the only difference is the AI takes 10 secs to respawn instead of 5, and you can take 3 bullets instead of 2. There's no "challenge" at all, it's just lazy difficulty implementation. Normal is where you need to be at if you plan to have any fun at all (though i guess some people have pain as a requirement for fun).

As for the MP, i really didn't feel it, i liked CoD and CoD2, but i dunno, i guess it simply got utterly overshadowed by TF2 for me. It was worth it for the kickass SP, as long as it's not in one of the retarded settings.

Hardened is fun as hell, and not that hard. (Except the fucking sniper flashback and control room assault.)

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:...Ah. Maybe this is why I thought CoD4's single player was total shit. I ran through the tutorial thing and it recommended veteran.

Same here, and I had the same experience as many others here. CoD4s single player is designed by fucking idiots. Even without the ridiculous difficulty, the levels are pretty bog-standard. It might be fucking awesome MP, but it's SP can lick my asshole for all the work they put into it.

I enjoyed it. I probably enjoyed running through all the MP challenges more, even if they were a little crazy(Kill a dude, pick up his gun and kill him again with it, Overcook a grenade and take out yourself and someone else, lol). But one thing I enjoy in a game is scenery(hate endless corridors/tunnels), and I feel COD4 delivered on that.

Ace Pace wrote:
Hardened is actually fun, I don't want a game where the team AI is neccesarily doing the job from me, sometimes the fun is storming ahead, taking a position.

What about when the AI cheats horribly and 1000s of people keep infinitely spawning in one room ?

The only part of CoD 4 I found too hard on Veteren was when storming the missile base, the APC's kept mowing me down even through the smoke grenades.

Laird wrote:The only part of CoD 4 I found too hard on Veteren was when storming the missile base, the APC's kept mowing me down even through the smoke grenades.

Yeah, on Veteran they can see you through ten feet of concrete.

The Vortex Empire wrote:

Laird wrote:The only part of CoD 4 I found too hard on Veteren was when storming the missile base, the APC's kept mowing me down even through the smoke grenades.

Yeah, on Veteran they can see you through ten feet of concrete.

The turret can also do a complete 180 degree spin in about 2 seconds and pound machine gun rounds straight into your skull the instant it faces you. Why do developers think we aren't going to notice cheating AI? Oh shit right, they don't care.

Shock and Awe wasn't that tough on Veteran. Especially the end.

It's definitely a game I enjoy more on multiplayer as compared to single player. I'm at the last flash-back stage on Veteran, and after two hours of replaying that mission, I've logged out and not gone back into single player since.

Laird wrote:The only part of CoD 4 I found too hard on Veteren was when storming the missile base, the APC's kept mowing me down even through the smoke grenades.

Something I discovered that is a bit of a secret:

On that level when you first start out, go all the way to the left around the compound. There is a truck with some RPGs and a section of wall you can demo away. You can kill the first APC with RPGs and then work your way up the left side of the compound with liberal use of smoke/frag grenades (tough, but worth it) to get to a two story building with a big metal stairframe where baddies are spawning. If you can manage to get up that stairframe and on to the roof of the building there is a Javelin launcher and you have a full few of the remaining APCs.

I played through on Hardened, and then used the mission selector to play through certain missions on various difficulty levels.

I found that certain missions are most fun on Hardened (the ones filled with frustrating situations described in Mr Bean's OP) , while some are more fun on Veteran (too easy on lower settings).
In that sense, they should have made the difficulty more consistent throughout the various scenes in the game.

All Ghillied Up was without doubt one of the best single player FPS experiences I've ever had, though. I had the word "Vindicare" stuck in my head the whole way