I’ve been playing CoD4 for the past couple of weeks, and I have to say I think it’s the best game I’ve played all year. It gets a lot of things right, from play/weapons balance, to the rich single player experience, to the “level up” mechanic of multiplayer, and especially the perks system. It fires on every cylinder, nailing its design vision in every aspect while delivering a very visceral experience in both single and multiplayer. It’s a true “must have” title if you enjoy first person shooters (both the PC and 360 versions are excellent).

That said, there’s a small handful of stuff that’s bugging the hell out of me about it.

The Martyrdom Perk

This is one of those things that reads great on paper in a design doc, and plays great in single player, but becomes a deal-breaker in multiplayer. It’s an interesting perk, don’t get me wrong. I know everyone’s been just dying to drop a grenade from their dead body ever since seeing Red Dawn, but there’s a ton of issues with it in a multiplayer environment. The idea is that when you die, you drop a grenade at your feet which hopefully blows up the guy who just killed you. Cool, right? Yes, but there’s a few problems with that idea.

This is a gun game. 95% of the time, you die from a bullet which engaged you from well outside of any grenade blast radius. Hell, you can shoot through walls in this title, so the guy who shot you doesn’t even have to be in the same room as you. He can be outside of your house while you’re hanging out upstairs and still get you through the bedroom wall.

Because you die mostly from bullets, now you’re using up a Perk (1 of 3) to get revenge for a kill-type that only happens around 5% of the time, and is due to you allowing someone to sneak in to point-blank range. In short, you’re actually banking on sucking so bad you’re hoping to get a kill when you die. Not really the best strategy for winning.

Now, what normally happens, since this is mostly a team-based game, is that you die and the live grenade which just mysteriously falls out of your ass has now caused your team-mates who were charging in right behind you to have to run for their lives. I’d say the majority of the time I see a guy Martyrdom a grenade out is when it’s the dude standing right next to me.  He buys the farm, and now I have to stop shooting at the guy who killed my team-mate and run for my life. This usually ends with me getting shot in the back. And dying. A lot.

So in essence this Perk really winds up being a team-kill perk. And yes, 8 out of 10 noobs on Live are using it*. If Infinity Ward nerfs one thing about CoD4 in a patch, PLEASE let this be it. Kill it. Nuke it. I beg of you.

The Airstrike/Helicopter Call-In

CoD4 has this feature which rewards kills in the multiplayer game, where you’re awarded bonuses once you achieve 3, 5, and 7 kills in a row without dying. They go like this:

• 3 kills: UAV Drone (radar now shows all enemies, not just ones who recently fired their weapon).
• 5 kills: Airstrike. More effective if someone (including you) has recently called for a UAV Drone.
  
• 7 kills: Helicopter Support. A friendly chopper flies in and takes down any enemy combatant it can see. It can be shot down by enemy fire.

Seems balanced at first glance. You’ve got to work your way up to 3 kills before the rewards start coming in, which isn’t terribly easy, but not insurmountable. Now that you’ve got a UAV up, you can see where some more guys are in your area and hopefully get the drop on them before they ruin your kill streak. Great! Only this is where it goes downhill.

Once you get 5 kills and get that airstrike, if there’s a UAV up and running, you’re nearly guaranteed to get the Helicopter Support. If there are just two enemies standing within a quarter block of each other on the same street, and you drop your bombs on that street, you get credit for the planes’ kills.

I have no issue with you getting the XP for levelling your guy from those kills, but they count towards the stat which is tracking how many more kills you need for the helicopter. Of all the times I’ve earned the Airstrike, I have also immediately received the Helicopter Support 100% of time if a UAV was up. This is a problem, because it is doubly rewarding someone for only reaching 5 kills in a row and being smart enough to make sure a UAV drone is up.

The simple fix for this is to not count the Airstrike kills towards the Helicopter Support. Count them towards XP and the level/team killcounts, just not for the chopper. Force the player to earn those kills with his weapons, just like the other two awards preceeding it.

The Uber Chopper

Okay, so not only is getting curbstomped by the Airstrike/Chopper 1-2 punch annoying, the Chopper itself is a bit too uber. This game really prides itself on a sim approach to modern combat: the guns kick somewhat properly (I assume, never having fired a fully automatic rifle before), the RPGs aren’t dead-on accurate, you have to hold your breath when firing a sniper rifle, you can count down a grenade timer before throwing it, the reload animations are proper, etc.

So when I see an attack helicopter (from either side in multiplayer), I expect it to behave like an attack helicopter. This means that its main machine gun has a limited range of fire, and cannot do things like, say, just hypothetically speaking, shoot backwards or straight down from the fuselage. This has nailed me on more than one occasion, as I have been taught by the game to expect things to behave in a “realistic” sim fashion. The chopper is so damn deadly that players need the blind spots in order to be able to fire back and knock it down.

The only two defenses against the choppers currently is to:

1. Hide indoors, or
2. Hope that it’s going to shoot someone else on your team when you duck out and try and hit it with your RPG.

Not exactly the best simulation, or solution really. I know helicopters can be tough to get right in a game, especially when they’re on rails (during the single player section when you ride in one) and not pilotable by players/AI, but this is a really frustrating solution, especially when you consider that the damn things show up 4 or 5 times per level due to the ease of achieving them (just need 5 kills and a well placed Airstrike).

It’s rapid and uber appearance is compounded by a killer AI that can evidently see through walls and anticipate the moment you leave your hidey hole, where you’ve been cowering hoping it won’t see you and destroy you, or worse, your neighbor who was standing right next to you.

And yes, he had the damned Martyrdom perk.