Call of Duty 4 Hands-On (PC)

Of all the games releasing this November, Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the most anticipated. The game plunges you into virtual warfare like never before, thanks to the most vicious firefights in history. We got a sample of that in the COD4 multiplayer beta, and the single player campaign is just as crazy, dropping us into dangerous environments where bullets fly from all directions. In other words, this game kicks so much ass you won't leave your couch for hours on end.

What we played was a tease, a measly two single player levels, but they were enough to whet our appetites. The first takes place on a huge tanker in the Bering Straight. You, along with your team of commandos, leap from an attack chopper and quickly move through the ship, the goal to steal a manifest and make it back alive, crew expendable. Naturally, the bad guys don't take lightly to your snooping around and do their best to make your life difficult with their automatic weapons. What ensues is a thrilling sequence in which you and your team slaughter everyone. Your squad mates are more than capable of handling themselves, so much so, that they can pretty much kill the entire crew. It gets frustrating, because all you want to do is cap someone in the head, but every time you line up a headshot, someone else takes them out. Hey, at least they're well trained.

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After grabbing the document, the enemy blows up the ship and it starts to sink. In a panic, you race from its belly to the deck, dodging exploding steam pipes and dealing with the boat pitching in the water, rolling left and right and tossing you like a rag doll. Topside, you run towards the helicopter and make a death-defying leap to safety, or not. Although we successfully made the jump our first try, you can miss and plunge into the icy waters.

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