Rather than just running from point A to point B gunning the hell out of everything, you'll be disarming bombs with the touch screen, planting explosives or hacking terminals in mini-games, manning. Everything from tons of voice over to slick, iron sights-based gameplay is there, as are the epic "out of FPS" moments COD shoots for.
Call of duty 4 modern warfare ds series#
The Call of Duty feel - instantly noticeable to any veteran of the series - is there, and that's a huge tribute to the game's ability to construct a fluid, entertaining experience onto a smaller platform. So while the experience isn't the most technically dazzling effort in pocket FPS history, it puts priority in what counts, and in our opinion flourishes because of it. For the most part character models look decent, utilizing a ton of animation and scripted movement, the frame-rate holds at 20+ (usually closer to 30) for the entirety of the adventure - something that can't be said for the choppy aforementioned Brothers in Arms - and the mouse-like stylus control is about as precise as you could ask for on DS. In general you'll notice that level skyboxes aren't much more than a straight color or basic pattern, and draw distances won't dazzle players that have seen the technical achievement as something like Brothers in Arms on DS, but the core experience is much more fluid than most of Call of Duty's competition as well. Aside from a few pieces of lighting trickery in Dementium and some superb resource management in Nintendo's own Hunters, the system is pretty elementary as far as 3D goes, so we were pretty surprised to see helicopters cruising overhead, destructible vehicles, morphing levels - though simple overall - and some pretty decent effects to set the mood including lighting strikes, rain, and smoke. Call of Duty 4 DS makes use of fully-modeled environments, but also falls back to 2D for very minor sections including iron sight gun models (basically your aim mode), and storyboard cut scenes.įor anyone that's seen what DS has done in the world of shooters thus far it should come as no surprise that Call of Duty's production value isn't going to be on par with what you get in a larger, console-like experience. For the most part you're getting an experience that feels like a smaller outing of the full-fledged Call of Duty 4 design, as you'll follow the same SAS crew though very similar missions, make use of the same type of gadgets and weaponry, and experience the same "in the heat of the battle" feelings you get on the consoles just on a much smaller scale. With Call of Duty fever kicking in again, however, Activision decided it was time to bring the franchise to gamers on the go, and solicited the help of developer n-Space (GCN Geist) to shrink the series down to pocket size. For whatever reason though, pocket FPS development has slowed down considerably since the release of the Nintendo DS, with only the mediocre Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, impressive first-party Metroid Prime Hunters, and recently released survival horror Dementium: The Ward. 3D environments were no easy task on the hardware, with most efforts resorting to classic raycasting engines circa Doom and Wolfenstein, but for some reason that development bug ran wild for a few glorious years of low frame, low res FPS goodness. Back on Game Boy Advance there was an amazing obsession with pocket first-person shooters.