####Therell be some spoilers here, so beware.####

This is a vent of extreme anger. I do actually like call of duty 4, make no mistake. However, i have one very important thing to say, which you can read and then ignore the rest, unless you want to know my reasoning. Theres lots of text, and no pictures, so i understand if you dont read it. It is just a rant, after all. It makes me feel better.

Heres my important thing - DONT PLAY THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN ON VETERAN DIFFICULTY IF YOU WANT TO HAVE FUN. parts of it are fantastic. parts of it will make you break things (ive come pretty close to it. certainly i swear a lot, as the rant below will show you).
Basically, the game has nasty enemy ai, useless and retarded ally ai, and lots of levels designed to a) make you rely on your allies for support, despite their idiocy and lack of aim, or b) just die. Yeah, just die a lot. Not much else.

Im playing the pc version, btw. I dont know how different the console versions will be when it comes to aiming, and ai difficulty. So if youre playing on 360 and owning veteran... STUF CONSOLE NOOB WITH YOUR AUTO AIM! I HAVE M/KB AND MORE PRETTY GRAPHICS, I AM TEH ROXXOR (or something).

lol j/k, im not a fanboy prick. These points of anger may not apply to you. I dont know.

You can stop reading here if you dont want spoilers and/or ranting. I think i make some valid points though...

COD4 has kickass gameplay, without doubt. Some portions of the campaign are without doubt among the best designed ive ever seen. I mean, the bit after the ship level (which was fucking awesome itself), where you take control of the president guy and get assassinated? Remarkably effective. And the aftermath of the nuke... HOLY CRAP. That was chilling and amazing at the same time. Also the bit where you take over the guns in that gunship plane.. ooo baby! And some of the levels have places and battles that are just plain fun.

Unfortunately, many portions are by far the worst level design i have ever seen. Most of them are compounded by tough enemy ai that, at veteran difficulty it rarely misses even at long range while running (irrelevant of what weapon), and you die within 2 - 4 hits for most weapons. Not to mention, most of the time they will shoot at you and you alone, if they know where you are. Of course, thats just part of the challenge. However, the game is not set up to fight such an enemy; for most of it, you need support. You are in a squad for most of the game, after all.

And that is where the problem lies. If you think halo 3's ai were shit drivers, just wait till you meet cod4's bunch of retards. They can barely hit a building at 5 metres. They like to sit back and wait for you to clear a building, before coming in and 'supporting' you. Essentially, you have a bunch of cannon fodder.

Except wait a minute. Remember i said above that the ai have you at the top of their hit list? They seriously will go for you, totally ignoring your allies. In the level from the demo, the part where an ally runs up the stairs and gets grabbed by an enemy once glitched. The ally hid behind the corner, and the enemy still ran down but didnt grab him since the ally was in the wrong place. At this point, normal ai kicked in - and the bad guy pulled out his pistol and shot at me. In the small gap between the wall and the ally - the ally and the enemy could seriously have grabbed each other, as theyre supposed to, they were close enough.

So really, you dont have any allies worth speaking of (there is one exception, ill get to it below). The enemies are nasty, but you kill them with the same efficiency. However, they outnumber a good 20 or more to 1 in most big pitched battles. They tend to come at you from at least 2 angles. They get all over the place, make good use of cover (even though you can shoot through it), and there will ALWAYS be one fucker hiding in a building if you finally get close enough to enter.

The game is LITERALLY designed to play with a squad, or even just one more effective player. But you cant do that. And theres more. Oh yes, theres more...

Some parts of the game are just god damn suicide. For example, in one scene you get to play as the support gunner on a transport helicopter, for the first few minutes. It essentially means you have a really powerful gun firing quite explosive rounds. It also means you cant take cover. Thats right, you cannot hide from the metric fucking ton of ammunition coming your way, courtesy of the ai's behaviour explained above. This means that, on veteran difficulty at least, that you have to play through the first 30 seconds many times just to figure out what the fuck is killing you. Turns out its quite a few tanks and a couple of aa guns. Eventually you'll pull through, and it becomes quite a decent level after that (you get out of the fucking helicopter). However, that first segment remains the most frustrating and annoying thing i have ever done in a game.

And the level im up to now... ohhh its a fun one. This one has something i didnt think possible - a useful ally. Hes a sniper and he can actually kill people. Hes not bad at it, in fact. The thing is, theres only 1 of him. And 1 of you, also a sniper. And LITERALLY NO-JOKING-WHATSOEVER FUCKING HUNDEREDS OF ENEMY SOLDIERS. Its actually a really cool mission, in the first half. Then you get your cover blown, and all hell breaks loose. It becomes the most difficult and annoying level i have ever managed to get to the end of.

And get to the end i did. But not finish it, no, the game wont let me have that. Your buddy gets injured, and you get to carry him to a pick up zone. Eventually, after amassing probably the highest body count an fps has ever seen, you get to carry him to the chopper. And then, i couldnt walk on with him, for some reason. So i put him down... and walked on... then the allies who came with the chopper came on, getting in my way... and my buddy was left on the ground... so i failed. Yes, thats right. I failed because of that shit. Checkpoint was way back... thats what inspired this rant, and my new found irrational belief that cod4 has the worst sp campaign ever made, despite the good bits.

I cannot forgive the checkpoints/autosaves, no quicksaving or anything. Manual saving would probably make veteran bearable - an insane amount of frustration comes simply from making a fair amount of progress, then having it all taken away by one lucky shot, and a shit checkpoint system that MIGHT save your game at some point. Maybe. Seriously, if i ever get into political power, ill do something about this. Checkpoints must be activated every 50 bullets fired and when the player is in a safe position. Or something. Nah fuck it, outlaw em. No one will miss them. Unless manual saves are implemented too, of course.

Thats just some examples. There are other points i could bring up, but this has been theraputic, and my anger is gone. I'll probably go back to the game now; ive proven i can beat the damn level... it is a fun game, sometimes an awesome game. Just also very frustrating.

So yeah... thanks cblogs, i feel much better!

tl;dr? Game is fucking hard on hardest difficulty. Often is not fun. Needs a co-op mode, or less retarded allies. Desperately needs quick saving. Is still really amazing in more than a few places.