Answering the Call

Single Player: Superior to Halo 3.

While the length isn't much better, the depth of story-telling and variety of gameplay are clear deviations of the normal big explosion shoot-em-up. Which Halo is. There are several "Oh shit!" moments while Halo 3's ending didn't even deserve an "Oh snap!" While I love Halo and will still aim to get the achievements and finish my campaign scoring runs, I'm calling Call of Duty 4 the better game. The only problem is the lack of online co-op.

Multi-Player: Superior to Halo 3.

The class system is really well done. The class customization is cool and fun to tweak. The unlockables matter. Ranking is based on a point system instead of a Win/Loss ratio. Upgrading becomes, not only fun, but a little necessary. Meaning that striving to get a new rank is more than just wanting a new emblem next to your gamertag. The only upperhand(s) that Halo has on the CoD4 multiplayer is the array of online achievements and the splitscreen+live combo. That's it. I miss the option of playing online with someone sitting next to me. Sure, I hate splitscreen but that's fun. That was one of my chief complaints with Shadowrun too.

Buy it.