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.

Quickie: Stranglehold.

It's a waste of the Unreal engine. Short of its few "That was sweet!" moments, the game's not worth playing. Definitely not worth buying. If you're really into Max Payne or are interested in short lived, mindless, occasionally frustrating fun, you might as well play Stranglehold.

Worth playing. Maybe just the demo because it will cover the best part(s) of the game.