Epic Default Productions

(Apologies to those who saw this early: lawl WordPress scheduling. Also, this is tagged LTTP because it fits the profile to a degree, and also because CW’s idea is a damned good one.)

I acquired a copy of Call of Duty 4 for 360, used, after continued insistence from a console-supremacist friend. CoD4 itself was nothing new to me — having owned the game on PC since release, in addition to previously being a fan of the series — but I figured it afforded me a chance to make a straight apples to apples comparison between platforms. Indeed, CoD4 has been hailed as a truly sublime console shooter, came in second only to Microsoft’s Halo 3 for Live activity in 2008, and was only recently usurped by its Treyarch-developed sequel, World at War, while still regularly appearing in the top ten. In all, it’s pretty clear that Infinity Ward did something very right in every version of their game, PC and 360 alike.

To be entirely honest, though, I played my 360 copy only once. One time. I started CoD4, played a round online with the aforementioned friend, and then immediately shelved it. My mind had already been made up; there was no way the console version could match up to the Windows release. This is a typical line of thinking for me, one challenged more and more as I’ve come to own current consoles, but still a common first assumption.

This past weekend, I played a few intense rounds of laser tag. In an effort to be, and I quote, “tactical as hell,” I spent most of the game crouched — an action, which, as it turns out, is a lot harder than it looks. As my thighs ached, reminding me just how out of shape I really am, the urge came upon me to play some Call of Duty 4. This left me with two options, and I chose the option that allowed me to recline comfortably at the couch. “At very least,” I thought as the 360 began spinning the disc, “I can give the two a proper comparison.”

In single-player, honestly, there’s very little difference. The usual apprehension a PC gamer might encounter switching from the familiar keyboard to the gamepad is nigh nonexistant here, and the controls have been tuned and tweaked to this end. They feel, for lack of a better term, “correct.” As there’s no real issue in the single-player, let’s move along.

Multiplayer is the standard by which most games (and almost all shooters) are judged these days, so, let me be perfectly clear here: Call of Duty 4 is the second-best multiplayer console shooter I have ever played. (It’s beaten out solely by Halo 3, and only because of co-op, and the game mode Rocket Race.) As far as online fpses on the Xbox 360 are concerned, CoD4 is cream of the crop.

Got it? Good, let’s get dissecting.

While it’s the best multiplayer console shooter, the “console” in that category does it disservice. The gamepad, though utterly sublime in single-player, is problematic in multi-player. Perhaps this is a weakness of mine — any extended handling of a gamepad makes my hands sweat profusely, and for some reason, I become (for lack of a better term, with no offense intended) a stroke victim in-game. Sluggish, uncertain, and effectively blind, I go from the hero of single-player to a goddamn liability, slaughtered repeatedly to pad someone’s kill/death ratio. I’m no stranger to being utterly awful at console shooters, but as I’m actually reasonably good at PC multiplayer (generally toward the top-end of the scoreboard), the sudden loss of all skill in a game that appears, for all intents and purposes, identical to my specialty is incomparably humiliating.

The multiplayer lobby for CoD4 is more streamlined than many of its 360 contemporaries, and is infinitely easier to navigate than the PC version, there’s no question. However, the gains in simplicity come with losses in choice, and, to some degree, clientele. On PC, I have a small list of favorite servers which I frequent — ones with reasonable ping, skilled players, preferred maps and modes, and acceptable rules (no bunny-hopping, for instance). The effect is something I’d call the “unwalled garden;” these servers are available to all, but are cultivated and maintained by a handful of admins to create slices of multiplayer nirvana — places refined by selection of game modes, maps, even players.

To extend the metaphor, where servers on PC are private gardens, matches on the 360 are public commons in the revolutionary era sense of the term. Ping can range from perfect to wretched between maps, modes are arbitrarily locked until one reaches higher rank, and I seem to spend an unhealthy amount of time in each match muting some asshole who keeps yelling for everyone to “get on [his] level [of skill].” For the ten seconds I gain joining a match, I lose a minute both muting and dropping from a game to find a more suitable connection. The main rule (“don’t be a dick”) is usurped by John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory — while this is, perhaps, the norm for Xbox Live, why would someone with the option choose Live over PC online?

There you have it: part subjective, part common knowledge, all guaranteed to get me labeled an elitist (one might be surprised how much this happens, or they might not). Though I hoped the experience might change my mind, it seems my prejudices were merely reinforced, as was the truth in my roommate’s statement: the PC is an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

Praise Oz for his hard-nosed look at why console multiplayer sucks in the comments, or put him in the guillotine like the unwashed peasantry and rabble you really are in the forums!