With my new computer setup, I am now able to enjoy some exciting modern gaming. I recently made two computer game purchases, Call of Duty 4 and the long awaited Crysis. I spent a good part of the last 24 hours deeply engrossed in both of them and decided, rather than putting up two reviews, I would do a head to head. First up, they are both really good games. Much of yesterday was spent improving my single player techniques. Today was devoted to multiplayer. The system specs that I used for the test are below:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (not overclocked)
• 2GB RAM
• Leadtek GeForce 8800GTX
• WD 7200 RPM HDD 500GB with 16MB Cache

The system was enough to play each game on its optimum settings. Though there would be room for improvement in the anti-aliasing department with SLI, all my settings ran on Very High. Both games looked exceptional, but it was with the look and feel that I believe the winner of the two came out.

In single player mode, both games are enormously fun. The levels of Crysis are absolutely enormous and it takes a little while to figure out the best strategy for the game. I found that being sneaky pays dividends. Most of the time that I played was spent running, hiding and regenerating. There is a lot of exploring that can be done, but for me, I felt it took a little bit too long to get from point A to point B. It was brief periods of ultra excitement followed by brief lulls. Call of Duty 4, on the other hand was intense. There is no time to relax, the tension only lets up between missions and by putting the mission briefings into the loading screens, it does not feel like there is any wasted time at all. In single player mode, COD 4makes much better use of team work. The first mission sees you raid a ship and it feels the way that you would imagine a special forces raid to feel. Very fast paced, not much room for error, if your aim is spot on then there are no problems. As the game progresses, however, the missions get a whole lot tougher.

The suit that you wear in Crysis really comes into play in multiplayer. I didn’t enjoy the experience too much because I was getting owned by sneaky buggers using the cloaking device. Add to this a fairly long reload time and the distances that you need to travel in some of the maps and you get an experience that is much like the single player version, but with more lulls. VOIP would enhance the experience a little, and I must admit I was significantly out-gunned. I put it down to lack of practice with the suit. It looks like it is going to be a lot of fun. The trouble for me is that I am impatient. I am sure that I will figure out some good suit strategies, but getting up to standard for multiplayer will take a few long gaming sessions and I do not have the time that Joe College Student has to figure out the ins and outs of exo-suit warfare.

COD 4 really came into its own as a multi-player game. Movement was extremely fast and smooth with my configuration and the graphics were sterling. There are some interesting modes, I tried Free for All and a type of Co-op Death Match. In the Free for All, it is every man for himself, you get lots of frags and you get fragged lots and it is a pleasure. The Kill Cam is nice too, after you get fragged, you get a replay from the perspective of your killer. You get to see if they were spawn camping. The Co-op mode was interesting too because you only get one life. Wipe out the other team and you win. When you die, you get to watch your team’s surviving members. Generally it is the sad sacks that hide away in the shadows that make it through to the end, but they get ripped for doing it and that is half the fun.

While I thoroughly recommend either game, they both are a lot of fun, I have to say that I enjoyed the experience of COD4 a little bit more. Graphics-wise, Crysis had a slight edge, and there was a lot more to explore in Crysis, but COD4 is all out battle from the get go and that made it a lot more exciting for me. Perhaps I will change my mind after a month or two, but for now COD 4 is the winner for the best shooter of 2007 crown.