Call of Duty can be a very hectic multiplayer First Person Shooter.
When it comes to identifying friendly players from enemy players, a name highlights over their head when you are looking at them. If they are on the enemy team, this name will be red, and if they are on your team, this name will be green.
On top of this, there are UAV's (Unmanned Arial Vehicles) which players may call in when they have managed to kill 3 enemies without dying. These will show a little minimap which will display everyone's location on either hardcore or normal servers. (hardcore servers remove the Heads Up Display and any information like ammo reserves)
Here, you can see members of the OpFor team:
They are always wearing dark coloured clothing, and wear hats or headdresses that are red.
In the first screenshot, you can also see that the UAV map is active, (top left corner) indicating where your teammates are (green arrows) and where your enemies are (red dots).
Here, you can see members of the American team:
Their clothing is light in colour; what may be considered 'desert cammo'. They wear helmets.
You can once again see that the UAV is active, and showing where your friendly soldiers are VS the enemy soldiers. It also displays where the helicopter is located, and whether or not it is friendly. (friendlies are always green, enemies are always red on the UAV, including helicopters or airstrikes)
Call of Duty 4 consists of a few game modes.
- Free-for-all means that it's every man for himself; you shoot people no matter what clothing they are wearing.
- Team Deathmatch means that you simply shoot people on the opposite team, and try to beat the enemy team's score.
- Capture the Flag involves grabbing a flag from the enemy base, and bringing it all the way back to your base.
- Headquarters involves capturing a location on the map and holding it for as long as possible. This location changes, so you need to capture as many as you can.
- Domination involves capturing and holding as many locations on the map as possible. There are always 3 persistent locations your team can capture.
- Search and Destroy has no respawns. You are either on the defending team, or the attacking team. Attackers try to plant a bomb and set it off at a bomb site, defenders need to prevent the attackers from blowing up the bomb site.
- Sabotage is similar to Search and Destroy, except there are respawns, and both sides have an objective to blow up, and an objective to defend. There is also one single bomb which can be dropped and picked up by the enemy team.
If you are new, I suggest avoiding 'Hardcore' servers, as you do not get a minimap, and your health is 40% of what it is in a normal match, so you will die much faster if you aren't quick on the trigger.
If everything is too fast for you though, a hardcore server can have it's advantages. People generally pace themselves slower on hardcore because they can die much faster if they run around without checking corners and being careful. It means that it shouldn't be as hectic, but you will die easier.
For some good general tips, you might try looking here:
How can I become a better CoD player?
This is a very common problem due to sloppy programming on Activision’s part. It is related to the system’s audio device, e.g. a problem with your sound card drivers, mostly if it is a Realtek or a Sigmatel onboard sound card.
Here are some things you can try:
Enable Stereo Mix
- Right-click the volume/speaker icon in your system tray, and select Recording devices. (If you don’t have the icon in your system tray, open Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Sound → Recording.)
- Right-click and select View Disabled Devices. The device Stereo Mix appears.
- Enable the Stereo Mix device.
- Start the game.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Use a mic & headphones
- Plug in a microphone into the microphone jack.
- Plug in headphones into the headphone jack.
- Right-click the volume/speaker icon in your system tray, and select Recording devices. (If you don’t have the icon in your system tray, open Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Sound → Recording.)
- Set Microphone as the default input device.
- Switch to the Playback tab.
- Set Headphones as the default audio playback device.
- Start the game.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Realtek: Disable front panel jack detection
If you have an Realtek onboard sound card, this might help:
- Double-click the orange volume/speaker icon in your task bar. This opens the HD Audio Manager.
- Click on the folder icon in the upper right edge.
- Check Disable front panel jack detection. This forces the driver to load microphone support even without a mic plugged in. Close the top-most window.
- In case you’re using the digital output, make sure that the Digital Output device is set as the default. To do that, click on Digital Output in the upper bar and on Set Default Device next to the volume adjuster.
- Start the game.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Sigmatel: install updates
If you have a Sigmatel onboard sound card, install all Windows updates and the latest Sigmatel drivers from http://www.dell.com/.
Remove the mssmp3.asi
file
- Go to the installation folder of CoD4.
- Enter the
miles
folder.
- Rename the file
mssmp3.asi
to mssmp3.asi.bak
.
- Start the game.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Update PunkBuster
Make sure PunkBuster is updated to the latest version.
Install Call of Duty 4 patches
Install all patches up to at least v1.5. (Currently, the latest available patch is v1.7.)
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Reinstall sound card drivers
Before continuing, please make note of the make and model of your sound card prior to removing it in order to aid in reinstallation at a later date.
Uninstall your sound card drivers as follows:
- Open Start → Run and enter
sysdm.cpl
to display the System Properties dialog box.
- Go to Hardware → Device Manager.
- Expand Sound, video, and game controllers.
- Right-click the sound card driver and then select Uninstall.
Then let Windows install its default sound drivers.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Update BIOS
If you are running the game from a secondary partition, download and install the latest BIOS updates from your motherboard manufacturer.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, try the next suggestion.
Disable onboard sound in BIOS
Disable the onboard sound card in the BIOS.
Best Answer
The three Modern Warfare games share a plot, but the plot tends to be pretty nonsensical. There are plot summaries online if you want to jump into MW3 without playing the first two.
As far as online goes, there are still many people playing the first two Modern Warfare games, although the majority of people are now playing Modern Warfare 3. (These are Xbox Live numbers, although you can assume PSN is similar).
The three games share a very similar engine and very similar gameplay. Skills from playing one online generally transfer to other games in the series.
I would say that you could almost consider Modern Warfare to be the "Madden" of shooter games - there's one every year, and the gameplay tweaks are generally of interest to the hardcore series player.
Don't forget also that in between Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 was Call of Duty: World at War, and between Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 was Call of Duty: Black Ops. World at War and Black Ops don't share the same storyline as the MW series, but they still have similar gameplay and online components. They were developed by a different company (Infinity Ward does Modern Warfare, Treyarch the others). Some people have a preference for one company's work over the other's.
Which you choose is really up to you; price-wise the older versions are considerably cheaper, however, the bulk of the support and the gamers are likely to be on Modern Warfare 3. More players generally means more game lobbies, and a better likelihood of a good multiplayer experience, but your mileage may vary.