Crysis invented sprinting? I almost forgot that you couldn't sprint in COD2, it's a feature on so many modded PC servers already. I do wish it were in more games though.. I was dying for Halo 3 to feature a sprint button. Oh well.. probably for the best.

I think it's a must buy for anyone remotely interested in FPS games. If you don't buy COD4, you don't like FPS, you just like Halo :P

Then again, Halo is the only FPS game I'll be playing this year on 360 :)

There are a ton of gaming hitting this fall/winter. It's sorta ridiculous. I'll find time to play all of the shooters I'm interested in though.. they sorta take priority for me. I still need a copy of VF5.. and I haven't even touched my copy of Guitar Hero 2 yet.. shame.

I want to play Bioshock, but I'm not buying it as of yet. I'm sorta assuming we're in for a relatively short ride, and the replayability probably isn't as high as Call of Duty. I could probably make due with a rental.

You can sprint in Call of Duty: United Offensive, the expansion pack for the first COD game.. and on modded COD2 servers. But it is nice to see it being incorporated into COD4.. I wonder if you'll be able to lean in the console version this time as well? I never understood why they took that out.. seems there should be enough buttons for that.

Sprinting isn't really new, it just hasn't been featured in a lot of console FPS games so far. It mostly seems to be military shooters (Battlefield, America's Army) that push that sort of feature. I'm not sure who really did it first.. back in the day we used to have to hold down a key to run at full speed or click an option in the menu to "always run" -- now running has turned into something completely different -- and "always run" is walking.

United Offensive is pretty old now a days, but I doubt that was the first game with this type of sprinting either. And then you have games like Half Life, which sorta has a sprint feature, but it doesn't come with as many restrictions. I prefer it this way. You should be able to shoot, or strafe while sprinting. Seems fair.

I wish most FPS games would add the ability to sprint as well. It's not really all that well suited to run and gun craziness.. but that's hardly all that's out there.

Strafe and sprint? Even the fastest sprinter is pretty slow, relatively, while moving laterally. While a more arcade implimentation may work for some games, those making even a half hearted attempt at realism should leave sprint+strafe at home unless it adds something vital to the mechanics. It is unnatural, and I personally like the limitation. Not only in realism, but it reminds me of Madden: without sprint you are very agile, with sprint you get a ~20% speed increase but your agility and ability to accelerate in new directions takes a hit, as well as your ability to juke. So do you want speed or agility? The nuances it creates are excellent. I enjoy this aspect of BF2 a lot. Of course some games would work with the arcade approach, just saying...

As for shooting and sprinting, I agree you should be able to *depending* on the gameplay mechanics and goals. e.g. a BF like game, i.e. semi realistic, you need some serious bullet deviation. For a game like Quake you should have no deviation (i.e. skill based fast arcade shooter). For other games where you want to restrict sprinting to a more tactical role you can either disallow shooting while sprinting (ala GOW) or take away abilities (e.g. no strafe) or whatever that don't essentially break down to a mechanic where you are always sprinting. On those lines I think there are room for all sorts of mechanics and designs, as well as those that have metered sprints like BF and those with unlimited sprinting.

Which reminds me of my ideal Halo controls: Add sprint, but to balance out sprint a) no shield regen while sprinting and b) not strafing while sprinting and c) long time limit on sprint (it is sucking shield regen afterall) and d) either no firing /or/ serious gun deviation.

I think Bungie should have done that as well as upped melee. Having two melee attacks (upper / lower?) that have alternate attacks when sprinting. e.g. Normal kick would be a sweep, but sprinting kick would be a flying kick. Using a flying kick to bash in a door would be cool :P

Btw, CoD4 looks awesome. 60fps... drool. Room for improvement but this looks awesome!

I'm a little sleep deprived right now Acert.. that sentence is missing the world "not" in between "should" and "be." You can't shoot and sprint in BF2 either.. or Quake Wars or most other modern shooters with a real sprinting function. And that all sounds about right to me.

Although, you totally can juke in a way in BF2.. there's a way to do a sideways sprint jump of sorts, sorta hard to explain, but it's actually pretty natural and if you've played the game for a while you've probably done it. I sorta wish that ETQW's sprint function was metered like BF's.

Constant sprint + Jump = crazy bunny hopping.

But yeah.. sprinting should always come with some sort of trade off. I'm sorta drawing a blank on Half Life right now -- but it seems to me that there aren't many restrictions put on movement or fighting while sprinting.. but again.. my brain is mush right now..Have you played FEAR? That game has some pretty interesting melee attacks.. I know I'm sorta drifting off topic here.. but it's worth mentioning. Taking someone out with a leg sweep is great -- but hearing "HEAD SHOT!" when you scissor kick someone in the dome is priceless.

It took me less time to type that than Grift to do the type :P

Nice to see we agree though, seeing as Grift and I have a very similar "eye" and preference in regards to FPS, a genre we tend to know pretty well.

Grift: Dang, it has been a while since I played HL2. I think you can sprint in any direction... and I played some FEAR SP (I hate SP games for many reasons... very few SP FPS get me past my complaints of the genre) and a bit of MP. It had some interesting melee, but I honestly never got to use them enough to become an expert.

On leaning... I like leaning in concept, hate it in execution. I think the PS3 controller could do this quite well as an aside. I quite like the concept of a "take cover" button where your mechanics alter to allow leaning, ducking, cover fire, etc over the action-lean controls. But it is a preference... I just never really got into spacing yourself well both in regards to the wall in front of you but also the edge to get the perfect lean distance. Seems very tedious and unnatural, especially mechanically since I have small fingers and getting my ring finger up to Q doesn't work well with my middle finger on W. I found Q more natural for less-twitchy tasks as BF2 uses, which I think is a good use of such. But his is all a preference.

Screw that. 1v1 Typing of The Dead. Bring it.

Lean is somewhat useful in FEAR, but I think Call of Duty is actually the game where I've seen it put to the best use. I don't use it as much as others, but I see people online leaning out of windows with their Lee Enfield all the time.

And 20 hours of campaign (which I really doubt you're going to play more than a couple of times) can't match the replayability of a multiplayer game. Hell I played more than 40 hours of the Halo 3 beta.

Yea that's pretty fair. I think Bioshock is going to be pretty great too. Call of Duty multiplayer has always appealed to me.. although mostly the rifles only mode which is actually a mod. I really like the weapons/setting they're using this time around and I think if they match the gameplay expectations that I have for the series it's going to be pretty great.

I think both Call of Duty games had great campaigns.. not much of a story really, but still pretty compelling. This time around we're getting a campaign with a fictional backdrop and a lot more character so maybe the single player will be more appealing to those that didn't like it previously.

I just hope there's a lot of variety to the animations. COD2 actually looks a little stiff because it uses only a small handful of canned death animations. Seeing those over and over again in multiplayer looks weird, sometimes one right after the other.

I sorta wish we were ready to move to some sort of procedural animation. Not ragdolls, which aren't very realistic at all, but a system that really know how to make you die in a unique and realistic way.