Its allright...
While the game looks good graphicaly, the modelers realy have to go back to the drawing board. The weapons are seriously out of proportion and badly positioned. The AI soldiers regularily clip theyr hand through granade launchers on the M16's, the weapons proportions are completely wrong, for instance the M249 SAW is way too small and the MP5 is way too large. The combat is identical to COD2 and 3, more 3 if we get picky.
If your looking for to the bone realism, franquely, go look ealswhere. COD4 is better compaired to a action movie. Big booms, big ego's and lots of drama.
The good thing is, it runs on the Unreal07 engine, which is fantastic! Its realy forgiving and will run on just about anything...even a blender i could say. while you can churn up the settings on a top class rig, you wont realy notice the difference. Unless you stare at pixles for hours.
The Multiplayer is like the old COD multiplayers...ambitious but rubbish. Theres no real aim to it, you just shoot for what its worth. While the perks are a nice touch at trying to make it more individual, its realy easy to max them out and i have to say, games like BF2 and BF2142 did handle the customisations alot better.
Mind you also the gameplay is often quite alienating. Whenever your with some AI squad members, they tend to do most of the shooting for you, so you just end up picking off the straglers. Most noticable in the Ship Raid mission. Where you mainly watch the others shoot away. All in all, i think its a nice litle time waster, the game dosent have a long life span, since you can get through the campaign in around 5h nonstop. Give or take 1. So there you have it. Nothing new, but not bad either.