Call of Duty 4 on the PC and Xbox 360 is a great example of what happens when pacing, controls, and storyline come together to form a great game. The DS version tries to keep those same gaming virtues at its heart but is inconsistent in how well it follows them. The gameplay isn’t terrible, but it does have some flaws that can’t simply be blamed on the DS itself.

The plot isn’t the exact same as the one found on the PC but is set in the same events and overall timeline. Just as in the other versions, the gameplay switches between the player controlling either an Army soldier or a British SAS operative depending on the level, and while the DS game takes place in many of the same missions as its PC counterpart they are from a completely different perspective. The new story arcs tread some familiar territory, but are different enough to be called their own storylines in their own right.

The top screen of the DS shows the player’s viewpoint and has a very minimalist HUD that shows an ammo indicator and a pulsing red glow around the edges of the screen when the player is hurt. The bottom screen is separated into two with the thin bar on the left leaving room for a large GPS display on the right. The GPS display shows the layout of the player’s immediate surroundings as well as the locations of enemies. The thin left bar has a weapon button that can either be tapped to reload the current weapon or held to switch between weapons. The bar also has a grenade button which can be tapped to ready a grenade or held to switch types as well as a context-sensitive interact button.

To look around the game world the player simply moves the stylus on the large GPS screen. The d-pad is used to move and strafe, and the left bumper is used fire the current weapon. It is a fairly standard setup for shooters on the platform, but Call of Duty 4 also adds some nice new features to the norm. Double-tapping up on the d-pad makes the character sprint forward, and double-tapping down makes the character crouch. Double-tapping the stylus on the GPS screen makes the character bring the current weapon up to their shoulder and use its sights for higher accuracy while shooting at the expense of movement speed.

The gameplay itself is where the game falters. Levels are all essentially corridor shooters with often little to no options to take a route that isn’t set in stone, filled with enemies that always come from the same doorways and balconies. Enemy combatants are about as smart as an armed box of oranges, which more often than not leave cover only to stand upright and stationary in the middle of a room until killed. Even when the player is completely pinned down the enemies never rush, letting the player simply slowly strafe out and shoot them one by one in the exact positions they were in before.

The level of realism remains steadily inconsistent through the title, enough to make the player question what exactly in that regard the developers were shooting for. The ability to crouch and use the iron sights makes the game feel tactical, a feeling that falls flat when fighting the universally stationary enemies that have near perfect accuracy regardless if the player is crouched behind cover or standing in the open as they do. While the sights can be used to kill someone at range with a single shot to the head it is the only way to do so, as that same enemy can be wearing nothing more than coveralls and take repeated bursts from a rifle to the head and torso and only keel over after the 20th round has hit its mark. Granted the player can also take a gratuitous amount of damage before needing to take cover and heal for a bit al la Halo, but the enemies can take even more punishment despite their lack of healing.

Other flaws pop up that further harm the gameplay itself. The crosshair on the top screen grows and shrinks in size to try to signify how accurate the weapon currently is but is nothing more than a visual effect. If the player dies and has to go back to a checkpoint they respawn with the weapons they started off with at the beginning of the level rather than the weapons they actually held at that point in the game. The game boasts a wide selection of weapons such as handguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers but it is incredibly aggravating to die and go back to using the starting weapon and pistol and have no option to go back in the level and retrieve anything else.

The action on screen is surprisingly smooth and maintains a relatively high framerate, and shares none of the perspective issues when looking around the environment that have cropped up on other shooters on the platform. The gun models are easily recognizable and detailed both on the ground and in the player’s hand; though when looking down the sights the 3d model is replaced with a simple sprite. Grenade explosions shower an area with shrapnel and dust, and the explosions caused by rockets or explosive barrels are large angry balls of fire. The environments are all well detailed; with the damage and rubble caused by war apparent in many locations in a war torn city, consoles and piping on board ships, and environmental effects when bouncing around in a humvee in the desert.

The game does make use of the strengths of the platform in using minigames perform tasks such as defusing explosives or hacking keypads. To defuse explosives the player must use the stylus to carefully trace a pair of wires before the time limit. Incorrectly tracing a wire or tracing the wrong wire makes the player start over on that wire and really put the stress on. Hacking is a simple matter of rotating wire pieces in some way that the power node makes connection with all four number nodes at once, then tapping the number found into the panel to successfully unlock the panel.

Call of Duty 4 for the DS isn’t completely terrible, but shooters on the platform have an uphill battle set for them even without having flaws of their own. Some of the game’s flaws can be overlooked but the checkpoint weapon bug is inexcusable and the nearly complete lack of enemy AI is essentially the equivalent of taking Doom’s enemies and making them forget to move forward. With just a bit more care put forth the game could have easily set a new bar for shooters on the DS, but instead is a missed opportunity.