Surviving and Triumphing in COD4

I am proud to present the article below, written by Mikko Alamäki, our winner of our in our Call of Duty 4 article writing contest. Also be sure to check take a look at these cool Halo Costumes for all you hardcore Halo players out there. Please share this article with your fellow Call of Duty 4 players and let us know what you think in the comments section.

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Knowing your enemy

In the average game of CoD4 HQ there are multiple types of players, rushers, campers, snipers and everything in between. The usefulness of these players to their team varies greatly from the useless free frag to the guy who carries the team. A guy with a sniper rifle can have a nice kdr but still be pointless to the game if he just camps one spot instead of moving and covering the team, same goes to the mad rusher who keeps running headlong into the fray just to get shot to bits.
The purpose of this article is to give you some ideas on how to, unlike them: die less, kill more and be more efficient at capping, holding & clearing of HQs. This is written with the point of view of Headquarters play, tho the same fundamentals apply to other rule settings as well.

One of the most important factors in continuously defeating your opponents is anticipating their moves and then exploiting their predictability. In a game of HQ there are couple of variables you have to factor in to outsmart your opposition:

- Lay of the land and HQ points
- Common traveling routes
- Camping points

With these you should always have a decent idea of where your opponents are and where they are moving into, or if they have reached their destination then where they are waiting for you and even which way they are looking at.
The average player will just be running from spawn point to the next HQ, while tunnel visioning and not minding much about anything beyond the immediate premises of the HQ. Other specimen you are likely to run into in the game is the average camper / sniper, these players are predictable enough so that with good enough knowledge of common camping spots you can estimate their exact location when you see them pop up on the radar on their first shot.

The basic logic on how to gain advantage on the predictable players is quite simple, don’t do what they are doing. The average joe makes costly mistakes all the time, the important part is learning from them. Every time you die you should ask yourself “Why did that happen? Did I do something wrong?” In most cases the answer is yes, you made a mistake and paid for it.
In this game you are bound to die, at some point your luck simply runs out and you get killed. Either you make a mistake, the opponent gets lucky or he simply played better than you. When you die you have to identify why you died so you can learn from it “ran straight into their team / was at a grenade spam point / sniper is camping there etc etc” from these you learn to avoid the mistake you did and because of that you become harder to kill.

For taking the best advantage of your knowledge of the opponents likely actions and your surroundings here are couple of dos and don’ts you should keep in mind:

- Always be conscious about your surroundings. Expose yourself as little as possible, move along walls, crouch & crawl behind objects, don’t stick your head out of windows, don’t run in open spaces. You should always know from where you can be seen and the most likely direction of opponent’s approach, this way you are always ready for an encounter.
- Avoid the open common travel routes, tho of course it’s just fine to take the shortest route from A to B if you think it’s safe. If it’s likely that the enemy is already at the spot or arrives simultaneously it’s better to not come from the most anticipated direction.
- Flank. Move a bit to the side and attack the enemy from a direction they don’t anticipate. No need to run around the whole map, usually just one house is enough to get to their side/back.
- Use the backdoor. HQ locations have multiple entrypoints so instead of running through the front door and getting shot by their whole team you can circle around, go in from the back and roll the whole joint while they are looking the wrong way. Once you get used to this you’ll find out that it’s quite common to find half their team sitting in a pile watching the front door, just like shooting fish in a barrel.
- Ambush the opponent. Hit and move, don’t camp, people hold grudges and most likely grenade or snipe you if you stay in the same place too long. It’s easy to camp an area instead of a spot, move down the hall, switch to the other corner, move up one room, they will expect you to be exactly where you killed them last time.
- Check those corners. It’s not fun to get shot in the back, takes only a second to be sure.
- Shoot through walls. Easy way to check corners, people are always in the same corners of HQ rooms, just pop couple bullets to check, you just might get lucky.

There’s also couple rules-o-thumb which usually apply to any average game of HQ:

- If you don’t expect it, they have Martyrdom. Always play as if they have it. Same applies for Last Stand.
- Snipers put claymores in the common entryway to their nest, watch your step.
- If it’s too quiet, somebody is propably sneaking up your back.
- If you try to knife somebody in the back they move the last instant or you get killed by something else. Kill is a kill, just shoot them in the back.
- If something doesn’t look right, take a shot at it to be sure.

With experience of all the afore mentioned things should gradually become a second nature, it’s mostly about avoiding making mistakes and making them pay for theirs.

Gearing up

Everybody is more comfortable with certain weapons and perks than with others, what fits their playstyle and what doesn’t. In this part of the article I talk about what I find useful for the playstyle I have, the idea is always that it has to be useful in most cases, good on offense and defense, when sneaking around and when rushing a HQ.

Weapon: Any rapid firing assault rifle or submachinegun, silenced. If it’s room-to-room tight go for SMG, anything else AR. I personally favor ARs because of the longer effective range, rapid fire is a must for close ups and multikills.
The silencer is absolutely vital, my point is simple: When you shoot a guy only he will know where you are (killcam), without silencer their whole team knows. This advantage gives you the valuable second or two to kill multiple enemies before they know what hit them and get out before they get back. Majority of the playerbase rely too much on the radar for the positional info of the opponents, no point telling them you are coming. People will hunt that red blip.
Pick the one you are most comfortable with on iron sights, even with the silencer’s shorter range the ARs are just fine on medium to long range and most of the action in this game happens on short to medium range. Acknowledge your weapon’s pros and cons and play according to them.

Perks: Basic principle is that you only want to pick something which is going to be effective for you most of the time and you can’t gain it in any other way:

Slot 1: Claymores, 3 Specs or 3 Frags. You can: Find more ammo & anticipate explosives so no point wasting perk on those. Claymores are excellent for covering your back, specs for clearing rooms (prefer flashes as they have bigger radius and imo confuses people more.) or frags for plain killing where you can’t reach with your primary.

Slot 2: Stopping Power. Period. The thing you do most in this game is shoot people with your gun, so you will want most out of it. The more effective your bullets are the faster you kill, the faster you kill the better your chances are in firefight. All the other slot 2 perks are situational in the least: you
can find more guns, you don’t want to get shot at, you don’t want to waste ammo etc. (Even if UAV Jammer is “ninja”, consider this: how often do you get killed by a guy with UAV Jammer during your UAV coverage because you couldn’t see him on the radar?)

Slot 3: Steady Aim. I consider this another vital one, around 50% of my kills are from the hip, with SMGs it’s up around 80%. The improvement this perk makes for your close up play is huge, you are much more mobile and have a clear view of the surroundings. I would only consider Deep Impact with M16 if you like to hang back a bit more, personally I pick SA with that too.

You, the player

There is one more important factor I have not mentioned yet and that’s You. The absolutely most important thing when playing is to stay cool and focused. People make a lot more mistakes when they get pissed off and unfocused, that’s what you should be counting on.
It often happens in the game that you get killed in some way that gets on your nerve, there is lag, randomly thrown grenades, helicopters, air strikes, snipers, kids screaming on the voice com, you name it.
Every time you die just take a deep breath and respawn, it’s just a game, if you lose your cool you’ll end up repeating the most common mistakes and die again and again. Play cool, play smart.

Other easily overlooked thing is bad habbits, those things you keep on doing that unnecessarily get killed. Here’s couple of my personal favourites I work hard to shake off:

Reload mania: As soon as you drop a guy you reload, you fire a couple shots at somebody on the yard and you reload, be it just 5 shots missing from the clip.
The most common way to die to this is when two guys rush a room you are camping, easy double kill but you didn’t see the second guy 5 feet behind the first one and instinctively start reloading…. Try hard to resist the impulse to reload until the situation is clear, eventually you’ll get comfortable with the idea of running with half a clip, it only takes three bullets to kill.

Claymores, must use claymores. Always check before you put down claymores, it’s only couple seconds to place the thing but that’s plenty for the guy in the next room to shoot you.
If you find yourself dying way too often with claymore in your hand just always check the front before changing to claymore. Also in tight spots think twice if it’s worth the risk of putting down a claymore, this mostly applies when you are camping in your HQ, it’s probably a better idea to keep aiming at that door than switch to claymores unless you know that you have the time.

If you feel like you get killed a lot when performing some action, pause to consider if it’s just bad luck or if you have a bad habit.

From prey to predator

The fundamentals I have described with the gearing choices combine into a sneaky and cunning tactical assault playstyle. Your ideal position would be on the blind side of your opponents, rather close and constantly on the move.
Using a silencer enables you to constantly pop in take down a guy or two and vanish before their whole team is on to you, take up position in the next room / corner / house and take them down again when they come looking for you, rinse and repeat for profit.

In the game always think about your next move, have a plan and press your advantages to the fullest. Also there is no point in playing nice and clean, you took some guy down and he is coming after you? Leave him a claymore. Opponents sitting in a room? Give them a flash and gun them down when they are busy watching the pretty colors. Shoot people in the back. Shoot people through walls.
If the heat gets too high just get out, better to be first at the next HQ than die in heroic defense of a lost cause. There is no point of making yourself fair game. Also there is nothing wrong with using things people commonly complain about like M16 or 3 Frags etc, they are available in the game for everyone so it would be silly to not use them because ”they are not fair”, don’t make artificial restrictions to yourself, as long as you don’t actually cheat it’s all fair.

Always try to do the thing they are not expecting, expect the thing they will do and be cool and prepared. With some practice you’ll become guy who always backstabs the snipers, cuts down the over eager rushers and gets the HQs. At that point the only thing you really have to be careful about is noticing if there is somebody on the other side who plays the same way.

Written by Mikko Alamäki
XBOX Live tag Malamaki