Friday, February 29, 2008

COD4 Patch Arrives, Better Late Than Never

Earlier today, the long overdue patch for Call of Duty 4 was finally made available. After playing for about six hours total, it's clear they really didn't fix much.

The major problem was the lack of host migration. Before the patch you'd be lucky if you were able to play 2 rounds in a row before the host dropped out and you were dumped back to the lobby by yourself, forcing you to join a new match. Just as often, you'd find a game, the match would start, and the "host" would leave immediately, breaking up everyone who had just been matched together. When this happened a couple times in a row, it got frustrating real quick. It was also a ton of fun when you were in the middle of a great match and the host would drop.

After the patch, the frequency of host disconnects seems to be diminished but "host migration" isn't anything of the kind. What happens is, if the host leaves, the game ends and everyone gets dumped back to the lobby where a new host is selected and a new game is started. It doesn't pick up in the middle of the game like we were led to believe. And it took how many months to get this patch out?

The quick mute was another option I was looking forward to, but its implementation is half-assed as well. From the score screen (Back button) you can use the D-pad to scroll through the names and press the A button to immediately mute whoever is selected. That's about as simple as it can be, only for whatever reason, that person becomes unmuted at the end of the match. Seeing as the "host migration" actually makes it possible to play with the same group of people for more than 2-3 games in a row, you'll have to mute people individually every single match. Not a huge deal, but it doesn't really make any sense. Because of this, it's more effective to just bring up their profile and mute them the old way.

The last major thing fixed by the patch was sniping, which beforehand was pretty much useless. It is certainly better; a 20-6 run on Bloc with a sniper rifle confirmed this for me. If I had tried that before the patch my score would've been more like 6-20. Still, I've never been big on sniping so I don't see myself breaking out the rifle too often. And even though it is much improved I still experienced a couple instances where I shot a guy dead on multiple times and he didn't drop. All in all though, I'd imagine people who love sniping are going to be pretty pleased. If you were somehow able to pull off sniping before the patch, you're gonna be a force to be reckoned with now that your bullets actually tend to go where your cross hairs are pointed.

They also finally fixed the "Your playlist data is older than the hosts" error you'd get whenever joining a friends game from an invite when you first started the game up.

I'm just completely baffled that it took them 4 months to get this patch out and it doesn't even do what it was supposed to.

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