S&S; Mobile Review: Modern Combat 4

Title: Modern Combat 4
Format: iOS
Release Date: December 6, 2012
Publisher: Gameloft
Developer: Gameloft
Price: $6.99
ESRB Rating: M

Modern Combat has been frequently compared to the Call of Duty franchise, just for the mobile player.  After a number of hours with the game, those comparisons are starting to make perfect sense.  

Presentation: 

This game is quite the looker, easily one of the best looking games on the iOS.  If you have one of the more powerful tablets, like the newer iPads, the game can look and run even better.  I played it on the iPad 2, and it still ran and looked great.  Like Infinity Blade 2, this game is stand out among the hundreds of games on the Apple store.  The environments are visually stunning for a iOS device, with some pretty diverse locales to do battle in.  There are some cool new motion blur effects and new physics effects thanks to the Havoc engine.  Some cool particle effects make those large set pieces and explosions look that much better.  The sound design is pretty stellar as well, bullets whistling over your head while the music upbeat music drives the action forward.  This is easily one of the best presentations found on the iOS, and its only a taste of what we're going to get later on as the tablets and phones continue to get more powerful.  

Core Gameplay and Multiplayer:

The controls in this game could've gone either way, it could've broken the game, but it didn't.  Don't get me wrong, the controls aren't perfect, but they do enough with no actual exterior buttons.  Your thumbs will be doing most of the work, your left controls movement, and the right controls firing, chucking grenades, and sprinting.  The overall system works well, but initially, it'll cause a bit of frustration.  Accidentally sprinting, when you wanted to shoot becomes all too familiar.  The game utilizes an auto-aim mechanic that doesn't require you to aim your crosshairs perfectly at a target, it helps and reduces the workload from your thumbs.  The game features a pretty robust multiplayer component as well, it has all the bells and whistles you've come to expect with any FPS game.  All your progression and leveling is here, and with 8 modes and maps to play across, its pretty deep.  There isn't any lag in the game, from the several matches I played, it was extremely smooth.  

Final Thoughts:

Its pretty obvious that Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour draws a lot of inspiration from different FPS games, and it does a great job of creating a good first person shooter experience for the mobile player.  
S&S Rating: 7.5/10 @whatsPlay