So you all read my glowing review of the Call of Duty 4 campaign in this previous post. OK, so maybe not all of you, but I know at least 1 person did. I had said that I would try the online multiplayer that night, but I never got around to it. Then the holidays and work hit, and I didn’t spend much time on the XBox 360 at all. Last night my brother, some buddies, and I got online and decided to give it a go. Not good, folks. Not good.

First of all, there is no cooperative mode for playing the campaign with a buddy. WTF? That is a huge, gaping hole in the game. I’ve played through every game I have that supports co-op with a friend and had a blast doing it. As short as this game is, I would think they could have easily included a cooperative online mode. Incidentally, I went out and purchased Call of Duty 3 simply because I loved Call of Duty 4 so much. I ran to my shelf last night after realizing there was no co-op in 4 and low and behold – it’s not in Call of Duty 3 either! Doh!

After I settled down and finished ranting to my friends about the lack of cooperative multiplayer, we entered into a private lobby and played some 2 on 2 team deathmatch to get the feel of the game. The controls were smooth and the levels were really fun to play. It took me a while to actually start killing people because my brute force “shotty or nothing” style that I use in Gears of War was just not cutting it.. I know, I know – MILITARY SHOOTER. You need strategy, patience, teamwork, and multiple styles of attack – all of which I rarely use while running around half rabid in Gears.

Once we were comfortable, we decided to go find a match and see how the 4 of us did together out in the “real world”. You know – that place where 10 year olds taunt you before they blow your head off from behind. And this is where Call of Duty 4 fell down. First, you don’t really have one individual hosting a game nor can you find a particular match you want. You are thrown into a lobby with another group of people who have been waiting, and you are all automatically divided into teams. The good part is that your party stays together on the same team – that is, if you could all make it into the room! Without fail, one or more of our team members were left behind when joining a game. Your only option is to back out, go back to your original private lobby, and try to find another game. Layer on top of that poor performance, random disconnects and lockups, and general frustration over keeping your team in one place and actually getting to play with your friends, and you have a really bad online multiplayer experience.

I haven’t taken the time to read the boards yet to see if this is a problem with the Call of Duty 4 game, the servers they run on, or the XBox Live service. I tend to think it’s not the latter since Gears and other online multiplayer games still work fine. Are there any secrets to getting past all the frustration and avoiding the stuff I described above? I don’t know, but if someone does then I wish they would let me in on them. I really think the game would be a blast to play online, but I’m going to avoid it until all the problems are fixed.