Kevin's Watch

Ok, after the complete failure of getting Doom 3 to install, I took it back to Best Buy and they actually gave me store credit for another game. Unbelievable. I expected a big hassle. Of course, it helped that they had no other copies of that old game in stock.

So I used my credit to get CoD4. It's fun. I'm not done with it yet (my 7-yr-old will barely let me on my own damn computer now!). However, I downloaded the 1.4 patch for multiplayer games, and I've started having problems (program hangs, blue screen, restarts, etc). I checked my Event Viewer logs and it appears this file, iw3mp.exe, is the culprit. I did some online searches and other people are having problems with this as well.

I was wondering if you guys had any issues with this game. Should I have downloaded the 1.1-1.3 patches first? Should I uninstall that patch? I'm still searching online for answers, so I'll get back to you if I learn anything useful.

Apparently, the problem lies with the device drivers for onboard sound cards. The Activision support site suggested turning down hardware acceleration for the sound card, and that worked fine.

I'm still having trouble running the game, however. It won't run on my user account, only the Admin account (which I know is a bad idea). And the game suggests using "optimal settings" which are not the full settings. This is disappointing to me, since I spent over $300 upgrading my system specifically to handle the newest games at the highest settings. The staff at Best Buy assured me that that 8800 gt would run this game at the highest settings, and I've got the overclocked version!

Anyway, I've turned the resolution down to 1024x768, instead of the 1280x1024, and it seems to run fine. Anisotropic filtering is set at the lowest level as suggested by the game. It looks fine, but I want to crank it all the way up!

So, would some more RAM help? I've got 1 GB, but another GB would be cheap.

I'm surprised that the 8800GT isn't cutting it, you'd need to spend serious money to get something more powerful. Is the PC version of COD4 locked to 60fps like the console versions? If there's a hack that will allow it to run at 30 it might be worth a shot. I've always said that anything above 30fps is a waste. It's probably worth investing in a second stick of RAM too, I'd start out with 2GB if I was making a new system right now.

Finally a mainstream shooter has caught up with Counterstrike!

The multiplayer does play a lot like Counterstrike, which I think is a huge shame. The single player game is so different, forcing you to make maximum use of cover, shoot accurately, hide from the enemy and pick your moment to dash across the open. My firefight in the TV station must've gone on for 20 minutes, I could barely see anything and I could't pop my head up without risking a bullet or a grenade and that's how I imagine real combat would go down.

The multiplayer has a standard run-and-gun game mechanic and although it's well executed, I find Halo 3 is more fun despite being inferior in many ways.

The TV station was indeed difficult. I think I died there more than any other place. I liked that realistic hide-and-shoot. You had to put yourself there, and actually pretend your hide was on the line. I did a lot of crawling on my belly, popping up for a quick shot, and then lying back down again.

The sniper level was really cool, too. Ditto the gunship--it looked so much like those videos we see from Iraq where planes are taking out guys running around on the ground. Modern Warfare indeed.

Nav, I think the problem is my system, and not the 8800GT. I just loaded Norton's 2008, and I haven't tweaked it at all. Also, I've just recently started cleaning out my start up tab in msconfig (something I've put off for too long). In addition, there seems to be some driver issues I still haven't sorted out. I think the game is a bit buggy yet. Activision has released 5 patches, and I expect more.

Nav wrote:The multiplayer does play a lot like Counterstrike, which I think is a huge shame. The single player game is so different, forcing you to make maximum use of cover, shoot accurately, hide from the enemy and pick your moment to dash across the open. My firefight in the TV station must've gone on for 20 minutes, I could barely see anything and I could't pop my head up without risking a bullet or a grenade and that's how I imagine real combat would go down.

The multiplayer has a standard run-and-gun game mechanic and although it's well executed, I find Halo 3 is more fun despite being inferior in many ways.

I ditto Nav. Except when people are cheap with the Energy Sword, camp and in general act like a d-bag.

I completely suck with the energy sword, to which my service record will attest. I don't run into a lot of campers in general, but Snowbound is too easily campable for my liking.

It looks like COD4 is the latest in a long line of games to be released before it's truly ready. The internet makes it far too easy for developers to not bug test effectively and then fix things three or four patches in. It's relatively rare to have video driver issues with an nvidia card though, that's much more of an ATI staple. I've always thought of it as the price you pay for that bit of extra grunt that comes with an ATI card.