In his seminal book The Art of War, 6th Century B.C. military tactician Sun Tzu, kind of the Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf of his day, wrote the following: "Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated." Obviously Sun was a man who had experienced first hand the horrors of the Boxing Day sale at his local branch of Next. Publishers Activision certainly didn't make many mistakes when they started their Call of Duty series, but after three successful editions of the first person shooter, the company have finally decided to cancel their World War II revival show and bring us it's the fourth production from the modern theatre of war. The game sees developers Infinity Ward, who have previously worked on Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2, return to the director's chair - and the result is an amazing show of military force in both single and multiplayer modes.

The single player campaign begins in the darkness above The Bering Strait, with you roping out of a helicopter, into the teeth of a raging storm and down onto the deck of the cargo ship below. As the vessel pitches and rolls in the swell of the furious sea, your squad moves into the ships' bowels, playing cat and mouse with the onboard security detail as you go. Finally you reach the package you came for but, before you can secure it, enemy fighter jets slam missiles into the ship's hull and suddenly your only objective is to get off the sinking vessel. Trying to clear the cobwebs from your mind, you stumble through fires and the steam from broken pipes, charging up metal walkways that have turned into water chutes and out into the elements. With the acid from your lungs burning the back of your throat, you summon one last burst of adrenaline, sprint along the rain and spray drenched deck and launch yourself off the side of the ship, into what seems like suspended animation, towards the waiting helicopter. This is just the first level. This is basic training. Welcome to Call of Duty 4.

For its greater part, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's solo missions see you experiencing a kind of Special Forces split personality; you swap between the personas of Sergeant John 'Soap' MacTavish of the SAS and Sergeant Paul Jackson of the USMC. Under the command of the gruff Captain Price, 'Soap' is deployed in Russia and the surrounding region on the trail of Ultranationalist leader Imran Zakhaev, who is trying to return his homeland to the glories of its hammer and sickle days. To help him out he's got a pile of bargaining chips you measure in megatons and an ally by the name of Khaled Al-Asad who's keeping Sergeant Jackson and his fellow Americans distracted in the Middle East by started a coup with the biggest televised money shot since Janet and Justin got jiggy at the 2004 Superbowl.

There are many things that go into making the campaign special. What it all comes down to though is that the single player levels seem like they may come close to replicating the confusion and intensity of actual war zones. The standard battlefield combat is so frenetic that decisions are often made by split second balancing of your head and gut. Tight spaces behind cover raise alarm because they're restrictive, whilst moments out in the open cause panic because of the palpable feeling of vulnerability, and there's a real sense that having 360-degree vision still wouldn't be much use if events conspired against you. Sprinkled throughout the regular fighting are some stunning set piece moments that drip with cinematic imagination. One in particular, during a flashback level set in Prypiat (the name may not mean anything until you add the word Chernobyl), is a real heart stopper. The game also includes a couple of the now seemingly obligatory on-rails helicopter machine gun stages and a more interesting one in an AC-130. The whole level feels like the complete flip side of the real war on the ground - slow, sterile and distant and, as such, the black and white visuals that resemble film negative are very appropriate.

All of this doesn't mean that CoD 4's single player isn't without its flaws, albeit minor ones. To begin with, for anyone inexperienced in first person shooters, being drafted straight into a crack team of soldiers who don't hang around can feel like you're being thrown straight in at the deep end - almost literally - and the rudimentary weapons practice you're given on an SAS firing range really doesn't help much. Then there are the numerous times when the game continuously throws enemies at you until you reach a point further on and they mysteriously dry up. This reliance on volume to increase difficulty also masks that while your opponents are decent shots and initially take up intelligent positions, they tend to either remain in the same spot or make a mad dash straight for you. It may be that the latter option is chosen safe in the knowledge that, until you pluck up the courage to push on, there's an endless supply of reinforcements following behind. Another battlefield niggle is that the grenade indicator is way too small and grey to be seen. The result of this is that, far too often, you'll end up lying on the ground reading a smug message warning you how dangerous the exploding projectiles are. The final and biggest grumble, simply because of the sheer quality of what's included, is that the whole thing is just too short. Although there are multiple skill levels and an arcade mode to unlock, it will only take experienced players around five hours, complete greenhorns no more than eight, to reach the campaign's conclusion - which is a thrilling if not completely happy one.

In contrast to the short single player game, the multiplayer in CoD 4 has more depth than a Russian missile silo. Supporting up to eighteen players online, the game includes a wide variety of different maps, many of which are expansions of parts of the campaign levels, which the developers appear to have pinpointed as being prime for group gaming. Apart from the usual every-man-for-himself, team deathmatch and capture the flag options, Search and Destroy mode and Sabotage are both interesting contests based around the planting of a bomb. There's also Headquarters, a points-based team game that involves keeping possession of a laptop, as well as some hardcore and old school options. Nice touches during matches are the UVA Drone, air strike and helicopter support bonuses on offer for stringing three, five and seven kills together respectively, but the biggest pull to keep players coming back is the create-a-character feature.

To begin with you can only build a soldier from one of a number of preset classes, which determines their abilities (called perks), which weapons they carry and any attachments for these. As you play standard matches you'll gain experience points for completing certain challenges and objectives. These points are used to level up your recruit, acquiring new weapons, attachments and perks as you go and, after only a short time, you'll unlock the ability to create your own customised character - which is where the real fun begins. If you manage to take your glorious military career all the way to level 55 you'll be awarded a golden Desert Eagle and the chance to reach Prestige Mode. Here you have the option to go all the way down to level 1 in return for an insignia confirming your achievement. Once back at the beginning you can try and repeat the accomplishment up to nine more times, with a new insignia awarded on every occasion you do.

With so much going on throughout CoD 4 it's possible to overlook how good its graphics actually are. The night and day, smoke and lighting effects make each level feel individual and special, something that's only added to by the way yellows and browns predominate the colour pallet of the Middle Eastern sections and greens and greys in Eastern Europe. The crowning jewel, through, is the flashback mission in Prypiat. Here, as in other sections, the pace of the game slows and you can appreciate the way Infinity Ward have captured the feeling of desolation in an area that seems like it has had the life bleached out of it. On a par with the high quality of the in game graphics is the presentation - with satellite images and 3D modelling, CoD 4 has ultra-modern written all over it. These production values also extend to the audio within the game, blending a complex combination of acoustic ingredients to make up the noise of a battlefield, from the sound of distant gunfire right down to the crunch, squelch or rustle of whatever is currently under foot.

The huge addition lifespan the online play adds to a campaign mode which may be short on playing time, but certainly not on memorable moments or replay value, means that Infinity Ward really have created a balanced game that's a hit in both the single and multiplayer camps. It's a title that has brought the series into the modern day in every sense and is bound to have a dramatic effect on the next generation of console skirmishes. In videogame terms CoD 4 really does rewrite the old book on war.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).