What I'm looking for
* good community -> fair play
* team play (tactical gameplay possible/necessary)
* fast paced, action packed
* realism *based* gameplay (ballistics, damage models, etc.)
* good sound
* good graphics
Things I'm trying to avoid
* camping/point whoring
* cheating/hacking
* kiddies (I used to like OFP community for its maturity, but now everything has changed)
Imo you can't be a pc gamer if you haven't even tried cod4, however, although it's a great game, it has some issues:
* Community is massive, good clans are out there, and poor clans too...
* This depends, sometimes lonewolf plays fine, and in other game modes at a higher game level you need to play as a team.
* Yes
* Can shoot through walls and in hardcore mode it's realistic yes, quick deaths, have to aim with ironsights/whatever as no hud crossair, etc.
* Yes, if you have 5.1 you will be amazed, all of the cod games have had better sound than the competitors imo.
* yes, decent graphics, good performance
BUT:
* usually not an issue thanks to the UAV, campers can be annoying but it's much less bad than in many many games.
* An issue unfortunately, punkbuster still fails sometimes.
* A major issue, you need to find good servers as the random servers are filled with people calling you a cheater, noob, wallhacker, whatever when you play too good or too bad. People moan about the game mechanics like martyrdom ( perk to drop a grenade when dieing).
Personally I stick to the 20 people max servers, any more and it's a spamfest, imo the 6vs6 ish servers are best, most servers are 30-50 players though :(.
Hope this explains a bit about cod4.