

The newbie guide to Call of Duty.


Staff member
Call of Duty is a very popular first person shooter conceived by a person named Ben Chichoski. It started as a PC game, and expanded to gaming consoles. The game is primarily published by Activision, and the trademark is owned by Activision themselves. The game that put Call of Duty on the map is none other than the revolutionary Call of Duty 4.

Call of Duty 4 started a revolution that spawned a world-wide sensation. If you're new to the series, and don't know where to start. This guide will help you get through the frontlines.

The first thing you need to know is that COD is unlike any other first person shooters you've played before, because it forces you to really, really aim. A lot of first person shooters on the market don't have something called "Aim Down the Sights" (ADS for short) this feature is now a staple of the COD series. You have aim/look on your directional stick, and with ADS, you can point your sight at your enemy. This also works for Sniping.

So the first thing for you to practice is knowing how to use the aim stick in conjunction with the ADS. When you see an enemy, move your view to his area, and press the ADS button which is usually the left trigger. Once you do that, you need to center it at the enemy's body, or head.

Tip: It is preferable to aim for the head, headshots DO count in the Call of Duty universe. And likewise, players see you as a better player if you pull off a headshot.

You have more equipment and actions to learn, though. Your character has a standard Frag grenade, and a special grenade button, both which are usually on the secondary trigger buttons. The PlayStation version has L2 and R2 buttons on the triggers, while the Xbox version has right thumper, and left thumper. These grenades are essential for flanking a location - such as a room. If you do not know who is in the room, or if there's anyone in the room, you can either chuck a grenade in there, or take the risk of running into their "trap." I'll go into detail about this later.

There's also posture changes. When you begin the game, your position is standing up. You have 2 other posture choices - laying prone, or crouching. These postures are very essential if you want to keep as much cover as possible. For example, laying prone is perfect if you want to snipe, and have as less visibility from a distance or are close to a cover. If you're crouching, you're probably trying to stay out of sight as possible. I will explain this later.

You can swipe your primary to your secondary weapon - this enables you to switch weapons on the fly. If you go out of bullets, change to your secondary, or primary - whichever weapon has the most bullets by the time you're out of bullets in one of them. If both are out of bullets, go find a weapon and pick it up.

Tip: Your weapons have cartridges just as you do in real life. So, they're bound to run out of bullets per cartridge. In this case, RELOAD your weapon.

If you run out of bullets and you don't see any weapons nearby... There are a few ways to go about this. If you see an enemy in close range, you have the ability to use a knife against them - this is called the melee button. You use the right stick to press, or swipe left to right. If you see someone had just recently died and you're far away, Sprint as much as possible to get to your destination immediately. The sprint button is in your left stick. Press and hold it down to run for a long period of time. The game limits how much sprint you can muster, but in some COD games, such as MW2, there are perks that allow you unlimited sprint. The perks will be explained in a bit.

Wha? What the hell are perks?
Perks are little details to make your player or weapon do something "extra" on top of what the game allows them. You have 3 perks to choose from. Each one is a tier of perks. A lot of people has ideas on which perks is best for each situation. I will go one by one to help you understand what they do and why they're essential.

Juggernaut: Juggernaut is one of the most controversial, one of the most discussed perks in any of the COD games. One reason: It reduces the amount of bullets required to take you out. Your player has health, if you take too much damage, you're dead. Juggernaut is like your Flak Jacket. Some weapons can't take down these players so easily, while others do. Even with Stopping Power Hence the controversy.

Stopping Power: Much like Juggernaut, Stopping Power is also one of the most controversial topics in any COD game. Because as opposed to Juggernaut, your bullet damage is increased depending on your weapon. This reduces the time in which you can take out an enemy. For example, if you pitted an AK47 player with no Stopping Power, against the AK47 player with Stopping Power, in this case the guy with the Stopping Power is going to win provided he has some health left.

Sleight of Hand: You can reload your weapon faster. This is great if you're the guy who likes to swap weapons at the drop of a hat. For example, if you ran out of MP5 bullets, you can swap to your pistol and finish off your enemy.

Steady Aim: Your weapons and your player has a sway to each shot. Steady Aim is like a syringe to help you keep steady for a small amount of time. Use that time wisely, because once you run out, your sway returns - resulting in decreased accuracy.

Bomb Squad: Throughout the game, you will come across players strategically placing various kinds of explosives such as C4, or a sniper's Claymore. Bomb Squad helps you find these explosives even though they're behind a wall.

Bandolier: These are straps of bullets across the chest. In COD4, it means having more bullets, or cartridges at your disposal. One other thing, if you're wearing this perk, and you're close to a similar weapon, whatever bullets that's left in the weapon gets added to your bullets inventory. Much like MW2's Scavenger perk.

Note: This is also true if you're not wearing Bandolier.

Martyrdom: Martyrdom is a tactic soldiers use as a last resort. In COD4, once you die, you drop a live grenade. The enemy has a few seconds to run for cover if they want to survive. Most players use it as a revenge/avenge tactic. Others hate, loathe, despise the perk.

Now that I've given you an idea of what perks are and what they do. I will get to the basics of winning a Call of Duty match.

When you begin a match in any COD game. You MUST be prepared. It would be much better if you had memorized that particular map. Because the first thing to know about the map is WHERE an enemy is likely to scout.

And just how do you know where to go?
At first, your brain tells you where to go, but the longer you play the game, you will learn a few things - The first thing that will happen is that your brain is going to change into a structured schema. So, my first advice is to LEARN the map from the inside out.

To do this, play the game as you please, but keep in mind that you're looking for all sorts of locations that a player is likely to be in. I mentioned earlier that you can crouch, you can lay prone, you can run, you can walk. One of the most popular position is - believe it or not; crouching. Why crouching? There are a lot of Campers. About 60% of COD gamers are comprised of campers, and snipers. The difference between the two is that snipers are far more forgiving than the ones that camp throughout the entire game like a wimp.

Sooo...I have to look for camping spots, too?
Yeap. Yes. Exactly. So, my other advice is to; pay attention to your corners. You never know who's camping in the corner until you watch your own killcam.

Once you've learned enough of the camping spots for most of the locations in any given map, you've just learned the most popular camping spots. Now, lets get to the second half of knowing where the most popular places to scout.

Remember 60 percent are campers and snipers. To avoid Snipers: Stay away from wide spaces; that includes not limited to streets, open fields, open roads, buildings that have an easy access to sniping - for example, Crash has more than 3 of these spots.

The other 40 percent are players who play defensively by going from camping spot to another camping spot, run n' gun [ahem; rushers], and players that use scopes with their Sub Machine Guns, and Light Machine Guns. There are also silent types that stay off the radar. To do this, is sprinting a lot from location to location with a silenced weapon.

Now, from here, if you know where players are with these playstyles, then you have just learned the most popular places to scout. For example, in MW2's SubBase, you would think there would be more campers than there are rushers. This varies by match. I see a lot of campers in the second floor of one building with stairs leading to the server room. Sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for unsuspecting people to come up the stairs. Others are taking position in the "bridge" from one side to the other - holding down the fort. Others are sniping from one of the two towers near the bridge. That's how varied it is. Whereas, in COD4's crossfire, most campers are inside buildings, and most SMG/LMG players are scouting the building to building on one side of the map, if they manage to clear all buildings on one side, they run across the street discreetly.


*sigh Another COD mention without the proper appreication showed to it's roots, THE PC!!! lol. Which by the way is Q for special grenade and G or Middle Mouse for Frag :D. But good guide, same advice I'd give a newbie. Map Knowledge is a huge advantage really, once you learn the maps and the popular areas you can work around it, find ways to flank them or come from a direction they are not suspecting.


Staff member
That is an excellent tip. And I agree.

Waffen SS

Note. primary weapons in ADS slow you down, but you can move just as quickly with your pistol in ADS. in HC the pistol is deadly and accurate. snipers should utilise this. try uav with silenced m1911. lovely. the m1911 has slightly more punch than the usp and is cool.

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