Much to the delight of first-person shooter fans everywhere, “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” the goldmine created in a partnership between Infinity Ward and Activision, recently released the Variety Map Pack.

The pack, a downloadable

add-on to the award-winning game, features four new multiplayer maps for the popular FPS, each of which is slated toward varying aspects of gameplay.

As an avid player of “COD4,” I snapped up the maps the day they became available. Downloading via Xbox Live was fairly painless, except for the $20 I had to sacrifice in order to get the necessary Microsoft Points purchase the maps. The $20 garnered me 1600 points, double what I needed for the maps, so while waiting for the download to come to fruition I perused the Xbox Live store to see what I could frivolously spend my excess points on.

Once finished, however, I jumped straight into what I was hoping would be nothing short of sheer genius in FPS form. I must say, Infinity Ward did not disappoint.

By far, Creek seemed to be the most popular map of the pack. Placing combatants in the ruins of an abandoned war-torn village, anyone who has played a round of paintball in the woods can immediately identify with this map. Creek is sniper heaven. Gilly suits make those sporting long-ranged rifles nearly impossible to see when immobile, yet this advantage is always balanced by the ever-present threat of a rush-attack through the lower-level entrances to other sides of the map through caves and valleys.

On the other end of the spectrum is China Town, a site of urban warfare where players must dart between buildings and windows to keep two steps ahead of any bullets trailing quickly behind them. From my own experience, this map can play well to nearly every type of player. Those wanting to bum-rush through a building while wielding a shotgun can do so, but need to keep a wary eye out for enemies hunching in a cramped room across the road with the sights of their machine guns and their itchy trigger fingers trained on your location. Survival here depends on quick reactions and precise movements.

Broadcast, the third installment in the add-on, will look familiar to anyone who has completed the single player campaign. Modeled after the television studio level where military coup leader Kahled Al-Asad broadcasts his propaganda to the world, gamers face tight corridors with wide-open parking lots. Those who enjoy flitting from doorway to doorway would do well to keep a shotgun or automatic assault rifle in tow, but if scoping down on the parking lots sounds better, I’m always a big fan of looking through a red-dot sight attached to whatever light machine gun I may have handy.

Finally, Killhouse pits players against each other in a military training course, with a mixture of hard and soft obstacles for players to take cover (or cower) behind. Limited nearly exclusively to games of headquarters or one-on-one cage matches, Killhouse plops the gamer in the middle of a fast-paced firefight where it comes down to who manages to pull the trigger first.

For what is the equivalent of $10, Infinity Ward has managed to pack more than its fair share of value into this package. So, gamers, I encourage you to go out and get this bundle if you haven’t already, and I bid thee happy fragging.