ic-games Review - Call of Duty - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

ic-games Review - Call of Duty - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii ic-games Review - Home - Review, Preview and Interview for PC, Xbox,Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

Call of Duty

Information
Reviewer: Andrew St.Denis
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Reviewed: PC
Genre: First Person
UK Release: 07th Nov 2003
Article Date: 11th Jan 2004
Difficulty: Medium
Retail Price:
Price Comparison:
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Score Breakdown

Experience:
Game Play:
Graphics:
Sound:
Overall Score: 96%

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Pros

Atmospheric gameplay

Top notch sounds

Impressive graphics

Why are you still reading this, go buy it already

Cons

Too short... it could last 6 months and it'd be too short though

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Screenshots

9 of 26

There seems to have been more then a few World War II First Person Shooter games out of late, and the latest in the long line is Activision’s Call of Duty. This time however there is a little more to the genre, since you are not just playing one of the allied roles, you get to play all the major nations, USA, UK and Russia.

The first major action you take part in after taking basic training is as an element of the Allied airborne forces during ‘Operation Overlord’ the D-Day landings in Normandy, France on June 6th 1944. Starting with the US 101st Airborne drop around Ste. Mare Eglise and the resulting battles around that area. Then you move onto the British 6th Airborne glider mission on the ‘Pegasus Bridge’ and the battles that followed that too. Before finally moving onto the turning point for the Soviet army in the East, Stalingrad, in each set of missions you get to play one character striving to make it through the war, preferably with all bits intact.

Now when you get everything started you might just start wondering if you’ve accidentally installed Medal of Honor, and you won’t be that far away from the truth, since the designers of this game were also the lead people for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MoH). Now while there are some similarities to MoH Call of Duty (CoD) is not the same, in fact if you imagine all the things you’ve ever liked from all those FPS games you’ve ever played and roll them all together then you’re closer to what you can expect from this game.

The start of any game begins at boot camp, where you run through a small assault course and weapons training, while it is short it does go through everything you need to play the game while not being so long that if you know what you are doing it gets too tedious, then you are onto the start of the US 101st’s missions. This is where you immerse yourself into the 1940’s and sit in awe at what your forefathers sacrificed so that you could sit there shooting virtual Germans.

Back to the gameplay, you will soon learn that your best friend in the whole world is cover, you will find yourself ducking down behind obstacles then standing, running like hell then belly flopping down behind the next thing capable of stopping gunfire.
You also have the ability to lean around corners, and you will see others doing the same, on both sides, and you will also find that it’s another thing that is needed to survive. Just like other games you will also find ‘med packs’ to help regain health during each mission, but the frequency of these packs depends on what difficulty level you have picked, the harder the level the less there are, until you get to ‘Veteran’ where you don’t get them AT ALL so if you want a real challenge and a more realistic game then play it like that.

The next thing is that unlike a lot of the WWII FPS titles you are rarely alone, you will have your own squad mates along side in most missions in the game, and while they do have a slight tendency to go off and do silly things occasionally, they do actually come in damned handy and some missions will be very difficult to complete without them. Now in some circumstances you can actually shoot your fellow soldiers and kill them but when your crosshairs move over your own troops you get a warning that they are actually on your side and also a visual colour coded sign as to their health status, but in the heat of battle you can find you shoot first and ask questions later (as seen in recent conflicts).

The weapons found during the game are the more famous of the period, covering pistols, rifles, sub machineguns, and light/heavy machineguns along with hand grenades. Some have a fire selector, giving you the chance to use full auto or single shot mode, since in full auto the accuracy is lost as you fire, this does have a use. The weapons can be fired either from the hip or can be raised to use the open sights on the gun, or in the case of sniper rifles, a scope. While in other titles you have a virtual unlimited amount of weapons that can be picked up, in CoD you have two ‘slots’ that can be used along with a side arm (pistol) and hand grenades. The weapons in either slot can be changed for any that are dropped by either side, and ammo is picked up for any weapon you are carrying, most of the time automatically, but in all cases of switching guns you have to ‘use’ the gun to pick it up. Switching between weapons is simple and a graphic at the top of the screen will show which weapon you have selected (also with one to show if the weapon has a selectable fire rate which mode is selected at the time).

One thing that is most noticeable in this title is that most of the time you won’t be using the ‘use’ key all that much, apart from picking up weapons/documents or using the heavy machineguns/anti-aircraft guns that appear or placing explosives you’ll not have much need, there are no doors to open, if the door is closed then it’s not needed at that time, while there are open doors leading to rooms that aren’t necessary for the completion it does save you running about trying doors just to find the right one

The sound effects are nothing short of brilliant, not only do you have the sounds from your own gunfire and that of your squad mates and enemy, but you also have the background battles going on, whether gunfire from other parts of the city/town/village but also anti-aircraft fire and also the aircraft themselves. Also there are the voice actors for the main characters in the game, here Infinity Ward (The developers and now part of Activision) have gotten some pretty big names to lend their voices. One that should be very noticeable is that of Jason Statham (Lock, Stock and also Snatch) but all the others involved have credits for several big name games, if not actual film roles, so these people aren’t unknowns. There is definitely nothing else out there that compares to the sounds of bullets ricocheting off an obstacle you’re cowering behind, while you wonder if you’re going to live if you stick your head out for a look.

The graphics are equally impressive, especially if you have a high end machine/ graphics card, while things still look good on lower resolutions things definitely look better if you can run things ‘full on’ while the scenery isn’t destroyable as in some FPS’ some parts do blow up, but these are scripted in for the most part.

The mission structure doesn’t change much, no matter which difficulty level you choose, nor does the positioning or number of most of the enemy soldiers, but because of the interaction of your squad mates in most of the missions there is enough randomness to make each trip through slightly different. For the most part you are given a set objective that has to be completed often before you move onto the next, but how you achieve them is more often up to you, but if you do veer from the path scripted you might not get all other characters to follow you, and in some cases they come in very handy for finishing the missions.

Activision actually ended up buying the company (Infinity Ward) that developed this game, and I have to say, if they only ever make one more game of this quality it was worth the money, the only other FPS game to have the intensity of CoD was actually MoH and only then the Omaha Beach landings mission, and this game manages to keep that up for the entire game. You really do get a sense of what the people who fought in this conflict went through, and that in itself is worth the price of the game, the gut-wrenching fear of knowing between you and the next piece of cover is open ground, and there are snipers, machineguns and enemy soldiers all intent on making sure it’s you that dies for your country, not them. If you liked MoH, or indeed any of the multitude of WWII First Person games that have been released recently then you will like Call of Duty, if you run through the game on Easy or Normal levels and find it too simple, then go back through on Veteran and I assure you, you will get a challenge, I did.

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