The PC seems to be a virtual first person time machine as of late. The biggest games to come out for the PC over the past 18 months have been Battlefield 1942 and Medal of Honor Allied Assault. Aside from both being made by EA they also have a common war between them. The allure (if you can say that) of World War II still brings people by the thousands to their computer to recreate an amazing story.
I will admit I'm a sucker for World War II stories and games, but at this point, let's face it a game would have to be pretty impressive to earn a high rating I mean what haven't we seen from this genre already?
I was very curious about Call of Duty. Although it's distributed by Activision, the game was designed by a group called Infinity Ward, which primarily consists of many designers and programmers who worked on the PC Medal of Honor Allied Assault game. That game, while fun, did have some moments of poor enemy and team AI and some of the results were scripted. Although I doubt many would admit it, Call of Duty is sort of a parallel sequel to MoH.
If you have seen and enjoyed the Band of Brothers series on HBO or on DVD, you are going to really enjoy some of the initial missions of the game. From the moment you're dropped onto land via airplane to the time you'll run the trenches in order to dynamite the German artillery-you will notice a d้jเ vu with the TV series. That's not a bad thing, by the way.
In addition to the standard "American Allied forces vs German" episodes, you will also take the role of the Russians and Englishmen during the game. You never get to 'choose' a campaign to pick the levels and missions are pretty linear in that respect, but it's still very challenging to complete the missions from each Allied perspective.
From a graphics perspective, the game looks very good, albeit similar to MoH. It's hard to believe a videogame engine that's almost 5 years old is still putting out such great graphics. Environments are very colorful with one exception for such a graphically intense, violent game-there's very little blood going on. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, software developers aim for a T rating over an M from the ESRB like movie producers aim for a PG-13 rating over an R. Frankly, I don't understand this: does anyone go into a World War 2 first person shooter thinking, hmmm, this shouldn't be a violent game? Does a game really sell better by being a T over an M? I don't know.
Anyway, back to the game as far as the actual gameplay goes, a lot of it you've seen before. Missions include putting the explosives on the tank and running to a church to get the German's Panzerfaust which, as you can probably guess, is an anti tank-weapon. So, you're probably thinking, why did I give the game such a high rating if it's a 'been there done that' type of gameplay. Well, it's the environments and the entire gaming experience that really makes this game. While the primary objectives are run-of-the-mill, the levels themselves are very, very intense more so than other shooters I've played. There's one level early in the single player game where you are storming houses full of Germans and man, it is very stressful (of course, not as stressful as really being there).
What adds to the gameplay is the amazing sound in the game. Thankfully, I've never heard mortar shells whizzing by me, but I would guess that Call of Duty replicates this noise very well. It is loud and with EAX sound, you really feel like it's coming overhead, or from the left the sound is very directional, which is very important when sniping!
If there's any gripe that I have with the single player game, it's relatively short maybe 12 hours or so. However, there is enormous replay value with online multiplayer. As the ESRB says "Game Experience May Change During Online Play," or in layman's terms "Forget the T rating when people do mods and add all the blood they want!" In addition to the different environments through the game itself and other mods, one of the more interesting things of the game is allowing online players to 'vote' for a specific mod, if the server allows it. Unlike 'chat voting' this actually tabulates the results if a game should play a specific map. Very cool!!
The big question is this: Is this game better than MoH or BF 1942? Uh well I'm going to take a cop out but I honestly believe that each game does very well on their own terms. BF 1942, for example is pretty much a multiplayer game that requires team based combat by real life players as opposed to AI idiots. MoH is more a single player game that although still has AI idiots on your team, is still an enjoyable game with multiplayer aspects. CoD has an excellent balance of single player and multiplayer with all 3 allied fronts. If you're a WWII buff, you're going to pick up all three games, and there's really no reason not to do that especially since all three games are only going to set you back the cost of the Band of Brothers DVD set. Call of Duty is highly recommended.
-Dan
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