Call of Duty 3 on Xbox 360 – The DVDfever Review

Call of Duty 3 was one of the first games I played on the Xbox 360 and, having had a taster of it with Call of Duty: Finest Hour on the original Xbox, plus Call of Duty 2 on the PC, I was very much looking forward to this new release, although it isn’t a straight sequel to the latter title and this one won’t be appearing on the PC either, just the Xbox 360, PS2, Wii and PS3 (when that machine’s released).

This game is actually a follow-up to Call of Duty: Big Red One on the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube and recreates the Normandy Breakout as you team up with French and American forces to kick Jerry butt back in 1944.

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As Call of Duty 3 begins, you’re treated to a CGI recreation of the Normandy invasion just after the Nazis took a stronghold over Paris in 1940, but it’d July 1944 as the game proper gets going and you’ll get to fight for several different armies as they become depleted and you have to join up with them, although it was a bit confusing when I found that after starting off as Pvt Nichols, I later became Doyle and then someone called Cole. Still, apart from when your name is called by someone the aims and objectives are no different than you’d expect.

It’s a good thing there’s many a checkpoint here because there’s nothing a cocky young soldier will try to do more than run forward into battle, blasting all over the place, but while it’s fun to do a combination of shooting and melee, it’s also the one thing that’s going to make you dead very quickly and, if possible, ensure life’s a bit easier for you by letting your CPU-comrades go ahead to start killing off the enemy before you wade in.

Assuming you’re not expired by the time you’ve shot off a few rounds, if you’re hurt, try and crouch down out of sight or just get out of the line of fire as this will allow you to recover your health. It regenerates as you go, even though there’s no visible bar to prove this, but the game prompts you that it’d be a good idea not to poke your head above the parapet for fear of it being shot off. Ok, so you can always go back to the last checkpoint if you snuff it, but when you die you don’t carry with you any weapons you had after the last checkpoint other than your standard issue firearms which is a great shame. I had a magnificent FG42, nicked from a German, which could fire far more rounds-per-minute and being a little too trigger-happy got me dead… so I lost it.

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Following a short training mission, you soon realise that it’s business as usual. Call of Duty 3 isn’t particularly different to any other game in the franchise in terms of gameplay. You’ll take the usual linear path and when you die and need to redo levels and sectinos, the enemies are in the same place. And like the Three Wise Men going to Bethlehem, you must also follow the gold star to get to the next point of interest on your map (no, I’m not relgious, but as I write this Christmas is coming and it seemed like a clevel line :)

The AI of the baddies isn’t much cop, as it never was in these games, since they know they’re under attack when you’re storming their bunker, but at the same time don’t try to stop you from taking controlled potshots at a colleague on one side when they could surprise you and take you out. And that’s for the moments when you have time to stop and stare, since there are genuine moments of chaos with guns blaring all over the place, which can be confusing at times when so much is going on. If the enemy is bearing down upon you, smoke grenades help when, say, trying to get across fields where MG42s are firing ten-to-the-dozen in your general direction. Be careful, though, since you can get told off for friendly-fire and it’s back to the last checkpoint saved.

This title continues the pleasure of emphatic music being played and action that can be very addictive, but it also incorporates a new system where you’ll enter a house and get set-upon by a Nazi who’ll try to smash his rifle butt into your head, forcing you to the ground, but as you’re down the game will tell you to alternate the left and right triggers to counteract his actions and sort him out. Quite intriguing if not ultimately fulfilling.

Outside, there’ll be times when you’ll need to melee your weapon at an enemy soldier if caught short trying to reload when one surprises you and you’re not ready. This has a much more fulfilling feeling.

Something else I hadn’t tried before, so I don’t know if it appeared in a previous variant that I haven’t played, comes with setting off a bomb. You must press a button as instructed to insert a fuse, set charges by rotating the thumbstick, press another button to pull the pin, then get the hell outta there before it blows. This is quite fun, but simple. A similar tactic is used later on in operating a crane to kill off a few more Germans.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.

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With this title being on the Xbox 360, you can expect fantastic sharp graphics and with exceptional smoke and lighting effects. However, certain graphics close-up, such as wooden barn doors are not detailed at all. I remember seeing this kind of thing on standard PC graphics cards before the 3Dfx chipset came out and took over the world, so to still see this lack of detail appearing on scenary on next-gen consoles around ten years on really isn’t good enough. The action moves along great but, on the whole, the images lose half a point because of the above.

That said, there are many joys to witness such as the realistic water effects and the game does look brilliant if you don’t try and study things too hard, so those moments where detail is lacking is not something that will hinder the experience and, on balance Call of Duty 3 looks almost like movie-quality, with lovely subtle effects such as when you take aim with your sight, it goes slightly out-of-focus before coming back into focus, just as it would in real life.

Clever in-game cinematics take you from the last thing you saw in a level, moving you round into position to the start of the next thing, but then levels don’t start conventionally. The opening one, following the training, sees you loading up your men onto a truck and heading for the start… only you don’t get there, you’re blown off course and just have to make your way to your first destination. Okay, so this is all planned in the script for the game as it would have to be, but it makes for a nice alternative to the average shooter.

There are, however, occasional glitches, such as when one of my troop was standing in front of the entrance to a barn, covered only by a fence, while on the other side was a Nazi blasting away with his machine gun – missing my comrade! Erm… very strange, and something you’d only expect on The A-Team. On a later level, a dress window dummy got caught in a window pane as if a grenade had forced it into that position and it continued forever to throttle around in sort-of mid-air like a spinning top.

Also, on one early level, two of my team were still stuck in a cellar because they couldn’t figure out how to climb up the steps that were still left. It was easier to get myself killed and then when the checkpoint reloaded, since I’d already climbed to the upstairs of the house, I was back up there with my men standing by and taking up their positions. At the end of that level, the picture started to go into a cut-scene but nothing went further. After a while I moved one of the analog sticks round to see I was now actually controlling the scene… but no, this wasn’t meant to be as once I’d moved forward very slightly the cut-scene that was meant to have been triggered suddenly kicked in. Such things give the impression that certain aspects of this title have been rushed and that Quality Control didn’t do as thorough a job as they might.

Despite the problems with the enemy AI, you do really feel like you’re involved in a war given how your colleagues usually react to the baddies around you.

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It’s all very intense stuff when in the heat of combat as you find yourself shooting ‘randomly’ on occasions in the hope of hitting a Nazi amongst all the confusion, which can only be what war was like.

Random enjoyments within the various levels include spotting the targets for your tank to shoot at, plus a later tank-on-rails section which was a great blast – literally – as you’re the one doing the firing. There’s also the regular ability to pick up and return live German grenades – not easy at all and you have to be quick, so it’s much easier to just run, although it’s more satisfying to return Jerry’s property back to him :)

Running low on firepower is also something to be concerned with, so if you want extra ammo, walk over to where a dead soldier was last holding his rifle, but if you don’t have their type of weapon then it’ll prompt you to swap what you’re currently holding for theirs. This is quite handy if you’ve just killed a few Germans and they’ve all got the same type as you can really stock up.

Several Xbox Live game modes are available, although I generally stick to the single player campaign of titles like this because I get killed within about five seconds, and that’s when I’m doing well! It’s worth a stop as well to the Xbox Live Marketplace for free downloads of “Spike TV Game Head” footage of 16 players going head-to-head against each other.

Many Xbox 360 titles also have achievement points available and, at the time of writing, I’ve picked up the Purple Heart (5 points) for perserverence despite grevious injuries, the Hot Potato (25) for picking up and returning 5 live grenades, the American Infantryman (20) for completing two missions as an American soldier and, of course, the Basic Training section in Saint Lo.

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Important info:

• Publisher: Activision
• Price: £49.99
• Players: Offline – 1-4, Online – 2-24
• HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p

Director: Keith Arem
Producers: Jason Blundell, Daniel Bunting and Tom Hays
Writing credits: Richard Farrelly (story) and Marc Guggenheim
Music: Joel Goldsmith

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT	9 10 7 8
OVERALL	8