Call of Duty 3 Xbox 360 review

Having played through Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 several times on PC and the latter on Xbox 360 too, I have to say that the franchise is one of my personal favourites. The X360 version of CoD2 was one of the gaming highlights of 2005 and the first games I completed on that format.

So you can imagine I was eager to get my hands on Call of Duty 3. Yet having played through the single player campaign right to the end and engaged in some multiplayer action I can't help but feel a little disappointed. As I'll explain, it's not just the game's technical issues that have caused this, but some sense of the lack of an epic quality to the events in Call of Duty 3. Don't get me wrong, CoD3 is a very good game, it just doesn't feel that it lives up to the series so far.

Big Red Eight?

This is the first proper Call of Duty game not developed by Infinity Ward, a team that has a real sense of the epic and cinematic. Instead of coding this third iteration, development duties have been passed on to Treyarch, the developer behind the disappointing Call of Duty: Big Red One. At this point you'll be forgiven for being confused. See what we have here is the third in the PC series, but not being developed for PC, coded by the developer of the CoD console games. Clear soldier?

Gone is the globe-trotting action of the previous games. There's no Eastern Front or Afrika campaign here. The action is set in Normandy in the period between D-Day in June 1944 and the liberation of Paris in August 1944. And therein lies a problem. This conflict, including the battles for Caen and the closure of the Falais Pocket were some of the most brutal of the Second World War. Brave men fought on all sides in a bloodbath that is often forgotten amid the more famous conflicts of the war.

But that doesn't mean it necessarily makes for a great videogame. There is a lack of epic and memorable locations for these battles. The relatively bloodless fall of Paris doesn't bookend the game well. And at the other end - yes D-day might have been overdone in so many games, but including the beachhead from another point of view would have at least provided a memorable starting point. And perhaps due to Treyarch's failure to make better use of cinematic cameras and music compared to Infinity Ward there are few moments that are truly memorable in the way many sections of Call of Duty 2 were.

Rifle's Rapid Rattle

That's not to say the gameplay is poor. Far from it. I just mourn the loss of that epic quality the previous two games revelled in. However the battles themselves are as adrenaline packed as you could hope for. Improvements to the core engine mean that we can enjoy many more enemies on screen at a time, and many more allies. You do feel you're part of some very large engagements here rather than smaller skirmishes.

The use of smoke grenades makes a welcome return and the realism of holding a gun up to use the iron-sight is even more convincing thanks to a new depth of field effect. The weaponry is powerful, offering meaty sound effects. The controls work very well indeed and I didn't mourn the loss of a mouse and keyboard at all when taking aim on the helmets of distant enemies. For me the joy of the game actually comes in the use of single-shot rifles such as the M1 or British Lee-Enfield than the auto weapons, I found myself killing more than one enemy a second in the most intense battles with such weaponry. Yes it does get that intense.

The introduction of so called mini-games into the series has been controversial, with the odd moment of button tapping in hand to hand conflicts. But these are few and far between and I rather enjoyed them. While the Jeep driving didn't do much for me, getting to control a mortar, with realistic control by rotating both thumb-sticks was great fun. I really could have had lots more of that.

Stuck in the Middle

One area where the controls aren't so great is the issue of getting stuck in the scenery. It's here that the franchise has taken a step backwards. Quite often you'll even start a mission stuck in a vehicle wondering what to do. A swift death follows through no fault of your own because you can't quite get out of the vehicle properly. Even more simple problems persist, such as just being stuck behind small objects on the ground.

What makes this all the more galling is that your AI comrades have no trouble getting around. They leap over low walls and jump through windows. But the game makes you take the long way round instead. On quite a few occasions I got very annoyed due to not being able to follow other soldiers and instead being forced down some liner path because I wasn't allowed over a two foot wall.

I wanted to have the same movement abilities as all the other soldiers in the map and it became frustrating that I didn't. I also felt having recently played Rainbow Six Vegas that the control method in CoD is due for a revamp. An ability to properly duck against walls and obstacles felt very lacking in the more frantic moments.

A Walk in the Woods

Problems with the epic nature aside some of the missions are very enjoyable indeed. There's one particular US mission in sunny woodland that is an absolute joy and one I know I'll play again and again. It's a long range fight at times, with rifle shots ringing out across the gorgeous forest and hillsides. As the mission develops and you and your battalion move up the hill, it becomes a more desperate close-in battle with heavy use of grenades and enemy machine-gun positions.

Another comes to mind where again playing as the US our unit had to row across a river. Taking up a paddle you actually have to row using a thumbstick while under heavy fire. The setting and situation worked very well, as did the build up to this moment. It's a shame there's only one proper tank mission, where you play as the Polish Army. But at least that army's later infantry mission is pretty frantic and enjoyable.

Less so are those of the British SAS, which didn't really fit into the story for me. I didn't like the attitude towards the French Resistance, which came across as the usual childish sniping at the French by folks in the US - despite the dialogue coming from British characters. Perhaps we should have been given a chance to play as the Resistance in these missions rather than an annoying Scot. Recognition of the part played by French warriors in the conflict seems long overdue in this and other WWII games.

The Canadian missions were a mixed bag. Some of them were very good, but one particular sequence in an industrial area was frustrating due to the poor placement of checkpoints - meaning three very tough tasks had to be completed before the next checkpoint. Repeatedly dying while running out of ammo trying to accomplishing the third of these nearly had the Xbox 360 through the window at one point.

Present...Arms

Call of Duty 2 was a pretty game on Xbox 360, thanks in part to the very smooth visuals. We've more of the same here, with no slowdown, tearing or glitches that I noticed while playing through the single player campaign. There are more enemies on screen how which makes for some very large scale battles fought over long distances. And some of the maps are huge, giving you the real feeling of fighting on a battlefield rather than a small sideshow. What is particularly impressive is the way many of the levels vary so much, so you might find yourself in a country lane, before battling through the suburbs into the city proper. In some levels the player is even offered the choice of several objectives. For example you may choose to attack an enemy position head-on, or join other comrades in a flanking manoeuvre to support the head-on attack.

My favourite level, as you might have guessed from earlier was the battle in the hazy sunny forest. However there's plenty to be impressed by in the game if we're talking visuals. Humans and vehicles alike look very detailed and the textures are sharp and convincing. I was constantly amazed how much detail each level featured, with burned out vehicles, rubble, scripted events and the like.

The particle effects are impressive too, they range from smoke coming from the muzzle of a gun to the massive explosion of a tank letting go when you've pierced its armour. There really is very little wrong with the way the game looks or moves.

Words of War

That can't quite be said for the way sound is used in the game. Explosions and weapon effects are first rate, meaty and powerful. The use of surround sound is great too, really immersing you in the conflict. But where the game doesn't quite work is when it comes to the scripting, dialogue and voice acting. That includes the constant repetition of dialogue from the troops around you as you fight.

The cutscenes aren't great and it's really annoying having to watch the scene from the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next when you're loading up a save game from halfway through that latter level. Sure this may be a way of hiding all the loading going on of these huge battlefields but it is really annoying, especially as loading screens haven't disappeared entirely anyway.

The music, when you notice it, is stirring stuff. It's just not used as effectively as Call of Duty 2. You'll tend to notice it appearing loudly at the end of big battles to signify that this is a great BIG EPIC MOMENT. Which seems very forced. Like many of the elements of Call of Duty 3 there's nothing technically wrong, but there's something somewhat lacking in the way it has all been put together.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

For all my complaints Call of Duty 3 does have a lot to offer in single player mode. But the greatest benefit that CoD3 over its predecessor is that it actually ships with a workable multiplayer game. As you might expect a week before launch the Xbox Live servers haven't exactly been buzzing with activity. So at this point I can't tell you how well 24-player battles work.

What I can tell you though is that my personal experience of the game's multiplayer modes was very good in these (admittedly all too small at this stage) skirmishes. The maps are certainly very impressive as is the use of multiple occupancy vehicles. You are definitely going to love tearing around the map sat in a sidecar firing your pistol as your mate controls the motorcycle. That is until you come up against two other folks from your Live Friends List sitting in a Sherman Firefly tank.

The star of the multiplayer side of things is the War game, where teams fight Battlefield-style for control of points on the map, attempting to hold them and ultimately take all the points from the enemy. Other featured modes include deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, single flag CTF and headquarters. The maps are large and varied and I particularly liked the ones set in small French villages as they feature so many places to hide.

I'm very interested to see how well the game copes with 24 players on one of these maps. The class system and ability to auto-balance the sides is most welcome, as are the many setup options. As you'd expect it also supports split-screen and local network play.

In the interests of fairness though it's very likely I will revisit this portion of the review once the servers are packed and CoD3 can be given a thorough online workout.

Liberation

What we have in Call of Duty 3 is a very good game that just falls short of being truly great. This WWII shooter feels more like an expansion of CoD2 than a fully-fledged sequel. However the core gameplay is just what you'd expect from the franchise and I'm sure I won't be the only one itching to repeat the single-player campaign once finished - next time on Veteran difficulty. As I explained earlier I feel that CoD3 does lack some epic qualities and the storytelling is a little too broad and obvious compared to the previous Infinity Ward game.

That's not to say you shouldn't pick it up. I definitely recommend this game. The scope for large online battles and some great fun action in the single-player mode make this a worthwhile purchase. Fans of Call of Duty 2 will really have a lot of fun with it. But Call of Duty 3 could have and should have, been better than this.

Update Wednesday Evening: I just wanted to add, having spent more time with the multiplayer side of things today that the game is great fun in that area. If you enjoyed post-patch CoD2 you'll love this.