Answering the ‘Call of Duty’
Last weekend, I decided to take one of my rather frequent trips to Champaign-Urbana to visit my friend, Jeff, and do the usual things: socialize at my favorite establishments, watch Bears football and play the XBOX 360. However, this particular visit had a new twist.
In addition to packing the usuals (clothes, a pillow, laptop computer, etc.) I was bringing my 5.1 speaker system. Jeff had unplugged and moved his monitor to the living room of his apartment.
The occassion? “Call of Duty 3″ and it’s fully glory of World War II-based first-person shooter action.
Heck yeah.
Jeff had instant messaged me earlier in the week, the day before election day, telling me it was shipping the day after the elections were over. Intense excitement ensued. To a certain extent, who gives a damn about the latest polls when you can soon be leading the charge against the Nazis in France?
Just how much fun was it playing “Call of Duty 3″? Well, let me explain it like this:
–> I played the game from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening.
–> I beat the entire game.
–> Jeff ran into his next door neighbor after the weekend.
–> She told him that she could hear the sounds of the game all weekend. Clearly hear them.
–> She heard them so clearly that she fell asleep listening to them.
–> We received no complaints during our gameplaying, however. We did feel bad about this after we learned about it.
So, yes, we pretty much played that game non-stop — with the exception of a few hours when we actually went outside the confines of a digital landscape to eat and drink.
And, for the record, it looks incredible on a flatscreen monitor and sounds awesome in surround sound.
With that said, the gameplay is excellent, too. I managed to plow through the game in essentially two sittings (”marathon sessions” as some call it) on normal difficulty.
“Call of Duty 3″ expands on the prior versions of the game by allowing for players to follow the missions of multiple Allied countries (United States, Great Britain, Canada and Poland) and work on a timeline that weave the stories together.
Some improvements include being able to now drive vehicles, which is probably the most frustrating and challenging part of the game. The jeep is especially annoying to drive, as the controls are unusual and you’re also having to watch a mini-map half the time to make sure you’re not going to wrong direction. The tank mission was all right, but wasn’t really all that exciting to play.
The real fun, however, was in the infantry based missions. The game places a high amount of emphasis on not just standing up, running in, and blindly firing. About 90 percent of the time, if you do this, you will die. Instead, it’s highly encouraged that you at least duck and run from different points of cover to accomplish your mission. There’s no health kits or medical packs, instead the game relies on the fact you can get only hit a limited amount of times in a row before you die. When this happens, you had better get behind cover and not get shot, fragged by a grenade or bulldozed by a tank.
Some more fun features include being able to throw grenades back at the enemy and also being able to “cook” off grenades before throwing them. Of course, both have dire consequences if youre timing is off. I found it slightly easier to just run away from the grenades than lob them back.
The multiplayer is fun, and much more challenging. People who remember the first incarnation of “Battlefield 1942″ will notice a similar gametype in “Call of Duty 3″ called “War,” which involves taking certain positions on a map, holding them for a certain amount of time and then moving on to take the next point — pushing the enemy back further and further until they’re defeated.
I really enjoyed the fact that multiplayer now allowed players to pick a “class” and then gain special abilities. Medics can revive dead players. Snipers can call in artillery strikes, which are devastating if launched on a spawn point. Also, vehicles have been encorporated, changing the battlefield dramatically. Personally, I found the addition of tanks a challenge I’d rather not have to put up with.
And the mainstays of “Call of Duty” are still there, too. You can look down the barrel of the gun to “sight” your shots, making you leaps and bounds more accurate. You can do melee attacks and lob smoke grenades to cover your movements.
While the futuristic third-person shooter “Gears of War” has been hogging the spotlight lately (and perhaps rightly so) for the hottest XBOX 360 title, I’m still very partial to the WWII shooter franchise. The storyline is engaging enough and I can vouch for how addicting it is to play.
I’ll remember to turn the volume down next time when I’m calling artillery strikes on Nazi tanks.
Technorati Tags: Call+of+Duty+3, video+game