Review: Call of Duty 3

Back on the launch of Xbox 360, the game I was looking forward to the most was Call of Duty 2. The thing that I always loved about it is that for the first time, a game had managed to come from the PC to a console and still retain all of it’s graphical shine, smoothness, and quality. Some said it was even better on the Xbox 360. Back in the last generation, this was simply not possible. Instead we had to endure the scaled down versions in COD: Finest Hour and COD: Big Red One.

So we now come to COD 3, developed this time by Treyarch and not Infinity Ward who have usually developed the ‘full’ COD games, leaving it to other Activision developers to sort out different console versions. Obviously, COD2 was an exception for Infinity Ward.
Sadly, COD3 rarely succeeds to match that fantastic experience I got from playing the predecessor. COD3 is very much a console game, and I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much the development of this game for the previous generation had hindered progress on the Xbox 360 version.

It all starts promising enough. You start in a charming place called St Lo (I actually stayed here on holiday this year) on your way to liberate Paris. The story takes you through with the Americans, the British, the Polish, and the Canadians. The whole game is set in Normandy, with the Americans and Canadians advancing from the south, and the British and the Poles advancing from the North to ultimately force the German army into a narrow corridor, which comes to a conclusion in Chambois.
The opening missions look lovely and you’ll immediately notice so much more happening on screen than on COD2, from explosions, to buildings collapsing, to planes flying over head.

Unfortunately the missions aren’t all that varied, but the upside to this is that you get a better understanding for the story- told through a variety of cut scenes, though I would have preferred if they had kept the traditional historic video clips instead- never mind. Treyarch have paid particular attention to the weapons in COD3, adding a few new ones, as well as making them look and feel a whole load better- with more realistic aiming and amazing reload animations. Graphically, the game is an improvement over COD2, but I feel they could have done more if they hadn’t have chosen to simultaneously develop for the last gen consoles.

If you have surround sound then you’ll be amazed by the level of detail here. Voices will echo in small empty rooms, or explosions will boom when out in the open- they did a very good job, and it really adds to the realism.

The length of the game could be better; you can beat it in perhaps 6 -8 hours on normal. The 15 missions simply aren’t long enough, although crank up the difficulty to veteran- and you’ll be playing (and swearing) for a lot longer.

Rated solely on singleplayer, the game would get a 7- simply put- it’s just not as good as COD2, and this sequel doesn’t really move the series on at all- all it has done is tinker and fiddle with a few things, giving mixed results. However the multiplayer review will follow shortly, which will and does alter the score- so watch out for part 2.