Call of Duty 3

Rise of the QTEs.

It's back to Europe to bring down the Nazis.  But this time you'll get to see a fictional account of what the Polish, French Resistance, and Canadians could have done to contribute to the overall war effort.  It may not be historically accurate, but it's definitely probably loosely based on actual events!

Recommended Age Minimum Age Available On... 12 10 Xbox 360, PS3 Overall Fun Length Frustration   Violence Sexuality Substances Gambling 5 4 5   6 0 0 0 Mods Religion Anti-Law Community Sports Magic Miscellaneous 0 1 0 0 2 0 0

1.     Gameplay

• Overall Fun - 5

Call of Duty 3 is the only Call of Duty game never to have a PC release of some sort (I consider “Big Red One” and the first “Call of Duty” to be equivalent), which is the only reason why it has taken me over eight years to play the game.  While this game is significantly better than I expected in a few key factors, it is by far the least interesting Call of Duty game out of the entire group (including the disappointing Ghosts).

The Canadians AND the French? I'm out.

On the positive side, Treyarch did a good job trying to live up to the reputation of its predecessors while also trying to establish something new for the franchise.  The vehicle-based sections were far smoother than I expected and the weapon play felt consistently reliable throughout the entire game.  And the game looked far better than its predecessors.

Yet Treyarch’s attempt at creating a more visually impressive game is also part of its undoing.  The game is significantly more cinematic than its predecessors.  More scripted events, more cutscenes, more points where the player loses control of the game and sits back while the action happens.  The player is not the main character, as strange as that might sound.

Hey guys. I'm standing right here. Right. Here. Hello?

In previous Call of Duties, other characters talk to the player.  That isn’t the case in this one.  In CoD3, characters talk to each other but hardly ever directly talk to the player.  This would be like walking into a room and listening to other people have a conversation about something that just happened.  You might glean the necessary details from their dialog, but you don’t feel included in the event.

This is a huge mistake.  I can remember specific events that occurred in the first Call of Duty games.  I can remember climbing the cliffs of Pont du Hoc.  I can remember rolling into Berlin inside a Russian tank.  I can remember rushing the German panzers in the deserts of North Africa in a desperate attempt to get within firing distance.  Those were great, non-cinematic moments that made a lasting impression.

Call of Duty 3 has none of these moments.  I can’t tell if its levels are fictional to serve the storyline, loosely based on some real material, or deeply rooted in historical events.  To me the absurdity of sending a single Polish tank to hold an entire hill from divisions of German soldiers overrides my willingness to believe in the historical accuracy of the writing.

Where am I supposed to be again?

This isn’t a bad game.  It has solid mechanics and visuals.  But it lacks the real soul of a good historical shooter.

• Length - 4

This is the first Call of Duty game that didn’t have a satisfyingly long single player campaign.  I completed the entire game in around 10 hours.  Considering that time was divided between 15 different chapters, that number should be significantly higher.  There are no story-changing decisions that can be made in the game and no collectibles that I noticed, leaving little replay value in the campaign.

The game’s replay value was supposed to hinge on the multiplayer capabilities.  While the previous CoDs did have limited multiplayer capabilities, this was the first game that significantly emphasized the multiplayer content.  In my opinion, while the multiplayer has helped later Call of Duty’s, it hurt this game as a whole.

To top it all off, the multiplayer elements are no longer functioning, which completely strips that element from the replay value.

• Frustration Factor - 5

While most of the time it isn’t a problem, there were plenty of times when it was downright aggravating.  I know that my AI teammates would attack enemies most of the time, but there were plenty of times when they’d just walk right past them and leave me to get shot in the back.  And this doesn’t include the seemingly psychic AI that would snipe me through smoke from across the map.

I also was not happy about the fact that my gun would jump every time I got hit, preventing me from hitting the enemy even if I fired the shot a fraction of a second after getting hit.  This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, except that the enemies with automatic weapons would cause gun to jump up and down rapidly, making them nearly impossible to hit.  It was actually significantly easier to kill enemies with rifles rather than enemies with SMGs (something counterintuitive to most shooting games, since rifles are supposed to do more damage).

2.     Parental Notices

• Violence - 6

For a first person shooter, violence in this game is extremely mild.  I had to go back through my video to check if there was any blood at all from my hits and despite checking hours of footage I couldn’t find a single example where blood emitted from a wound (except in one occasion mentioned below).  Seriously, hits from all weapons do not result in any blood at all.

If you can't see anything in this picture, you're beginning to understand.

Instead, the hits seem to emit smoke.  I made sure that there wasn’t any optional “blood” settings that I accidentally hit, but sure enough this is one of the few FPS games I have ever played that did not have any blood from violence.  Needless to say, gore was not a factor either.

This is about as much blood as you'll see the whole game.

The only time in the game when blood was ever present was on the headwound of one of the main characters.  The bandage had some blood on it (presumably to let the player know that the man had actually been wounded).  But this was the only time I found where blood was visible.

Oh what I would have paid to see that become a fatal wound.

Explosions did not have any visible blood or gore.  Enemies hit by explosions would sometimes go flying a few feet, but there was no visible damage.

I said a-BOOM-chicka-boom!

• Sexuality - 0

Sexuality is not a factor in this game.

• Substances - 0

Substances are not a factor in this game.

• Gambling - 0

Gambling is not a factor in this game.

3.     Other Factors

• Mods - 0

Mods are not a factor in this game.

• Religion - 1

Since this game takes place in Europe, there were a number of churches included in the environment.  However, religion is never openly discussed in the dialog.

• Anti-Law - 0

Anti-law is not a factor in this game.

• Online Community - 0

The servers for the online multiplayer portions of this game no longer seem to be functioning.  As a result, the online community is not a factor in this game.

• Extreme Sports - 2

There were a few sections where the player had to drive a modified jeep with a few mounted machine gun turrets at high speeds down dirt roads while being shot at by Nazi forces.  A few of these involved some minor stunts, but nothing significant.  These were the only examples of extreme sports in the game.

It's like The Great Escape. Does this make me Steve McQueen?

• Magic - 0

Magic is not a factor in this game.

• Miscellaneous - 0

There are no additional factors in this game.