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Review: Call of Duty
by
Jolex Del Pilar
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
A cinematic tour de force that happens to be fun to play.
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Title:
Call of Duty
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Platform:
PC Windows, Pentium II 700, 128MB Ram, 1.4 GB of HD space, 32 MB video card. |
Publisher:
Activision
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Developer:
Infinity Ward
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#
of Players: 1 - 16
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Genre:
Action/First Person Shooter
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release: November 2003
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Grapevine:
"Call of Duty serves an equal amount of flash and substance." |
Activision is really churning them out these days. In a holiday season that will see the industry release over 250 titles, three of the most solid titles will be published by the top 20 developer. With the release of True Crime: Streets of L.A, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, and now Call of Duty, Activision quite possibly has the chance to see three of its titles win Game of the Year awards in three different genres, which would be an amazing feat.
Call of Duty is a title that was nurtured along quite nicely by the folks over at Activision. It received just the right amount of marketing push, enough to get the public excited about it, but not enough to disappoint the gaming community if anything should happen during its development. The E3 trailer that was played continuously during the show on the floor hinted at the cinematic look and feel that Call of Duty would try to evoke. With the full retail version in our hands, it's good to see that the trailer cinematics were more than just flash.
Call of Duty was developed by Infinity Ward, why is that important? Well the Infinity Ward development team is made up of programmers, and artist that have experience developing another WWII shooter you might know of called Medal of Honor. While Call of Duty shares more than a few passing similarities with that series, it's obvious that Call of Duty is a far more reaching game in terms of pure cinematic impact, and visual display.
Call of Duty takes the player through 3 mini-campaigns that take place over 24 missions during the war. You play as Americans from the 101st Airborne, British from the 6th Airborne Division, and Russian Infantry in the defense of Stalingrad. The American Campaign is used as an introduction into the gameplay nuances of the title, though there are some meaty missions there for you to experience. The British Campaign has a more cloak and dagger style of gameplay to it, while the Russian campaign might give you shell shock as you relive the chaos that was the battle of Stalingrad (think Enemy at the Gates).
The 24 missions have objectives that run the gamut from basic "clear the field of all enemy soldiers" to demolition missions that ask you to take out important targets, like V2 launch pads for example. One of the best missions in the game have you in a vehicle trying to escape pursuing Germans. As you escape in your civilian vehicle, you get to lean out the window and shoot at pursuing German vehicles, and German roadblocks. It almost feels like a scene from a 1920s-styled gangster flick. Besides that though, other missions will ask you to infiltrate German bases or ships to gain access to important information. Mission variety is definitely a strength of this title.
One notable aspect of the title is the perfect blending of the visual and audio experience. Much like Activision's other big release, True Crime: Streets of L.A, the music for the game is perfectly placed. Stringy compositions accentuate tense moments during the game, while A.I soldiers yell for you to "take cover". The game is just awesome from a visual perspective. MG42 machine guns will light up the night sky, while burning tanks will emit transparent smoke. If you have the hardware, Call of Duty won't fail to visually stimulate. In this reviewer's opinion, Call of Duty may be a new barometer with which to judge the progression of how far PC games have come graphically. Make sure you have at least 64 MB of RAM on your video card though, anything less and things will get choppy.
The siege of Stalingrad is a bloody, and chaotic affair, even by gaming standards.
Perhaps what seperates Call of Duty from most shooters is the attention to scene direction, and cinematic feel. Call of Duty throws so many little cinematic details at you in any given scene or level that it's hard to catch every single one. For instance, when you drop into the battlefield, you can actually see other planes dropping airborne soldiers into battle, and then the German anti-aircraft fire that fires off in response. Soldiers will execute orders without your direct influence. In Stalingrad, soldiers run off their boats to charge german machine gun positions, complete with a communist morale officer holding a red flag screaming chants for "Mother Russia" all the while. Call of Duty is one of the first games in memory to actually put you into a battle in which you have the feeling that you are not directly influencing the course of the fight (MMO Shooters like PlanetSide excluded of course). You almost feel small, as a single soldier fighting against the constant rattling of a German MG42 machine gun, huge Panzer tanks, and sniper pot shotting. There in lies part of the cinematic experience, the feeling of vulnerability, something absent from other shooters. There are no super ray guns to save you in this game, only your rifle and your wits. Combined with Call of Duty's great melding of sound and visuals, the game effectively conveys the chaos of battle that major motion pictures like Saving Private Ryan, or Enemy at The Gates have attempted to show in the past few years. This is what seperates Call of Duty from its contemporaries.
While it's given that Call of Duty will sell based on the fact that it's a shooter in the popular WWII arena of gaming, there are some who might believe that they've seen it all before. Believe us, you have not, and to miss Call of Duty would be a mistake. With 24 missions, and a fairly varied multiplayer experience (team vs. team, coop), Call of Duty offers a cinematic tour de force that serves up equal amounts of flash and substance.
--- Jolex Del Pilar
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