Call of Duty 3 Reviews

Now, I wrote a half-assed review a few weeks ago (my first, so please forgive me) but it was extremely weak and garnered some criticism. I think it's time I return to my first boosting game and give it a proper review that doesn't just harp on the multiplayer. Please accept this return to Call of Duty 3 as my proper review!

World War II is in full swing. The Allies are pushing against the Axis and taking piece after piece of Nazi-occupied Europe that they can back for the good guys. Of course, ze Germans are not going to stop without a fight and that's where Call of Duty 3 comes in: you take command of various Allied country's troops: Poland, Canada, United States, French and British troops all come into play in this elaborate and ambitious game. But is the story too ambitious?

It's easy to use WWII as a backdrop for a war game. Heck, it's been the subject of more games than Mario and Luigi! Activision took the helm early by being the ultimate in war game makers with the origins of the Call of Duty series but they passed the batton to Treyarch for Call of Duty 3. This has been deemed a bad move by thousands of gamers as the difference between Call of Duty 3 and all other Call of Duty games (save for World at War) is extremely noticeable.

Treyarch is able to take the stories and intertwine them together well enough but their muddling of many other aspects of the game, both single- and multi-player, ruins a great story with terrible gameplay. I wasn't really able to get into the game as I was too busy dying countless times due to glitchy walls, magic bullets, and a ruthless AI that seems like I was fighting against an army of plutonium-fueled Supermen armed only with a can of silly foam! Sure, the main story arcs were there and were entertaining for the most part but you need to be absorbed with these guys so that the emotion is there as they get picked off by a sniper's bullet or tank's cannon. It just was a little lacklustre for my taste.

Story: 6 out of 10

The gameplay, the gameplay, the gameplay...let's break it down into two sections: regular and veteran mode for the single player campaign. Then we'll look at the multiplayer!

Playing on a regular difficulty was quite enjoyable! I was actually enjoying the times I spent trudging across Europe and killing enemy insurgents whenever they would pop up. The story did, indeed, take a major role and I was enjoying the fun achievements that I could gather without much care. It was once I was finished that I turned my attention to Veteran difficulty...Dear God, what an act of frustration. With over 40,000 TA users registered to have played the game, still only 10% have finished the game on this difficulty. And I can understand why.

To fully get the grasp of Veteran difficulty, you must try it. You are thrown into a warzone and given, essentially, the exact conditions you would get now, save for the option to replay the same life over and over again. One or two bullets can be survived but you are lucky to only get hit twice. The enemy peppers you with more bullets than much of the actual war! There's no need for rationing or conservation with this version of the SS! And the first mission, after the training, is a massive battle in a graveyard. Fortunately, open catacombs help with the cover and there are a lot of NPCs fighting alongside you but holy hell! I managed to pop the Purple Heart achievement (achieved for dying 20 times in a single level) just hopping over that first wall and trying to storm the enemy's stronghold!

This trend continues throughout the entire game with very few breaks. I understand the need to make the hardest difficulty of your game truly difficult, but there are limits! I only have so much hair to pull and so many screams of frustration to utter! And from the TA Ratio and completion percentage, I'm not alone!

I did manage to complete that final mission after numerous tries and saw Grizzled Veteran pop with its gloriously high GamerScore. The wave of relief is unbelievable. Only those who have popped a ridiculously difficult achievement (Seriously..., No Life, this one, etc...) will understand that release of endorphins when the little noise sounds and a beautiful achievement like this pops. And this game has two of them!

The second achievement revolves around the multiplayer side of the game! Going to try to 100% this game? Be prepared for the longest boosting session of your life! The General achievement requires you to obtain 40,000 points in ranked multiplayer matches. Sounds undaunting, right? That's what I thought. Then I played my first game...

First, the multiplayer lobby is terrible. Trying to connect to your friends is a crap shoot with random searching at the same time, lots of Preferred Players and a whole lot of luck. For this to work, you needed 8 players. At least 8. I would be involved in 16 player TA sessions because the last 4-6 slots were for back-ups, connections were so bad! The host would announce the time to search and then you'd pray to the gaming Gods that you would connect. If not, you're stuck with your own lobby and maybe a few others. And, once you did connect to the host, you had to hope everyone else was just as quick or else a random would jump in and not understand what was going on! One of my sessions went for three hours and the first match didn't start until 45 minutes in because of this terrible connection system. Fortunately, on August 10th, I popped my General achievement with a group of Europeans (the lag helps boost the score in Capture the Flag) and I was finally rid of the game once and for all!

Be warned, fair reader. The multiplayer is not for the faint of heart.

Gameplay: 6 out of 10

Looking at the game was something to enjoy, to be honest. The game captured the gritty realism of World War II (not that I would know, but I can match it to historical footage) and never let the player leave that world with colourful bits that just didn't match the setting. All of the weapons, equipment, locations, vehicles, everything seemed so authentic. The research that went into this game was impressive. Recent games have greatly surpassed Call of Duty 3's level of realism but it is nice to know that even back then, the company understood what to do.

Character models could've used a bit more polish (especially in multiplayer) but there was usually more than just NPCs and other players running around for your eye to train upon. You'd see flak go up in the afternoon sky to bring down aircraft, you'd see muzzle flares throughout the evening battles, you would feel in the moment.

Graphics: 8 out of 10

To go along with brilliant looks, the sound brought everything home for the game. These war games tend to have extremely good voice acting, and Call of Duty 3 is no exception. They have multiple nationalities going over key points with great emotion in their voices that they felt real.

The sound effects for the game worked well, too. Your weapons sounded like they were truly being used to ward off the forces of evil.

There were a few music cues that were of some interest but nothing overtly stirring that I would remember and make mention here. Give me a soundtrack from an epic like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger and I'll talk to you about music. But Call of Duty 3 is not a multiple disc-spanning RPG; it's a war game with it's focus on battle and historical accuracy.

Sound: 8 out of 10

The game, in itself, does not hold for me the interest to play it more than once unless I was going for 100% completion (which I did.) It is in the context of the two big achievements that you'll find the most return value as you'll need hundreds of hours to finish this game completely and finally put it in your trophy case proudly. And I honestly don't think there are too many with the patience to aim for that General achievement. Currently, only 4% have! Brave souls, all of them!

Replay Value: 6 out of 10

Overall, I gave this game a rough time in my first interview. For that, I apologize. Every game deserves to have a fair and honest review that looks at all aspects. It's difficult for this game because everyone seems to know only of the General and Grizzled Veteran achievement and tends to overlook that a pretty solid game lies beneath the headaches and boosting issues. Give it a try. Be open-minded. And have fun with the regular campaign. Just make sure that if you go online and are playing Capture the Flag, if you see all of your teammates huddle around the flag for no reason, you shouldn't start playing the game. Just sit quietly with them or leave because they are boosting and they need those unaware to help them out as best as possible!

Overall: 6 out of 10

Smokin' Gamer here again with another (Somewhat) Quick Review. Now for all the games I review I look at six areas: STORY, GAMEPLAY, GRAPHICS, SOUND/MUSIC, REPLAY VALUE, and PRICE VALUE.

Call of Duty 3:

The Call of Duty series is by far one the biggest critical and commercial success story in video game history. Each game of the "official" series has something to call it's own. The first Call of Duty was considered to be groundbreaking (back when WW2 shooters still seemed like a new idea) for it's single player campaign and multiplayer. Many people said Call of Duty 2 was the first "must own" for the Xbox 360. Call of Duty: World at War brought a new "grittiness" to the WW2 shooters (along with Nazi Zombies). And of course, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 went on to become two of the best and fastest selling games of all time. But what about Call of Duty 3? It seems to be kind of the black sheep of the family. Well let's see if this game was just a forgotten gem or if it just should have been forgotten.

STORY: The story in Call of Duty 3 has you following different soldiers from the Allied Nations. This means you play as an American, Russian, Polish, British, Scottish (I think), and French solider. Each group has their own subplot to deal with and everybody's main objective is "KILL NAZIS". Now I never give away anything when it comes to the story. What I will say is it does have it's moments. The story does give some nice settings and areas for you to fight against the Nazis and it helps it from getting monotonous. However there is one major thing that does stick out. This may sound weird, but some parts that are meant to be over-the-top and "summer blockbustery", just come across as...well...bland. I know that may sound like a oxymoron, but if you've played the game you probably know what I'm talking about. I guess the best way to put it is say you are watching somebody acting out a scene that in itself is crazy. But they are overacting so much it just kind of takes you out of that scene. Here I go again making a mountain out of a mole hill. To be fair, this is really my own gripe when it comes to the story. The story could best be described as "WW2 meets Hollywood Action Blockbuster". In the end, it does have it's corny parts, but it's all in good fun.

STORY: 5.5/10

GAMEPLAY: Now the gameplay is your standard FPS. There was no major change to the formula, but I guess if it's not broke then don't fix it. Of course, you go through different parts of Europe battling the Nazis whether it's on foot, by jeep, or with a tank. You will have several objectives throughout a mission and will always have to be kept on your toes. The big problems are the checkpoints and A.I. The checkpoints and auto saves are not done to well forcing the player to have to restart the same spot over and over again. The A.I. (both friendly and enemy) is the poorest out of the entire series. Even the original Call of Duty had better A.I. Both sides will stay behind cover, but instead of shooting over their cover, they just shoot into the cover that they themselves are hiding behind. This wasn't a huge issue and it didn't hinder the experience too much, but it is definitely worth noting. Now I will cut Treyarch a little bit of slack since this was the first "official" Call of duty game they developed (they did however do the "Spin-off" ones like Big Red One and Finest Hour), but then again, if you are going to play with the big boys (Infinity Ward) you better be on your "A" game. The only other complaint, is that this game seems to play it safe. Like I said before, if it ain't broke then don't fix it, but they really could have added some kind of mechanic to the series that they could have called their own. And no, I don't count their addition of more "quick time" events. Other than that the game is what you've would expect from the Call of Duty series, just with a little less polish.

GAMEPLAY: 6.5/10

GRAPHICS: The game does look pretty good for it's time. The character models are a little "rough", but it is a somewhat earlier 360 title so I'll let that slide. I did enjoy some of the environments, especially the wine cellar cause it was almost like fighting in a maze. Even though there was some cool environments, there was also the same ol' WW2 ones that have been recycled countless times. I know, I know it's a WW2 game so what do I expect, right? But they could have made some places that were more eye-catching (much like they did in World at War). Really the graphics are very similar to Call of Duty 2, which is not really a bad thing, but it could have used more of an updated look and more polish.

GRAPHICS: 7/10

SOUND/MUSIC: Now this is where the game nailed it. If you have 5.1, you will hear all sorts of crazy stuff happening all around you. From Nazis yelling to explosions, it does a fantastic job of putting you right into the action. The music also does it's job very well by having an orchestral soundtrack to help heighten the suspense. I've heard about some people saying the guns sound similar and, yeah, they do. But in all fairness it's not a deal breaker. I might get some crap from this, but the sound/music is the game's strongest point.

SOUND/MUSIC: 9/10

REPLAY VALUE: The game is about 6-8 hours long. You can get most of the achievements if you play the game on Veteran (like all the other games in the series). There's also multiplayer which has your usual "Deathmatch" and "Capture the Flag" (keep in mind this was the last game before the now famous "perk system"). The multiplayer is fun, but doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell if you've already played the multiplayer from Call of Duty 4 on (which by my guess is about 99% of us). So in short, you might play through the game twice to get the achievements and mess around with the multiplayer for a day, but unfortunately there's little replay value here.

REPLAY VALUE: 6/10

PRICE VALUE: This game goes for about $20-$30 new and $10-$15 used. So is it worth it? Well, personally I would suggest buying the "War Collection" if you don't already own "Call of Duty 2" and "World at War". But if you already own those games then I would say get C.O.D. 3 if you can find it for $15 or less. It's does have it's problems, but in the end it's just good mindless fun.

PRICE VALUE: 7/10

OVERALL SCORE: 6.5/10

Call of Duty 3 may be the weakest of the series, but it's still a pretty fun game. Also before any fans of the game get upset, the way I grade games is 9.5-10 is excellent, 7-9 is great, 5-6.5 is above average or average, 3-4.5 is below average, and 1-2.5 is poor. It may seem like a harsh grade scale, but it works for me. So in the end, it's a somewhat better than average game. For anybody who is familiar with my reviews, I know this one may have seemed kind of...well...bland. But don't worry cause the next two games I'm going to review should be pretty interesting since one of them is one of my favorite games on the 360 and the other is one of the worst games I have ever played in my life. So stay tuned here at TrueAchievements.com for more (Somewhat) Quick Reviews and check out new episodes of the "Smokin' Gamer" at YouTube.com (youtube.com/smokngamer). Peace!!!

I bought this game December of 2006 right after finishing COD2, which I thought was a GREAT game. COD3's graphics are excellent and the game level mechanics and AI are well done. The weapons are much more detailed graphically and game physics-wise compared to Call of Duty 2. The sound is fantastic however the weapons all seem to sound alike.

That said, I quickly lost interest in the game and went back to playing Gears of War due to the broken and frustrating save system (read, there isn't one unless you count having to reach a checkpoint a save system). Recently, I decided to give the game another try so that I could finally finish it and knock out a few achievements along the way. I quickly remembered why I put the game away - but I did finish it and have played it more than a few times to see what each difficulty level is like (I do this with most of my games).

In COD2, each and every mission (and sub-mission) were listed by name and difficulty played (Easy to Veteran). You could select the sub-mission and play it at any difficulty setting, which I found particularly fun. Treyarch didn't feel the need to do this apparently, which I find particularly frustrating when going back to play sections of the game in Veteran mode. There is no way to tell what difficulty setting any mission was played at.

Furthermore, I thought it was very annoying that you couldn't skip any cut scenes even when you've played through that section already. It has been said that this is so that you don't "see" any "Loading..." screens but after each cut scene there is a "Loading..." screen... So if you quit the game and come back to continue where you left off, expect to see the cutscene for that mission again.

The MP is well done and and a hoot to play. The ranking system is pretty standard compared to games made today. I played the MP only briefly though from what I played, it was pretty solid and very fun. This alone is worth the price of admission (however COD4 is much better - but this is a COD3 review). The tank driving parts of MP was fun along with the big diversity of weapons and stage designs as well.

Overall, COD 3 is a good game, but could have been better. Much better with a better save system and ability to view game progress like in COD2.

So, why did I bother to write this review? I'm hoping that someone at Treyarch is listening and when they make the next COD:(after WAW, which I have not played), they don't repeat the same mistake with the save system, and give us the ability to view each level's difficulty setting (down to the sublevel as in COD2). And PLEASE give us the ability to skip the cutscenes - make us watch them once - after that let us press a button to skip them like most every other game...