Call of Duty: United Offensive

"Bigger, Louder, Better?"

Call Of Duty: United Offensive is a FPS developed by Grey Matter and is the expansion of Call Of Duty.

Story: 6/10
Presentation: 6.8/10

Pretty much the same deal as the first game. You see the war through the eyes of 3 soldiers of the Allied Forces. While the presentation is still good, it is a bit inferior to the first game.

Gameplay: 7/10
Replay Value: 5.5/10

The game still plays like a COD game. You are a soldier, usually in a squad trying to capture or defend key areas in the battlefield. Whatever you do affects your accuracy, whether you run, walk, move your head around, crouch, go to prone position or “zoom” with your weapon. Generally all the good mechanics of the first game are here, but something seems to be a bit wrong in this game. What is that? Well generally the game is similar to the first one but this one uses too much fireworks, way too much, but the game doesn't actually get any better, in fact its worse. That's the problem with COD:UO, it is a game full of show, a lot more epic with large amounts of enemy troops running towards you, with many tanks at their backs and planes flying around. The game looks better but somehow it has lost the realistic atmosphere of the first one. In the first game the appearance of a tank while you where on foot, was something very rare thus it created a great feeling, as if the tank was something too much for you too handle, in this game 3 tanks are coming towards you always have some sort of rocket launcher near you, so you just aim and shoot as fast as you can.

The expansion is a lot harder than the first one, but not in a good way because of one reason. You see in the first one, the game was scripted meaning that the tank would come at That time, the soldier would appear at That place and that place only, the bomb would explode when you would open That door, etc, etc. But, this time the game is toooo scripted it becomes bad… The main mechanism that makes it bad is the respawning of enemies. Yeah, you heard that right respawning enemies. I don't know about you but I hate that in games, (with very few exceptions), why? Imagine this, you are in point A and want to run over the bridge and go to point B and destroy the artillery that doesn't lets your armored vehicles pass. What do you do? The obvious is, go to point B along with your buddies try to not get killed and all. But what if you want to do something else? For example I first tried to kill the enemies from a distance. So I used my rifle from afar, and killed enemies, many enemies, so many enemies that I wondered. And then I realized that the game would spawn out “kleine Deutschen” until the end of the world! So I was forced to pass the bridge to reach the next checkpoint in order to stop the spawning of enemies from point B and start killing spawning enemies of the new C point!!! Finally the game is still extremely linear, with only one path you can follow without being able to lets say go through the river instead of over the bridge and such.

Finally the game has a nice filler once again that is all show and no go too. In the first game your tank along with 4-5 friendly tanks would destroy a whole battalion of german tanks. Here you control the machine gun of a bomber, trying to defend it from enemy aircrafts, while it flies above the enemy. I've got too admit that it looked great, but don't fool your self, that was just a filler in order to make a, (once again), small game look longer.

Graphics: 9.2/10
Design: 9/10

Big wow here! If there's something the expansion must be proud of is the quality of the graphics. The overall quality is still the same since the graphic engine hasn't change but the game has better design this time, with the various levels looking even more like actual battlefields worn out from bombardments and full of wreckage. Finally the special effects from explosions and the like are extremely great and this time, contrary to the first game, this one is full of them.

Sound: 9.6/10
Music: 7/10

The sound effects are still great and very loud as they should be since you are at war, with all guns blazing and bombardments occurring all the time. The music remains well arranged and quite emotional but I find it to be a bit inferior to the music of COD. Anyway the game sounds good.

Positives:
-Great graphics, far better special effects than the first game
-Great sound effects

Negatives:
-All show and no go
-Too scripted, enemies sometimes respawn
-Small and extremely linear

Also Play:
Call Of Duty (Series)(PC)
Medal Of Honor (Series)(PC)
Return To Castle Wolfenstein (PC)

Overall: 7.5/10

While still a good game, I had to point out in this review that it wasn't so good as the first game. I'm a person that when I play the expansion pack of a certain game, I want it to enhance the game and not be just one of the same and maybe even worse.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/09

Game Release: Call of Duty: United Offensive (US, 09/14/04)