Call of Duty: United Offensive

"“I need armor support!” I yelled, and I got it."

In 2003, FPS fans were hit with the best thing since Medal of Honor Allied Assault and, arguably, sliced bread. This was Call of Duty, the outstanding evolution of the concepts of previous WWII shooters. Combining non-stop action with a wide range of locales, weapons and gameplay concepts, Call of Duty set the new standard in historical FPS games.

Come 2004 and the long-awaited United Offensive is released. Instead of being developed by Infinity Ward, the original developers, United Offensive is developed by Gray Matter studios, the team responsible for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. With the difficult task of living up to Call of Duty's standard, United Offensive picks up on the original game and expands on everything, and remarkably so.

As with Call of Duty, the single player campaign puts the player in the boots of American, British and Russian soldiers fighting against the German forces. Rather than play through unmentioned battles of the original characters, the respective personas are that of new and different men. The American campaign pits you as Private Riley of the 101st Airborne, in the midst of the Battle of Bastogne. The player is immediately thrown into action as a jeep patrol goes horribly wrong, resulting in a mad drive through enemy lines with the player taking out enemy infantry with the rear-mounted .50cal machine gun, before holding the line in foxholes, and later capturing German strongpoints and enemy-held towns.

The British campaign departs from the generic foot-soldier gig and puts players in the boots of Sgt. Doyle, a gunner on a British B-17. Contrasting with the rough, cold ground battles, Doyle cruises through the beautiful skies of Holland before being pelted with relentless flak and kept busy with shooting down enemy fighters swarming the bombers, running back and forward as the plane is shot to pieces and crewmen get killed. Players later link up with the Dutch Resistance and fight on foot, and participate in an SAS raid.

Most dramatic of the three campaigns is the Russian campaign, starting off with intense trench fighting in the Battle of Kursk, placing demolition charges on enemy tanks, clearing trenches and holding villages. Players then move onto more villages on the road to Berlin, including another tank-driving mission, and ultimately to the brutal and devastating house-to-house fighting in Kharkov.

To aid players in their mission against the German foe, an assortment of weapons are made available. Most of the weapons are retained from the original, including old favourites like the Kar98k, Mosin-Nagant, M1 Garand, Thompson, MP40, MP44 and other rifles, submachine guns, support weapons and sidearms. Quite a few new weapons are included, however, and include unique pistols (TT33 for the Russians and the Webley Mk IV for the British, rather than the shared Colt .45 and Luger pistols) as well as the SVT40 and G43 semi-automatic rifles for the Germans and Russians. Several other weapons received damage tweaks, and the sniper scopes are improved with larger scope size and authentic reticle patterns, instead of looking down a straw in the original game. As with Call of Duty, a dynamic crosshair is included, but players are required to use iron sights to fire accurately. The most radical addition is the inclusion of deployable light machine guns: the Browning M1919A6 .30cal, the DP-28 and the MG34, adding a new dimension to infantry combat as players are able to reinforce strongpoints with massive firepower, at the cost of being unable to fire while on the move.

The greatest expansion to any aspect of the game would have to be the Multiplayer game. While the original Call of Duty was quite fun to play, often it deteriorated into mindless deathmatch-style games and stalemates, with little more than “kill two or so players and get killed”, and with some horrible weapon imbalances. United Offensive partially rectifies the submachine gun dominance by generally extending the average combat range. Levels are now quite large, encompassing entire towns and villages instead of the narrow streets and halls typical of Call of Duty maps. Of course, close combat maps are also plenty, but with the addition of semi-automatic rifles for more teams, the action is intense. However, two very important tide-turning tools of war are added to multiplayer to keep players on their feet: vehicles and artillery.

Taking a page from Battlefield 1942, players are now able to command tanks and jeeps. However, instead of the unbalanced nature of vehicles in the Battlefield games, United Offensive retains a remarkable balance with the vehicles. While tanks are able to use their main and coaxial guns, as well as a top-mounted MG, tactful manoeuvres are required when fighting against enemy armor, with heavier tanks being able to deal and take more punishment than the lighter Panzer IV's and Shermans, and with damage being affected by angle of attack. Infantry too becomes a huge threat with the availability of anti-tank weapons such as the Bazooka, Panzerschrek, Panzerfaust and even 88mm Flak guns and high-explosive satchel charges. Well placed explosives and knock out multiple vehicles, well-aimed rockets can cripple a tank or stop a runaway jeep, and an accurate 88mm gunner can halt entire armoured assaults. Multiplayer games have never been so intense and full of action, as teams try to outmatch each other in aggressiveness, marksmanship, integrity and strategy.

The other tide-turning Multiplayer element is the combat ranking system. Each player starts off as lowly privates, but as they score more points; they are promoted to higher ranks. This in turn gives them more ammunition and new equipment. Ultimately, the highest-ranked players are able to call in artillery at certain intervals, using binoculars to transmit coordinates. The sound of huge guns firing is heard in the background before the whistle of dozens of shells is heard crashing down onto the target. A single barrage of artillery can turn the tide of the game, eliminating massed concentrations of enemy forces, blocking chokepoints and cutting off reinforcements.

In addition to the game modes offered in the original game, including Deathmatch, Search & Destroy and Behind Enemy Lines, three new multiplayer modes are added: Capture the Flag, old but classic, yet highly intense; Domination, which is a fast and frantic battle to command key locations and defend them; and Base Assault, which consists of opposing teams using vehicles, artillery and explosives to destroy enemy bunkers while defending their own.

Visually, United Offensive is almost identical to Call of Duty. Player and weapon models are nicely detailed, and enemy models feature new hit animations, but the Quake 3 engine on which it is based on is certainly showing its age. Weapon effects aren't that impressive either, and apart from a nice variety of level designs and appearances, there aren't many impressive additions. Surprisingly, Gray Matter pulled off an outstanding effort in improving smoke and explosion effects: tanks shells, smoke grenades and fog of war is beautifully rendered, complete with flying debris and dust. Unfortunately, not much can be said about the sound. While the immersive ambient noises are plentiful, the weapon sounds are still unconvincing, the music is re-used from the previous game, and dramatic moments aren't as dramatic as they were in Call of Duty.

Sadly, the game has one major downfall: the single player aspect. While the Multiplayer aspect is outstanding, despite issues such as artillery saturation and spamming, the single player game is absolutely horrible. While not as linear as Call of Duty, United Offensive introduces frustrating gameplay techniques that utterly kill the game.

One of the most noticeable additions is endless enemy spawn points. That's right, instead of having a fixed number of enemies to eliminate, countless enemies run from barricades or leap over fences at certain parts of the campaign when you eliminate a bunch of them, and only stop spawning when you overran that area, only to be met with more infinite enemies from another part of town. Players should have been given the opportunity to take out enemies from a distance, but instead are forced to advance under fire.

Another major frustration is the way in which beaten zones are scripted. Being killed is now almost random, but while realistic, it becomes tedious when you get killed instantly because you forgot to kill German #13940 on the left. Even worse is when you try to run past enemy machine gun positions. In Foy, for example, you have to run from one haystack to the next. However, the moment you step out from behind Haystack #1, you are ripped to shreds by the machine gun, despite two or three of your squad mates already running ahead of you. Apparently, you are meant to carefully lean out and pick off the gunner, but you get zapped if you lean out a millimetre too far. Not fun, seriously. More frustrations come with auto-save points not kicking in when they're supposed to, and some hideous frame-rate drops in certain points of the game.

The final consensus on United Offensive is quite simple: more action, less drama, outstanding multiplayer, and disappointing single player. If you play United Offensive for the single player experience, you won't be any more impressed than what you were with Call of Duty. If you play United Offensive for multiplayer, however, you will have scored yourself one of the most intense and enjoyable online gaming experiences ever.

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replay: 10/10
Overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/05