Call of Duty 3

"Don't be fooled, this is not Call of Duty"

GRAPHICS: 10/10

Very good. A solid improvement on Call of Duty 2. There's no particular area they are better, it's just everything in general. Better effects, better character models, better physics (although the deaths look creepily ragdoll-ish) and... wait for it... excellent grass.

SOUND: 8/10

The sound of this game draws you in very well, but the music is... not my thing. I spent the majority of my Call of Duty 3 time listening to System of a Down and Stone Temple Pilots instead of the boring, deja-vu inducing orchestral themes. The guns in particular sound amazing, and the characters actually speak (although the online American voices are barely tolerable. Apparently, during WW2 all Americans at the front line were from the south.)

CAMPAIGN GAMEPLAY: 4/10

Yikes. A huge step down in this department. CoD2 forced you to fight immense (or they felt that way) battles as Russians, British, and Americans, and to be perfectly honest, there wasn't a single level that didn't blow me away.

Call of Duty 3 introduces embarrassingly cheesy voice actors, boring level design, and, rather than putting you in the middle of a huge platoon (most of which get killed) like in Call of Duty 2, Treyarch decided that the "lone wolf" gameplay mechanic was better here. You and 2 or 3 allies will battle your way through hundreds of brainless Germans, completely removing the intensity of the previous game and instead making you feel like a 1940's Master Cheif. I don't know about you, but I personally find this detrimental to the WW2-shooter experience. And due to the lame weapons in single player, you won't even enjoy the shooting. Weak.

ONLINE/MULTIPLAYER GAMEPLAY: 2/10

I really, really wish I could rate this higher. Because if certain problems were fixed, CoD 3 could be among the best online games. As is, however, the online gameplay is borderline broken.

In a nutshell, rather than choosing allies or axis and and then a weapon and proceeding to blow people away for 20-30 minutes, CoD3 has actual classes that introduce some strategy to the game. Medics can revive fallen comrades, snipers can call air strikes, Anti-armor rocket launchers exist to destroy vehicles (more on that in a sec...), and rifleman can even use rifle grenades. Treyarch did a good job of making the classes unique. Unfortunately, they did not bother to properly balance them.

To be fair, the classes themselves are decently balanced. At long range, a sniper will defeat a light assault, but in close quarters the light assault will usually win. That sort of thing. But the real problem is the balance between factions. Simply put, all of the American weapons are ridiculously good (to the point where the BAR of a a heavy assault can outsnipe a sniper) while their German counterparts are... less than good. Perhaps the best example of this is the rifleman's weapon: the Americans get the familiar semi-automatic M1 Garand while the Germans get... the Kar98k. In CoD2, the Kar98 was a one hit kill, but Treyarch decided that must have been too powerful, and instead they have roughly equal firepower. What this means is, the Garand is fast firing, with a bigger clip, while the Kar98 has a long pause between shots and a smaller clip. Yet they have the same firepower. Go figure.

Balance issues aside, Call of Duty 3 could still be fairly enjoyable if the online playability was decent. Which it definately isn't. The biggest problem is simply joining a game, which is next to impossible. I usually spend 5-10 MINUTES looking for just a single game that doesn't encounter a connection problem or "No game sessions available" message. And once you join, even if you find the best connection on a good, cable internet provider, you will have ridiculous lag. I could tell stories and stories about being killed behind from behind walls, two players killing each other due to the game being unable to decide who shot first, and unloading an entire Thomson clip-and-a-half into someone before they die. However, said problems happen in virtually every game you will join, so I'd probably be wasting my breath. Rent it and see for yourself if you don't believe me.

If these multifarious problems don't convince you that the online play is broke, then I suppose you might like it. But most people generally find "death by lag" to be one of the least satisfying video games moments, ever.

REPLAY: 5/10

Well, even if the online sucks, it still has online play and 4 different difficulties, with a good number of achievements. If you can stomach the horror that is Call of Duty 3 online, you can have many months of play before it gets stale. Hell, I got this game months ago and still play it in the hope I can find an online session without lag. Because if you can find one, you will actually have a great time.

OVERALL: 29/50 - 5.8/10

Call of Duty 3 has a lot of things going for it. Excellent graphics and sound, a great (if a little stale) online concept, and some genuinely cool moments (such as the first level's intense start). Unfortunately, this game utterly kills itself with shoddy execution, with a boring single player experience and unexcusably laggy online matches, the majority of which you won't even be able to join. If most of these problems were fixed, this game would indeed be the "must have" that the box says it is. But as it is right now, there is very little redeeming about the gameplay. Those 6/10 points are mostly pity points or graphical "WOW!" points, so don't think this game is a 6/10 experience. On gameplay alone, I'd call it a 3.

RENT OR BUY?

Save yourself 5 bucks and don't even rent it. Leave it sitting on the shelf at Walmart where it belongs. And if you MUST try it (perhaps to experience how awful it is) rent it first. I mentally slap myself every time I realize I spent 60 bucks on this crap.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/07