Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

Dropping you into WWII's European Theater, the Call of Duty franchise puts you in an advance on German-held territory. Focusing on the days leading to the liberation of Paris, lots of options and stellar sound make this a game worth playing.

Though not specified in the manual, you play as a few differerent soldiers, with the game flipping between them as it progesses. You end up playing as parts of different Allied units, each with the goal of entrapping retreating German forces near the French town of Chamois before they can escape and regroup. Unlike other WWII FPS titles, you'll do more than just shoot your gun and advance. Segments include tank maneuvering, spotting targets to call in air strikes, and operating a mortar to wipe out a roadblock. The result is a more comprehensive war experience than many titles offer. As the Germans get hemmed in further, their counterattacks become more desperate and dangerous, requiring you to have really mastered your skills to survive the end stages of the game. Smart AI enemy AI enhances the overall exerience, and the sounds around you truly immerse you in the battelfield.

It can't be overstated how great the sound is, especially if you've got a surround sound set-up. Bullets whiz past you, mortars and bombs explode in all corners of the room, and German shouts of "Achtung, handgranate!" fill the landscape. Add in the nicely polished, orchestral anthems and the real winner is your ears. Enemies' smart battle actions add an extra layer of realism, as they not only use cover, but some will even vary between ducking and standing before peeking their head out from behind a wall, creating less cheap 'leave the aiming reticle where it is and fire' kills for you to take advantage of. Tank missions provide a nice break, and give that macho feeling of getting to use a really big gun. Occasional choices in routes, either in getting to do either A or B to get to C, or having to do A and B (but in either order) serve to make the necessary historical linearity of the game a bit less obvious.

The biggest snag in the game is quite literally a snag in the game. The tiniest bump in a wall prevents strafing, turning your desperate flee into cover into being a sitting duck. In a game where death can come in under a half-second, that's not good enough. Driving missions are fun enough, but checkpoints pop up on your minimap so late that the first time through you end up guessing which way to turn, and the wrong way might be into a German tank. While they generally perform admirably, and will almost complete your missions for you if you let them, sometimes your squadmates get caught behind items or won't move unless you move over a very specific, yet unidentifed spot, leaving you to take care of things on your own. Some cheap spawning is used outside, with Germans popping up to replace dead comrades until you get close enough to the group.

While the overall gameplay is very good, and the fighting controls are solid, picking up new weapons takes too long, requiring you to hold down the reload button for while, leaving you open to attack for too long. The graphics are done quite nicely, and the smoke effects are pretty realistic, though you will note a glitch or two along the way. The only quibble you can make about the sound is occasionally during a weapon reload it won't play the sound for that, a glitch that many WWII games seem to have in common. I got close to 20 hours on the hardest difficulty; you should be able to get around 10 on easier settings. While the game may not stretch the standard WWII FPS genre to a tremendous degree, it comes close to perfecting it, and definitely delivers an experience that FPS fans will enjoy.