Call Of Duty
More of some rambling observations than a review… I played the Call of Duty (rather short) demos this past weekend. One thing this game has going for it is atmosphere. Speaking as someone who has never been in the military, and therefore never having experienced real combat in any form, this game does a pretty decent job of making you feel immersed in the scenario. The battles are intense. However, the demos really don’t do a lot to highlight any squad control and there are no multiplayer options, so there’s a lot of this game I haven’t gotten to see yet.
I hope the actual game includes much longer missions than was included in the demos. The missions in the demos I found to be rather simplistic and definitely too short, which brings me to my primary complaint about the game, or at least the demo’s presentation of the game. It’s too scripted. Your mission goals lay out what you need to do step by step, and you have to do them in the order they are presented to you. And they tell you exactly where to go most of the time. I prefer the Rainbow Six type of missioning where you at least have some level of ability to modify how the mission is done as long as all the mission goals are accomplished… but I also enjoy the realism of Rainbow Six (RS is more of a strategy game, whereas Call of Duty is more of a First Person Shooter action game.) This also brings me to the AI… Every time you do the same mission, the opponents start out the exact same way. You can sit there and time when they will come over specific walls, around corners, etc… While it’s exciting the first time, if you repeat any part of a level, you already know where the opponents will be. Is it really that hard to make better AI?
Performance was pretty good. I only had a few problems with low frame rate while running through a couple buildings while laying down lead, but I tend to set my settings pretty high.
All in all, though, for the Battlefield 1942 fans, this game looks pretty appealing, although so far I wouldn’t call it next generation, based on my limited exposure to it through the demos. I still haven’t decided yet if I’ll actually spend the money to buy it.
Favorite quote from the game: “We ride through enemy lines in a French tin can. You want to paint a bullseye on it, sir?”