Surviving the fires of Call of Duty 3 on the PS3…
… is like saying: Somehow, I wonder how they ever got through World War II alive and kicking, but that’s a testament to the tenacity of the humble front-line grunt. Activision‘s Call of Duty 3, for the PS3, which was tossed onto my lap recently (and the editors told me to take it home and choke on it… wow they must really love me) has a ton of them GIs. A few shoot with you, many more shoot at you: if you value your head, I advise you keep it down.
That’s the good news. If you’ve bought COD3 to give lead as good as, if not better, than the other guy, then this game gives it well enough. Toss in multiplayer and the game could become well worth the purchase for that reason (even right alongside Resistance: Fall of Man, COD3 has potential bang for buck value in that department). You have to be a fan of WWII shooters to appreciate it, I think, and at least in single-player, you gotta be prepared for a lot of Jerry thrown at you at any given moment – probably even more than the previous gen. I actually had to pop in a PS2 Call of Duty just to do a head count.
Unfortunately, I lost count.
St. Lo is beautiful in the summer. Too bad we had to spoil it.
Graphically, COD3 is almost impressive. The advantage of looking at it this late is that we’ve already heard all those “this console vs. that console” comparisons for this multiplatform shooter. Personally, I kinda liked what IGN called the “washed out” colors of the PS3 version more – reminds me a lot of the “Band of Brothers” miniseries. Total effect is to suck you into that WWII vibe we grew up with through the movies.
The rest can be found at the full article. Private Ryan can be found somewhere else.
… is like saying: Somehow, I wonder how they ever got through World War II alive and kicking, but that’s a testament to the tenacity of the humble front-line grunt. Activision‘s Call of Duty 3, for the PS3, which was tossed onto my lap recently (and the editors told me to take it home and choke on it… wow they must really love me) has a ton of them GIs. A few shoot with you, many more shoot at you: if you value your head, I advise you keep it down.
That’s the good news. If you’ve bought COD3 to give lead as good as, if not better, than the other guy, then this game gives it well enough. Toss in multiplayer and the game could become well worth the purchase for that reason (even right alongside Resistance: Fall of Man, COD3 has potential bang for buck value in that department). You have to be a fan of WWII shooters to really appreciate it, I think, and at least in single-player, you gotta be prepared for a lot of Jerry thrown at you at any given moment – probably even more than the previous gen. I actually had to pop in a PS2 Call of Duty just to do a head count.
Unfortunately, I lost count.
St. Lo is beautiful in the summer. Too bad we had to spoil it.
Graphically, COD3 is almost impressive. The advantage of looking at it this late is that we’ve already heard all those “this console vs. that console” comparisons for this multiplatform shooter. Personally, I kinda liked what IGN called the “washed out” colors of the PS3 version more – reminds me a lot of the “Band of Brothers” miniseries. Total effect is to suck you into that WWII vibe we grew up with through the movies.
The smoke grenades come back from Call of Duty 2, and they work just as well, with a nice thick fog of white that makes it easier to run past German machine guns (yeah, sure. That’s what I tell myself when the game tells me to go find cover NOW before I die). The battlefield and all its props are well-rendered, so far as I’ve seen. I actually laughed when, as I plopped down behind a hill, I saw this stone rolling in front of me. I don’t know if I’ve seen any jaggies – got down to the grass once and observed them just to be sure, looked fine to me. Then I had to get the heck out of there – right in front of a machine gun nest, you see.
One of the other shooter staffers who also had a crack at the game mentioned that the gunfire audio seemed a bit underwhelming. Yeah, the Treyarch devs could have pumped up the volume of the guns at the default setting. Other sound effects come through, though, and at least one advantage of subdued gunfire is that you can hear the Germans coming. Voice acting is pretty standard fare for a WWII-themed game.
They keep coming…
You know your shooters, you know your COD, you shouldn’t have any worries about controlling the PS3 3. The SIXAXIS rifle butt will take about a third to a half-second before it registers, though. And those events where some German tries to… er, show you his not-so-pearly whites up close, and you literally have to shake him loose? Quite a workout (which it is in real life), but for the sake of your arms, it’s advisable to pick the non-motion sensing option.
Also back from COD2 is the regenerating health system. It’s perfect for keeping the pace of the game up, and with the amount of gunfire that can fill the screen in two seconds, it can be useful. Not really realistic, but useful. To counter this, at times COD3 will throw Nazi Sturmtruppen at you like they were lemmings. Or ordered by, of all people, Stalin. You have to keep moving forward to displace them off their positions and cut them off – forces the pace, actually, which is a good thing.
Nazi AI is somewhat decent, too, though some are courteous enough to leave their heads exposed enough for a nice shot. Conversely, your Allied squadmates sometimes get in the way, running in front of you, taking too much fire for their own good (though I think the regenerating health applies to them, too… I think). Now if they only laid suppressing fire, I’d love them more, but as it is, like COD games before, you’ve got to lug a lot of the workload.
The downside to such numbers coming at you is that it’s disorienting, and it can become overwhelming at the harder levels for the less prepared. TIP: save the smoke grenades for these moments, they will cut down on incoming fire, if you keep your head down.
The new Class system in multiplayer certainly mixes things up some. Play Battlefield 1942, 2, or 2142 enough and you’ll easily slide into this new system, because it’s based on the same principles. Love the Light Assault class: you get the sticky grades so you can stick it to those annoying Tanks good (where were those weapons in BF1942?).
Since this is coming out only now, we’ve had the benefit of the latest updates from Activision to fix whatever bugs cropped up before, so we could say we’re looking at what Activision intended Call of Duty 3 PS3 to be (as much as they could for now, anyway) compared to its condition at launch.
I wanted to ask Tom Hanks what he thought of the game, but he wasn’t available.
Immersive? Definitely, to the point of overwhelming sometimes (and that could be dangerous). Compelling? Reading about glitches early on after launch was worrisome, but with all the updates to date in the game now, my current run-through went through smoothly… or I could be very lucky there. Resistance is certainly its competition, but it’s an entirely different animal (of the species Chimera) altogether. COD3‘s team-based and class-based multi-shooter offers a bit of BF while BF is not available for Sony‘s next-gen.
As for single-player… honestly, I haven’t finished the game yet (and on Normal, too), and I’m still wiping blood, Allied and Axis, off my boots, which goes to show how many lemmings one game can throw at you. Nice target practice (or is it duck-and-cover practice?) for multiplayer, if you want to look at it that way. A better than average game: it’s not bound to take your breath away for too long, but it’s a notch above the norm, and it will certainly keep your head down if you want to live. Live long enough to shove a pineapple up Hitler’s goose-stepping behind.