The Budget Bin Reviews: Call of Duty 3 (Xbox 360)

War is hell, but hell can be pretty enjoyable when it’s done right in video games. This month in The Budget Bin Reviews, we revisit one of the first, and still one of the better FPS titles in this generation of gaming. It’s Activision‘s Call of Duty 3 for the Microsoft Xbox 360.

War is hell, but hell can be pretty enjoyable when it’s done right in video games. This month in The Budget Bin Reviews, we revisit one of the first, and still one of the better FPS titles in this generation of gaming. It’s Activision‘s Call of Duty 3 for the Microsoft Xbox 360.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is here, so we thought that to better appreciate Infinity Ward‘s work on its latest offering, let’s take a look back at the previous Call of Duty and see what leaps and bounds in technology have been made after a couple of years.

In the third iteration of the celebrated shooter franchise, Infinity Ward decided to take the back seat in favor of other projects and handed the creative reins to Treyarch. The result is an intense video game rendition of the bloodiest war in history, but some were a little disappointed that it isn’t quite the quantum leap that they hoped it would be. Does this game deserve a purple heart or do we Court Martial it for being a disgrace to the Army? Let’s break it down:

Allies+Guns= Ain’t no way they’re saving Hitler’s brain

It’s no secret that there’s an entire battalion of shooting games based on World War II to date, all of which are jostling for position on every gamer’s spending list. War stories have been told, bullets have been fired, but the reservoir of creative opportunities remains viable and that’s where Call of Duty 3 capitalizes. Picking up on the events that transpired right after Call of Duty 2, the game catapults you in some awesome action from the get-go of the Normandy Breakout.

The game starts with a brief training mission where you’ll learn all the basics of mutilation….er, liberation. You’ll be given simple instructions on how to carry and effectively fire guns, throw grenades and do some melee combat. When all that is said and done, Call of Duty 3 throws you into one of the greatest firefights, maybe ever, in the history of gaming. You’ll board a truck for a short drive, but your little excursion is violently halted by a blast that throws you and your squad off the vehicle. A battle ensues, and it’s no ordinary one.

The battle that ensues is the stuff that legends are made of. It would be recommended that you view this on a big screen and that you hook up the best sound system that you can find because it’ll be epic, in-your-face brutality that will follow. Corpses and guts will be everywhere, screams will fill the air, and the sound of bullets whizzing by will make you feel like you’re in the heart of WWII Normandy. Players new to the game may be lost in the mayhem for a while, but once they gather their senses, it’ll be payback time.

During the course of the game, you’ll be fighting alongside several Allied factions which will require you to learn how to use their weapons and accomplish their objectives. This is especially engrossing as it gives you a sensation of the war’s full scale. Attempts are made to endear you to your squadmates, but your stay together will be a bit too brief for warmth to actually spread.

Penetrate, mutilate, dominate, liberate!

Considering that Call of Duty 3 is among the early next-gen shooters that made it to the Xbox 360, the visuals hold up very well even by today’s standards. The character models and the guns are nicely drawn, while the terrain is as realistic as can be during the time that this game was under development. Vehicles aren’t exactly spectacular, but they’re solid nevertheless.

What steals the show as far as the graphics of Call of Duty 3 are concerned is undoubtedly the special effects. Explosions, the rain, and even the clouds were amazing in this title. The only sad part is that you’ll never get a real chance to gawk at these because there’s never a dull moment throughout the levels.

Perhaps one small detail that’s overlooked is the quality of smoke effects that Call of Duty 3 has. Where smoke in other games tend to be wispy from afar but a little blocky up close, the smoke in this bad boy is thick and light, moving the way you’d expect real smoke to behave in real life. The cover it provides troops on both sides complements the strategy nicely as movement must be executed while the enemy can’t see through smokescreens. It’ll almost make you feel like a ninja.

Regardless of whether the frame rate issues of the Sony PlayStation 3 version of Call of Duty 3 are generally true or isolated cases, let us assure you that the Xbox 360 version has none of that. The speed doesn’t change whether you’re facing a lone soldier or a platoon of them rushing at you. Even in 24-player online matches, the graphics remain solid provided that you have a decent connection.

War can be ugly

As solid a game as Call of Duty 3 is, we wouldn’t say that it is without flaws. They aren’t major ones, mind you, but there are elements in this game that will make you wish that the developers put more effort in building it. For one, Call of Duty 3 doesn’t do much to elevate the level of gaming that Call of Duty 2 provided. Sure, the graphics were updated, and there are some new bells and whistles like planting bombs here and there, but when it comes to introducing something totally new, this game fails in the single player aspect.

Aside from the spectacular first fight in the graveyard, much of the levels will have you doing the same things over and over again. You’ll be going through missions a little faster than you would in a tactical shooter, throwing grenades at mobs and picking off the survivors with a firearm. You’ll soon notice that the enemies in the default difficulty settings are just a little tougher than cardboard boxes, and soon you’ll be bum-rushing their mediocre-AI hides. They tend to move in predictable patterns every time, too, so by the time you repeat a mission, you’ll be feeling like you’re psychic.

Boosting the difficulty levels will give you the worth of what you paid for, as enemy soldiers will be better at moving and shooting. That amounts to some decent replay value, but after completing the game in about 10 hours, you’ll have to go online where all the good stuff happens.

Take your aggression online

The online play in Call of Duty 3 is the single, biggest factor why the title remains regarded as a great one despite the minor shortcomings that irk some of us. This game brought to the Xbox 360 the first huge bag of fun that it had over Xbox Live and it remains a strong draw to this day. Four players on one Xbox 360 can participate in 24-player matches, upping the team-based fun way higher than its other versions.

All the standard online play modes are present in Call of Duty 3 such as the standard-issue capture the flag, Deathmatch and what not. What makes it more interesting is the fact that like most modern team-based shooters, Call of Duty 3 has a myriad of classes with unique strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited to gain an edge.

One may argue that the online mode too, lacks innovation but and they may be right, but we say nevermind that. There are some things that can stand alone even without dramatic revisions, and online play in shooters hold up pretty well in themselves. Bottom line, Call of Duty 3‘s online play isn’t quite Halo series-quality but it was still good enough for its time, and is still pretty good as this is written.

A true war hero

If Call of Duty 3 launched today at full price, it would be worth considering to have in any FPS fan’s shopping list, but knowing that it launched almost a year ago and is now priced at US$ 29.99, it’s almost a steal! This game may not have started a revolution but it does a great job of putting up a fight and having its moments.