Cgrundertow Call of Duty 3 for Xbox 360 Video Game Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 just set a record with the biggest entertainment launch in history. That’s impressive stuff, considering that the record was previously held by Avatar. However, some newcomers to the series might accidentally refer to that game as Call of Duty 3, which came out 5 years ago, and it was Treyarch’s first attempt at making a Call of Duty game, back when the games were still set in World War 2. This is Call of Duty 3 for the Xbox 360. Like my Medal of Honor review, this is going to be a strictly single-player review for the same reasons. It’s 5 years old, and there are better Call of Duty games on the market, so online play wouldn’t represent what it was originally like. Call of Duty 3 has a similar plot to the earlier games in the series. You’re still switching between different soldiers of different nationalities, and this helps to give you a sense of just how large this war really was. You’ll have your standard American and British troops, but other troops like Polish and Canadian soldiers help to keep things a little bit fresh. In addition, the game uses really nice cutscenes that help to give a small historical background of the events taking place at the time of each level, not unlike Treyarch’s 2008 game, World at War. It’s one of the best parts of older Call of Duty games, but it just wouldn’t work in the newer games that feature entirely fictional plots. Now, while this is a Call of Duty game, its gameplay might make some people a little bit confused when the start up the disc. For starters, recoil on weapons is incredibly vicious, far more than that in Call of Duty 2, and enemy AI actually seems a little bit worse. In addition, this game introduced the ability to throw back grenades at enemies, which is now a given in any Call of Duty game. There’s something really satisfying about doing that. The game also uses melee quick-time events with enemy soldier that require trigger pulling and fast button presses. These have been much improved in recent games, but they feel super lame in this one. Treyarch’s main problem with Call of Duty 3 is that very small changes make it feel like a completely different game. This isn’t a big thing on its own, but having rifles and grenades perform so much differently from the previous game in the series is really hard to get used to, especially when, to be frank, Call of Duty 2 did it better. Combat just plays out much smoother in that game, especially when fighting over long distances. That game does include some destructible elements that really do feel like a welcome addition the series, and it’s strange that they’ve never been used again. Blowing up a floor with a grenade is a…achem…blast. Visually, Call of Duty 3 is one of the more impressive early 360 games. Faces, weapons and environments all look excellent, as well as smoke and explosion effects. In addition, the game features very nice voice acting, although the German lines do seem to be ripped directly from Call of Duty 2. I guess there were only so many things that Nazis knew how to say. Call of Duty 3 is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, and it truly did innovate, but with a superior World War 2 game available in Call of Duty 2, there really isn’t much reason to play this one today.