Call of Duty : Games : Web Wombat

Arguably the Saving Private Ryan of the interactive entertainment world, it controls like a game and looks like a game, but when you play it there is a sense of immersion that I don't believe has ever been conveyed so visibly.

The phrase 'cinematic intensity' is a good one to use when describing a day in the life of a soldier in Call of Duty (CoD), and methinks that Infinity Ward, the folks who developed and coded the game, have some serious talent and a keen eye for what works and what doesn't.

From the outset, it's essentially your everyday first-person shooter.

CoD has a good control scheme, and anyone who's ever played a similar shooter will be able to dive right it. If it moves, kill it. If talks trash after killing it, kill it some more. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

From the menu there are a few options, but the important ones are the single player campaign game and multiplayer. Both offer countless hours of enjoyment and first I'll touch on multiplayer.

While there's the usual suspects - deathmatch and team deathmatch - the Behind Enemy Lines in an interesting, some would argue unorthodox, multiplayer mode. Simply put, it's Allies vs. Axis. The Axis team always outnumber the Allies from the commencement of the game, and whenever an Axis trooper kills an Ally, they become an Ally. The longer you stay an Ally, the more points you get.

The best modes, in my humble opinion, are the team based ones, similar in implementation to Counter-Strike (CS) if you want a comparison. The first is Retrieval, pretty much like the scientist rescue in CS, only replace scientists with inanimate objects. The other is called Search and Destroy, which again is similar to the bomb levels in CS, where one team has to blow stuff up, and the other has to protect.

Join your buddies and take
on a team of strangers

Like CS, you only have one life per round, so if you die it's adios amigos and you get to watch two guys camp in dark corners for several minutes. "But where's the innovation, Willy?" I hear you chant like a daedric mantra on Beltane?

One of the cooler aspects of the various multiplayer games is the aptly named Killcam. When you killed, you'll get a little Killcam replay that shows through the eyes of your killer how he killed you.

Overkill? No way.

It show's you where they were hiding (good to find campers) and what method they used to waste your arse, whether it was a good spray of machinegun fire or a long-range rifle shot in the back.

While the multiplayer modes will entertain for aeons, it's the single player campaign that will most likely pique your interest from the get-go. After completing a fairly basic boot camp-cum-tutorial, you'll join the American 101st Airborne division to prepare for the D-Day invasions.

After even spending a few minutes with the game, you'll notice that CoD differs from the garden-variety shooter. And it's all in the execution.

Thanks to a combination of awesome, and sometimes deafening sound effects, realistic graphics and solid level design filled with convincing architecture, the result is one very engaging and addictive wartime title.

The only instance you'll really want to take a break is when you get up to the devilishly challenging Soviet levels, and frustration may kick in. You often begin levels without weapons and have to methodically work your way through heavy machine gun and mortar fire by using the tools of fallen comrades.

Another element that works well at immersing the player in the action is the feeling that the gameworld is alive and, seeing as your not some super commando with a dry-cool wit, up against Hitler's huge army on your lonesome, fighting alongside soldiers is something that until now hasn't really been perfected.

War torn France makes for
an eerily real game experience

Well, I mean nothing's perfect, but the soldiers around you, who comprise of machine gunners, riflemen and of course the Sarge, are constantly talking, sometimes whispering. Even when you die CoD lists rousing quotes from the military big men that add to the experience. One of my faves is from Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Whether you're in the thick of a firefight with an enemy platoon, or simply trudging around the landscape, looking for daisies to hew into your army-issue garb, there's often humorous, sometimes sobering comments made by the soldiers fighting alongside you.

Sometimes it's unnervingly realistic to just sit back and watch the others go about their business, scrutinising them as they examine their surroundings, fire a few shots and perhaps even take a rest.

Not since Halo have I seen such believable AI scripting. It's also cool not to have to instruct your buddies too - they just do their thing, and quite efficiently too.

Again, this is reflected in the AI of your teammates, which is undeniably polished. Pathing and movement (you'll even see them dive for cover and work as coordinated unit) has reached an impressive level - no getting stuck on sharp corners here - and their ability to take down enemy soldiers and units means that you'll be running to the front lines to ensure you get some boom-boom action too.

They'll even drag injured soldiers away from enemy eyes, while covering and suppressing fire are also part of their repetoire.

On a visual level, Infinity Ward has done well. Beyond your fellow soldiers looking fairly life-like, with detailed faces, good lip synch and all their idiosyncrasies (such as looked scared, pointing the way ahead, making light of situations etc.), weapons, vehicles and structures all have a good level of realism.

There's a level where you start off in an aircraft that eventually crashes, and the way you are strapped in but can still look around during the chaos is expertly portrayed. There's even levels where you'll be firing at enemy vehicles from the back of a truck, or from a jeep or a car, adding variety and joining the plot together with style.

Once you enlist, there's no looking back...

It's a very gritty-looking game, which only adds to its sense of realness, and though there are better looking games out there with more advanced visual effects and better looking explosions, the overall effect of the combined audio-visual aspect comes together with zeal.

When you can hear bullets whizzing past and mortars whistling overhead, it's quite a scary thing.

Sometimes you won't want to move from your cover, as you know the tank out there is bearing down - it really is a gripping experience to play through and sometimes it can affect you psychologically more like a movie than a game.

One of the problems with the single player facet is that it has end, and though there's a good 10 hours of solid play of offer (more on harder difficulty levels), I guarantee you'll be hankering for more at the end of it.

And while the multiplayer mode comes in handy, and is a shit load of fun to boot, it's often the grandiose scripted sequences from the 24 single player levels that you'll yearn for. But I guess that just proves how gripping this game is - not wanting it to end and all that.

The pacing of the game is also right up there with the best of them, and maybe it's this feature that makes the game so compelling, so hard to put down. Like a well written book or a cleverly directed film, there's few times when you'll actually think to yourself - "Time to go to bed," or "Where's my spy camera!"

At the end of the day, it must really hurt EA to see Call of Duty on the shelves. It's such a brilliant game in almost every respect, and seeing as 22 of the staffers who worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault defected to Infinity Ward to make Call of Duty, it says something about the company's management (i.e. it's restrictive and it sucks).

Kudos to Activision for trusting the artists and giving them the freedom to express themselves - the result is a tremendous success, a gameplay experience like few others, and one that comes highly recommended.

Game: Call of Duty
System: PC
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Infinity Ward
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 95%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Call of Duty is on the shelves now.

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