Ureview by: Eraser
Ureview points: 28
Ureviewer since: April 2006
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Reviewed On: Wednesday May 23, 2007
Price paid: $60.00
| Rating: 7 | Recommends product: Yes
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Introduction
Call of Duty 3 is the third installment of the famous World War 2 series. Treyarch, developers of CoD2, are also the developers for this title. At it's core, Call of Duty is probably just another World War 2 shooter. It doesn't really innovate in the First Person Shooter genre or the World War 2 theme and while Treyarch are to be commended for the graphics they've squeezed out of the Wii, it still falls a bit flat when compared to graphical powerhouses like XBox 360 or Playstation 3.
Controls
So what is it that makes this edition of the game special then? The controls, obviously. And it does in fact make quite a difference.
The Wii's remote is used to point at the screen to aim. A crosshair on the screen corresponds to wherever you're aiming, and this makes it really easy to accurately target those nazi's. If you move the crosshair to the edge of the screen, your view will rotate (as if you were moving the mouse in a keyboard + mouse setup).
The B-button on the back of the remote is used to fire your weapon. The - button is used to reload your weapon and perform certain functions, such as entering a vehicle/MG42/mortar or picking up weapons.
The D-pad can be used to switch weapons or pull out a grenade. Both frag and smoke grenades can be used, each assigned to their individual D-pad directional button.
The controlstick on the nunchuck is used to move forward/backward and strafe. The Z-button is used to crouch/prone and the C-button is used to jump, but jumping is rarely useful.
While a nudge of the nunchuck can be used to throw grenades, it's not preferable as the game doesn't respond to the movement far too often, resulting in shrapnel in your face. Not good. Fortunately this functionality is optional and grenades can be thrown with a button as well.
All in all the controls work pretty well and they work so well that, with a little fine tuning, they are in fact the next best thing to the still superior mouse and keyboard setup. You don't want to go back to a classic controller anymore.
Call of Duty also features a number of situations asking for special controls. Planting an explosive device is no longer a single button press, you actually have to make movements with the controller to set up the device. In other situations you'll have a hand to hand fight with a german soldier, again requiring some quite intensive movements. The way this is done makes the game much more physical in those moments, and much more intense. Driving a jeep is done by holding the remote and nunchuck vertical next to each other, holding them as if it were a steering well. Turning is done by turning the imaginary wheel, as if driving a real car.
These special control implementations do add a lot of spice to the game and show that simple things like this can make a game much more interesting and diverse.
Gameplay
The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect from a Call of Duty game. In this game you'll be playing as Americans, Brits, Canadians and Polish forces. Personally I find the WW2 genre to be a bit boring, because every game offers pretty much the same. The same weapons, the same assignments, the same types of area's you'll be fighting in.
But even though Call of Duty doesn't offer much new on top of this, it's gameplay is more than solid. Slightly more advanced enemy AI wouldn't have hurt, but enemies aren't annoyingly dumb.
The whole atmosphere of the game is great and typical WW2. There's lots of action going on and it's definitely a spectacular game to play.
One rather annoying thing about this game is that each mission has it's introduction video which cannot be skipped. This in itself is not too bad, were it not for the fact that each time you resume your game after having quit, you're forced to watch the introduction video again. A slight annoyance.
Graphics
Ofcourse CoD3 doesn't look as good on the Wii as it does on XBox360 or PS3. But it does look nice by itself. There's a lot of detail in most scenes. Too much, in some. There are moments when the performance of the Wii grinds down to a level where it's barely controllable anymore, but these moments are rare and shouldn't be a real problem considering the rest of the game, which simply runs at good framerates.
The smoke effects in CoD3 deserve special mention, as those are great.
Conclusion
Call of Duty 3 is definitely a great game for the Wii owning WW2 fan. It shows how much potential the Wii's remote has and that it definitely is a great solution for First Person Shooter games.
If you are, just like me, bored by the WW2 genre then CoD3 is still a good game to try out some time (rent it or loan it from a friend). The new control system does give a fresh approach to the game.
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| Pros: Good use of the Wiimote and Nunchuck, nice graphics, good soundtrack, great atmosphere |
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| Cons: Controls not always as accurate as they should be, yet another WW2 shooter, unskippable intro videos |
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