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Call of Duty 3 isn’t a bad game…on the 360 and PlayStation 3 anyway. While it is one of the weakest entries into the series, it still manages to deliver all of the action and intensity we’ve come to expect from a decent World War II shooter.

But the Wii is a radically different piece of hardware. Can this slightly underpowered system with the bizarre controller deliver the same experience as its two console counterparts? Even more importantly, can the more free-form controller actually improve upon the standard console first-person-shooter formula?

A Revolution in Control

No and no.

Controlling Call of Duty 3 using the Wii’s remote is one of the most frustrating endeavors in gaming. In lieu of a second analog stick, your remote acts as your “look” control, meaning moving the cursor to any edge of the screen causes the camera to follow you. This is all well and good until you get into a particularly tense situation and manage to move your controller so far to the left or right that the system loses track of it, resulting in a dizzying camera spin that will force you to basically stop playing and get your bearings.

And it will happen, thanks to the fact that your melee attack is also mapped to the remote’s motion sensor. In fact, almost everything in Call of Duty 3 can be done with various motions. Wiggle the nunchuk to change weapons; whip the controller around to melee, and use the pointer on the screen for very precise aim (this is assuming you don’t change any control options).

To be fair, the aiming bit actually works incredibly well. Pulling off deadeye headshots is a heck of a lot easier using the Wii controller than it is with a more conventional option. But movement in this version of CoD3 is downright irritating. Basically, had this game been on rails, the control would be sublime. As it is, you’ll struggle to keep playing past the first hour.

Frustrating Facts

And if the movement control doesn’t force you to retreat from the fight, the ugly graphics, lack of online play and ridiculous “struggle” scenes will.

Call of Duty 3 on the Wii looks like an average GameCube game, which really isn’t good enough anymore. Everything looks blocky, flat, and bits and pieces of the terrain love to pop in and out of view during play. Sure, the system isn’t as powerful as the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but the game should still look better than this.

And no online play? That just hurts. Considering every other version of CoD3 contains this feature, and the Wii is an online-capable system, there’s really no excuse for this, either. It just makes this iteration of the game feel like more of a cheap port than it already does.

And finally, the life-or-death struggles with soldiers that manage to surprise you. In the other versions of Call of Duty 3, these were fairly infrequent, annoying little simon-says moments, where you would jam on the shoulder buttons or waggle the Sixaxis back and forth until you were able to smack the Nazi with your gun and move on. On the Wii, these encounters are more dangerous than any of the bullets whizzing around the level. The controller ballet you have to perform to get through them isn’t at all clear, and even after you’ve finally figured out what you’re supposed to be doing, it’s still way too difficult to do it right.

Full Retreat

If you must play Call of Duty 3, do it on one of the other consoles. Both the 360 and PS3 versions aren’t the greatest first-person shooters ever made, but they’re decent enough to satiate your apparently endless need to keep fighting the same war over and over and over again. Don’t bother with this game on the Wii, though. The developers made a valiant effort at a unique control scheme that just doesn’t work. 

Article by: Greg Sewart
Video produced by: Michael Benson