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A brief disclaimer about Call of Duty 3: I absolutely suck at every COD game I have ever played… the combination of whizzing bullets, frenetic first person shooting and total carnage leave me wishing I had registered as a conscientious objector and stayed stateside during WWII to have a scrap metal drive and grow a victory garden.

But eagerly awaited next-gen videogame Call of Duty 3 totally rocked.

Activision ratcheted-up the already overly-amped realism of the series and attained levels of life-like rarely seen in any game. How realistic? In keeping with past COD games, they are scrutinizing every realistic detail. A military advisor and a weapons specialist were key members of the development team.

Gameplay

We got to try out two single-player levels on the 360 and one on the Wii. We spent the majority of our playtime entranced by the 360 version’s two levels.

The gameplay will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever played either a COD game or any first-person-shooter. The aiming and movement are second-nature to most gamers and offer little new with the exception of the Wii controller variations. A flick of the nunchaks to the side changes weapons and a forward thrust activated the melee attack.

COD’s mini-game hand-to-hand combat simulation consisted of, in the level we played, punching fast to get that damn dirty German bastard off you.

Overall, the controls= perfect, nothing innovative, but if it ain’t broke…

Levels

Set in France as the allies marched toward the liberation of Paris, the first level we played was called The Island, and featured house-to-house fighting, running down battle-scarred roads, guns blazing, and other first-person-shooter action familiar to fans of the COD series.

The graphics were breathtaking. In a series always known for its realism, this edition takes it to that clichéd “next level.” We’re talking individual blades of grass, astounding water effects in the streams, and a picture-postcard of the French Countryside. Very, very impressive

Special note about the sound: It’s so realistic it’s wet-your-pants scary. Bullets whizzing by your head, etc.

French People

The game really takes off in the level called Night Drop. It’s here you meet up with members of the French underground who lead you to attack the hunkered down Germans who have invaded their country.

This level shows off the dynamics of the gameplay nicely. There are encampments of Jerry’s lounging about who can be taken out with stealth attacks. Don’t shoot your gun or they’ll start yelling “Schnell!” which I can only assume from playing videogames means, “He broke stealth!”

There’s full on run-and-gun through-the-trenches sections, and house battles. Definitely exciting

Part of the level involves tooling around in a Jeep while enemies shoot you and your companions with their terrible Nazi guns. Unlike many FPSs that try to incorporate vehicles and fail badly, this one works great. Jeep driving was my favorite part of the game… I’m actually good at it, but bad at everything else.

G4’s Jess Reed and I handed the controller back and forth throughout the level, and became embarrassingly attached to our computer-controlled friends in the French Resistance. Marcel DuBois, our leader Isabelle, and Pierre LaRoche were awesomely brave and noble fighters, and Pierre’s death at the hands of the filthy Krauts haunts me to this day. TheFeed are proponents of all things French, and we were happy to see positive portrayals of our froggy allies from across the sea.

The dual objectives on some missions make the game feel less tracklike, than many other COD games in the past.

System Comparison

Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to check the game out on the PS3, so I dunno about that, but the Wii version was… interesting.

Graphically, it looked fine—up to the level of COD on an Xbox. Activision must have worked very hard to wring this much graphical power from the little Nintendo.

But the controls on the Wii take a LOT of getting used to.

The sensitivity of the aiming controller was one thing. At first, the game seemed nearly unplayable, with the sights jerking around and the view changing with the smallest flinch of the controller, but the options allow you to turn the sensitivity way down and make the game useable… Useable but not necessarily better that traditional control schemes.

Learning an entirely new control system in a genre of games you’ve been playing for 10 years is not something you can really accomplish in the amount of time we had, so it’s hard to be entirely fair with this assement, but overall, I’d rather play it on a traditional controller, although it was fun to learn it on the Wii. At least the new control system gave me an excuse for my terrible playing.

This may highlight an important problem with the Wii: Ported games are likely to seem very weird on the system. It’s just not designed to play these kinds of games, and, it seems like games not specifically designed for the Wii from the ground up are going to suffer.

Or… maybe it’s just a matter of learning a new skill set.

Overall

As evidence of how fun this game is: Even in a quasi-professional situation of a press day at Activision, Jess and I were having such a good time with this title, we missed lunch, cackling at the screen and telling each other how badly we sucked while the rest of the gaming press had free sandwiches.

In short:  I’m getting this game for whatever systems I end up owning in the new year.

Jess Reed Says:

In Steve’s defense, he is good at most games, but man does he blow at Call of Duty.  While we weren’t the players boasting about destroying the level on hard, we had a lot of fun joining the French resistance.  These guys really know how to set up a story and lay down the war torn scene.  After parachuting down to the country side and joining up with my new French friends I am excited to pick up another great installment in this series for 360.

Then we played the Wii.  I didn’t have high expectations for the graphics, but I was surprised that they weren’t a muddy mess, they actually looked good!  I knocked down the Wii-mote sensitivity a few notches which helped with precision and taming the camera.  

 The dpad selects grenades and with a quick flip of the wrist you are tossing pineapples at the enemy.  When battling one on one with a soldier visual icons come up on the screen indicating what motion you should be doing with your Wii-mote.   The first action I did was a punch motion with the nun chuck and Wii-mote and after two times I was tuckered out.  I think I was getting a bit to ‘into’ it, because there is no reason for over-exaggerated motions, but it’s hard to hold back when some guy is attacking you face to face on a 40-inch TV. 

Don’t expect to just pick up the controllers and run in guns blazing, it takes a few minutes to re-learn how to play a FPS with the Wii-mote, but I can’t wait for another chance to play.