No cows were harmed in the making of this game

Who loves to shoot Nazis? Hmm? That’s right; everyone on this green earth who isn’t a Nazi likes to shoot Nazis. Perhaps that is one reason why this game is so freaking awesome. Perhaps it also helps that you play as a wide variety of different soldiers, from British to American to Soviet (sorry, no German, although you do get to impersonate one for a while). Or maybe it’s the weapons. There seems to be more than enough weapons to keep you entertained and plenty to splatter some Nazi brain matter on the walls. And the Nazis just keep on comin’. It don’t get much better than that. Unless you can snag two Nazis in one beautifully placed sniper shot, that might be better. But this game offers all that and more.

The graphics in this game are excellent, even for a game already two years old; you can easily find yourself drawn into the game and barely even notice the beings you are slaughtering are only AI. Enemy character animation is also very good, they lean around corners and look intent on killing you, they run when they should and hide when they should and look proper doing it. In fact, the enemy characters look very convincing, you can hardly see any blocky forms in them, and you have to be damn close to see that. There are also several different enemy character models, so you really don’t feel like you’re just killing the same dude over and over. However, the faces are all the same, so it loses its convincing effects after a short time, but who cares? You’re just going to shoot them directly in the face anyway. What does it matter if it looks the same? The friendly animation is not as impressive, although each face looks different and everyone has a different name, they often look like retards bounding around in the fields, the movements seem extremely ungainly. As for the environments, the only thing bad I have to say is about the water. It looks like they took a small pattern for the water and just repeated it over and over, you can actually see the water pattern repeating, and that’s just not right. But all other textures and patterns in the game are fantastic, and once again, you barely even notice that it’s not real. Even the dead cows look pretty damn good. You know, for a dead cow.

The AI in this game was supposed to be extremely advanced, at least according to LilPickle, but I can tell you I found nothing but disappointment in the AI. The enemy AI seems to have a knack for knowing exactly where you are and shooting only at you, no matter how many other soldiers there are to shoot, no matter how well you are hidden, no matter how many ninjas you T-bagged, and no matter how much cheetah blood you drank this morning. And that really pisses me off. One of the taglines for this game is “no war is won by just one man” or something. But if that were true, then why does the enemy AI instinctively know to fire directly at you? That doesn’t make much sense to me. This seems to apply even when you go into ninja mode and try and sneak around the back of the enemy, they always turn and shoot you, even if you are prone on the ground and moving slow to make no noise. They always know right where you are. But otherwise it’s not too bad, the enemies do try to duck and hide, they run and dive and crouch and everything. Hell, if you get close enough to them they’ll actually strike you with the butt of their gun. It’s just the way they shoot that really pisses me off. As for the friendly AI, get ready to get irritated. Just when you’re about to snap off this awesome sniper shot at the unsuspecting enemy, one of your friendlies just happens to jump directly in front of your shot, and you unwittingly shoot him directly in the face. And then you’re all like what the fuck? But it doesn’t matter, because the Nazi you were supposed to shoot then manages to kill you while you slam the next shell into the rifle. And that concludes my main complaint with this game. Stupid AI.

The missions in this game are all very good, and they mostly get harder as you go along, although some tend to be easier as long as you have some skill with a sniper rifle. However, not all of the episodes are the same length, nor do they get longer the later the game gets. It kind of skips around a bit and seems a little unorganized the way its setup. But, that’s only a minor detail and I can easily overlook it for the extremely high quality of the rest of the game. Missions range from the typical runs of bridges and rescue, to the non-typical run of Stalingrad and sabotage of Nazi boats.

One other thing that really drove me nuts in this game was the controls. They are very non-typical for a first person shooter, which was irritating at first, but after a while it actually becomes much easier to use than you might think. Otherwise, the game handled very well, I never once experienced lag, and only once got irreversibly stuck. The movements seem realistic and well planned; you move fast when you walk and slow when you crouch or go prone. And the speed at which you move in each of those positions feels excellent and just the way it should. Bullets inflict the proper amount of damage on the enemy, and occasionally on you. Overall, the game feels and handles just the way you’d expect from World War II game, and it really helps to add to the feel.

What little multiplayer I actually attempted handled just as good as the rest of the singleplayer game, but I’m just too much of a noob to do any good against those types of people, so I didn’t try for very long. However, it handled well even on my low budget 3 year old machine… so, no complaints here.

So, aside from irritating AI both friendly and enemy, and the lumbering movements of friendly soldiers, this game is excellent. It is so easy to get the hang of, is very challenging and is wonderfully animated. It really feels like a WWII game should, and I have played enough WWII games to know. Call of Duty scores excellently under almost all regards and the few places where it does not score well are easily overlooked for the otherwise excellent quality of this game. So, all in all, I give Call of Duty a shining

4 splattered Nazis and dead cows out of 5