FUTURE CANON GAME REPORT Steve 596
**Posted by steve at 12:55 PM
CALL OF DUTY
This game is very impressed with Call of Duty's authentic presentation, well designed and often very intense single-player missions, and fast-paced, entertaining multi-player modes. It have many versions for this game. I have been playing this game for many times and I love it. In my opinion, it will be a canon game in the future!
this is a game that pulls together many of the best aspects of other, similar games, and also includes all sorts of little "wish-list items" that may have crossed your mind while playing those other games. The result seems, above all, very well designed. The action in Call of Duty, ultimately, is arcadelike--much like in Allied Assault or Battlefield 1942. You can't survive a shot to the head, but you can take a few bullets anywhere else and can keep going just fine. There's also a clear onscreen indication of the direction from which you're taking fire (and, as you're getting hit, the screen shudders to make it look like it hurts). Luckily, first aid kits, conveniently placed in the levels or occasionally dropped by killed enemies, instantly restore large portions of your health. You hardly ever need to activate a "use" key in this game. When you do, you'll use it to instantly set explosives or grab documents, but you won't use it for opening doors.
Call of Duty features a wide arsenal of authentic American, British, Russian, and German WWII weapons, including various rifles, submachine guns, side arms, and grenades. You can carry only two larger weapons at a time (as well as a pistol and some grenades), so, typically, you'll want to have a rifle for out-in-the-open engagements and a submachine gun for tight-quarter combat. While armed with any of these, you may shoot from the hip, raise the weapon to eye level and aim down the sight (for more accuracy at the expense of movement speed), or use the butt of the weapon to try and club an enemy to death. Manually reloading your weapon tends to be faster than letting the clip run out, and some weapons let you switch firing modes, like going from full-auto to single shot (though, since you can squeeze off single rounds in full-auto mode, this isn't very useful). Your crosshairs expand when you're moving and contract when you're steady, pointing out how much more inaccurate you'll be if you try to run-and-gun. The weapons themselves are modeled very convincingly, thanks in no small part to the tactile sense you get from being able to look through their sights or use them as bludgeons, and most every one will earn your respect since, in the right situations, they can all be deadly effective.
MODE
Additionally, multiplayer Call of Duty features the very clever "kill cam," which lets a player who's been killed relive the last five seconds of his life from his killer's perspective. The implications of the kill cam are pretty significant: If anyone isn't playing fair in a multiplayer match, the kill cam ought to make this quite clear, and then players can vote to have the offending player kicked. When playing a deathmatch-style multiplayer mode, you can easily skip the kill-cam sequence and get back into the action, but if you're playing one of the multiplayer modes in which you can't instantly respawn, it can make for an entertaining five-second consolation prize.
Call of Duty bills itself as having three distinct single-player campaigns--one for the Americans, one for the British, and one for the Russians--but this isn't exactly the case. You do get to play a number of exciting missions from the perspectives of each of these allied forces, and each one takes place in a different part of Europe. However, you play through all of the game's missions in a linear order, and there's no clear transition from one "campaign" to the next. There's no epilogue when you finish a series of missions, so all you get is a different-looking between-mission loading screen to clue you in that you've moved on to the next chunk of the game. Overall, the single-player portion of Call of Duty is of approximately average length, meaning it should take you some 10 hours, give or take, from beginning to end. None of it is filler.
One of Call of Duty's most distinguishing features in the single-player mode is how many humans, both friend and foe, it manages to cram into an environment. With the exception of a small handful of corridor-crawl-style commando missions (which, while pretty good, are probably the least interesting parts of the game), you'll never be fighting alone, and you'll always have allied soldiers fighting--and dying--by your side. These allies are mostly for the sake of ambience; they mostly look realistic as they fight from behind cover and draw some of the enemy fire. They even sometimes charge the enemy, as you'd expect them to under the circumstances. However, they won't do your job for you and can't be depended upon to take out the bad guys.
GRAPHIC and ENGINE
Because the core gameplay and weapon balancing in Call of Duty is very well done, and the 3D engine and netcode capably handle situations where a ton of action is going on all at once, all the multiplayer modes are inherently enjoyable. The aforementioned kill cam is another nice touch, and the same sort of excellent level design found in the single-player portion of the game can be found in the multiplayer maps. These are each quite large and easily accommodating of 32-player games, and they offer plenty of cover and plenty of places to set up ambushes. Each of the main types of primary weapons has real value, and real weaknesses, on these maps. A server browser lets you easily get in on a multiplayer match so you can have at it. The game also readily invites user-made mods.
Call of Duty's graphics, somewhere down the line, are powered by the Quake III engine, but the game looks great--not dated. Occasionally, some of the character animation doesn't look quite right. For instance, the animation for when killed soldiers fall from banisters or balconies looks particularly weak. Additionally, there are a few clipping issues here and there. Also, some of the scenery, particularly small shrubs and such, looks blocky and ugly if you get right up to it. We also experienced some graphical issues running the game with an ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card, which didn't properly handle the game's occasional motion-blur effect. Other than these specific issues, the overall look of the action is excellent. Realistic weather effects, explosions, and muzzle flashes help make the game's environments come alive, and the character models for friends and foes are surprisingly detailed given how many of them can be onscreen. Additionally, the game runs very smoothly in comparison to other recent shooters. If you get a good frame rate out of other PC action games, this one will be silky smooth. Call of Duty, like Allied Assault, squeaked by with a "T" rating from the ESRB despite the extremely violent subject matter it portrays. Unlike Allied Assault, it even shows a little blood in the form of a red mistlike spurt that's seen when a bullet hits its mark. For better or worse, there's no graphic violence here, but the animations are realistic, and action is visceral.
AUDIO
The audio in Call of Duty is even better than the look. You'll learn to tell most every weapon apart by its own loud and clear roar. In those rare instances when shooting isn't occurring all around you, you'll still tend to hear shooting off in the distance--an ambient effect that reinforces the sensation that you're in the middle of a war. Some of the more action-packed single-player missions are practically deafening, what with all that's going on with the bullets practically grazing your head, shells flying, aircraft making strafing runs, and more. In a great touch, if an artillery shell detonates near you, you'll be shell-shocked, rendering you temporarily deaf and substantially disoriented. In fact, you'll struggle to get back on your feet as the sound of battle eventually rushes back to your senses. The game's sporadic use of voice acting is good, though it's a bit of a shame that much of the Russian soldiers' voice-over (and some of the Germans') is in accented English rather than in the native language. For a game that attempts to appear as authentic as possible, this seems a little incongruous. Amidst all the cacophony of Call of Duty, it can be hard to hear the game's orchestral musical score, but it kicks in on particular occasions and adds even more drama and cinematic flair to the proceedings.
So Call of Duty is an all-around excellent game in first person shooting game that players alway play it many times. Fans of this game also wait for the next version coming (same as me), so no way that this game can not be a future canon, can't you tell? Finally, let's ENJOY!!!! Call of Duty together....
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