In continuing our Activision feature let’s talk about Call of Duty 3. Last week I got the chance to go inside Activision and get some major time with the next version of the best selling Call of Duty franchise. All of the developers from Treyarch were on hand to guide us journalists through a few single player levels and a massive amount of multiplayer goodness. For those of you who are saying “who the hell is Treyarch, because they sure aren’t the guys that did COD 2,” you would be correct, they are new (COD: The Big Red One developers) to this project and I can honestly say that at first I was very worried about this match up, I mean COD2 was fantastic. However after a day of hands-on gaming with the new Call of Duty no longer am I worried about what this development team can pull off. Call of Duty 3 will be just as big, if not bigger, in terms of sales for the Xbox 360 when it is released come this holiday season.
First up was an introduction from the lead programmer where he went on about how much of an improvement COD3 was over the past versions and then he told us about the new storyline. Basically, the game is still based in the time of WWII, but in this sequel gamers will be attacking the “Normandy Breakout” portion of the massive war. Not only will the American and British troops be available to play as in COD3, but new to the war are the Canadian and Polish soldier storylines. He went on to say how the storyline is like one big episodic movie where there are no breaks from the action (loading screens are actually movies and interviews about the battle that is forthcoming) and the continuous flow of the game will draw gamers into the COD world like never before. Once all the talk is done we finally get a chance to put our grubby little hands on the controller, the first thing I noticed was how beautiful this game looked. Anyone who says it is just a small graphical improvement over COD2 is understating the way this game looks way too much. Everything from the gunshots, to the rain, to the actual character models themselves look more realistic and gritty than ever. Although Treyarch may have reworked the graphical look of COD2 they did the smart thing and left the controls alone, COD3 controls just like its predecessor, which is actually a good thing.
Did I mention that the streams in COD3 literally flow the direction of the hill they are going down? Meaning that I followed a stream that flowed downhill at one portion in the level, until it switched directions and starting flowing uphill, just awesome! I got lucky enough to play both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 version and if it came down to one console or the other for me, the Xbox 360 wins hands down (graphics were even). Why you ask? The controls just feel right on the 360, personally I never thought the Playstation controller was made for FPS style games and this belief couldn’t be more correct with COD3. After a few minutes getting the controls down I was ready to charge into battle, and that is just what I attempted to do. A few curse words and deaths later I decided rushing in may not be the best thing to do. Call of Duty 3 takes a slightly different approach to the run and gun type gameplay that FPS fans are used to from games like Quake and Halo. To succeed in COD3 you must play smart, considering it is basically a one shot one kill game. The level design that Treyarch used is just fantastic, all the single player levels we got to play were unique, yet fun and challenging. I was very impressed with the build we got to play because if I didn’t know better it could have basically been the final version ready to ship! We didn’t get to delve much into the actual details of the storyline itself, but from what I did see, and already mentioned, I am very excited to sit down and play out the single player mode of Call of Duty 3, now onto the real stuff, multiplayer!
