On the basis of its hardware, the Wii version just doesn’t have the eye candy that the PS3 and X360 can boast, and quite honestly, this is where the Wii version loses most of its points. Again, not the fault of EXAKT, but those who have spent a considerable amount of time with the next gen versions of CoD3 will definitely notice the differences between them and the Wii. Unfortunately the gap will only continue to widen as already the Wii can’t keep up with the high visual standards. Those who haven’t played the other console versions will recognize that CoD3 on the Wii looks to be about as nice as your average Xbox title – although some textures are just downright fugly. Judging it on its own merit however, the Wii version of CoD3 is often an impressive playground of destruction and mayhem. Decent character models (a little boxy and angular), realistic environments filled with crumbling architecture and rubble and constant projectiles and explosions create the foundation upon which this war is fought. If you’re playing with a great sound system, expect to be shell-shocked after a few long sessions.

As the third game in the series, CoD3 seems to be showing its age rather than actively trying to outdo itself. Respawning enemies are still as problematic, frustrating and frequent as they have been in the last two games. Enemy AI still has the upperhand as it can often “sense” your presence through walls and even shoot through them occasionally. What was once functional – the checkpoints – now seems a little too restrictive as you simply move from one to the next, decimating everything that moves between points A and B. Not to mention that you’re rarely given freedom in regards to carrying out a mission. Paths are linear and you will be lead down the garden path throughout the game. I am eagerly awaiting a war game in which you aren’t restricted by small walls, barbwire fences or other obstructions. That’s why online play is so valued – the limitations just aren’t there.

Certainly the 14 single player missions will keep you busy, but without multiplayer support online, the Wii version seriously lacks overall play value. At clocking in just around 10 hours on Normal, CoD3 could be forgiven if there was the promise of countless online hours to further push your investment.

This version of Call of Duty 3 has all of the action you’ve come to expect from the series and therefore is a pretty sound choice for those who want to experience it on their new Wii system. If you’re willing to invest the time in adopting an entirely new (and at times cumbersome) control scheme, CoD3 can be rewarding. The Wii-mote setup does take some time to adjust to and feels great in terms of aiming and movement, but loses points for some unavoidable fumbling which can occur at the most inopportune times. The lack of online play hurts, but of course its absence only affects those who would play online in the first place. If you’re a single player gamer all the way, it won’t matter. Just understand that you’ll be trading “feel” for visuals if you make the choice to purchase the Wii version over the X360 or PS3.

By Vaughn Smith
CCC Site Director

Rating out of 5 Rating Description 3.8 Graphics As I said, you're trading visuals for feel when you adopt the Wii version. Looks good, but already a line has been drawn in the sand between the Wii and the next gen systems. That can't be a good thing.... 3.7 Control Control is a mixed bag - on one hand it's great once you get used to it, but the fact is you never quite get used to everything. Too many hand position switches from d-pad to buttons and back again. 5.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting Aside from some cheesy acting here and there, the soundtrack and sound FX are topnotch. 2.5 Play Value Without online multiplayer, CoD3's play value gets hit right in the foxhole. The single player campaign will take you around 10 hours though. 3.8 Overall Rating - Good Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

CCC storms the offices at Activision to get hands-on time with Call of Duty 3. by Patrick Evans

When the beloved WWII franchise Call of Duty changed hands from Infinity Ward to Treyarch, many people scoffed. How would this changing of the guard affect the established gameplay that gamers had come to know and love? After all, Call of Duty 2 on Xbox 360 was a smash hit that jumped off store shelves at the system’s launch.

I must admit that I was one of the skeptics going into the recent Activision press event. Many beloved franchises have seen developer changes in the past, and not all of them were better for it. Well, after spending plenty of quality hands-on time with all three versions of Call of Duty 3 (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360), I think that it’s safe to say all the doubts can be put to rest, at least until we see the final builds come out. Treyarch has handled the project with plenty of care, and our play time with it is proof.

The presentation that we, the gaming press invited to the Activision event, were given opened with an interview of a WWII veteran on the battlefields of the Falaise-Chambois pocket. His account of the battlefield was gritty, describing an injury he suffered from the concussions of enemy shells during the fight. From there, we were introduced to the story of Call of Duty 3 – players will play as soldiers from the British and American armies, as well as the newly added Polish and Canadian forces. Each country will have their own perspective on the war overall and it will be reflected in the cut scenes and dialog of its soldiers.

During the presentation the development and studio heads at Treyarch gave us, they made it abundantly clear to us that there would be a seamless storyline presented without loading bars. Instead of a loading screen, players will instead watch cut scenes introducing them to the next level. In the first single-player mission we played through on the 360, players were briefed on what the mission objectives were. Our orders were to suppress the Germans on the other side of the field, using our tanks for cover. The use of story cut scenes as “loading screens” will be a welcome addition to the overall package if it is used consistently as a way to inform us of mission objectives or other such pertinent information, and the fact that we won’t have to wait for these scenes either is just another bonus.

Going back to the single-player action on the 360; it was, in a word, intense. The firefight that broke out between the allies and Germans on the field was nothing short of extreme. The trick, as I learned after dying a couple times, was the use of the ally tanks for cover as you fired at Germans across the field. After wiping out the couple-dozen enemies, players moved along a road behind another tank as it approached a farm house and a barn. German soldiers fired from just about every vantage of both buildings; one in the windows of the house, one in the top floor of the barn, and one from behind the barn’s first-floor doors. “Rambo-style” gameplay, as one developer put it, is not advisable this time around. The enemy AI is simply too smart for a light-footed soldier. Even at times when the AI isn’t as bright, which was seen early in the first stage as enemies would run in a line directly across my line-of-fire, the sheer numbers alone will dictate how limited your options will be.

Players that thought Call of Duty 2 looked good will be floored by the visuals in the upcoming sequel. When playing, and dying, through the two demonstration stages, most of my thoughts were “Where in the f&#* are they shooting me from!?” When I wasn’t stuck on that thought, however, I was able to notice some of the smaller visual nuisances that Treyarch had captured. When you move the gun up to aim along the sight, there is a blurring to the depth perception that you would experience in real life. Things near you get blurred in your peripherals while your target a hundred feet away is focused. The battlefield itself felt alive from beginning to end, which is impressive to say itself.

After I had gotten my fill of playing, or dying as it was, on the Xbox 360 I was ushered to another boardroom setup with PS3s. If the Xbox 360 version looked impressive, the PS3 was downright gorgeous. After murmuring under my breath about how much nicer the game looked on PS3 than on Xbox 360, the producer on hand mentioned that the televisions upstairs for the 360s weren’t running in the full 720p mode and that the visuals may have looked a little less impressive than they would have on these particular televisions. That aside, the PS3 version was very fun to look at, and even more fun to play.

The name of the level we played was simply Forest, and the objective was to move through a forested area with our allies, eventually making our way to a series of German bunkers. Equipped with a Springfield sniper rifle, the most efficient way to move along this forested area was by creeping up behind your friendlies and popping off enemy soldiers from afar. As you move along, one of the most impressive sights is the interactive foliage found throughout the level. You will find soldiers motioning to others through the trees, using bushes for cover, and hiding behind dead tree trunks laid across the ground. One journalist even took the time to notice during the firefight that you could track where soldiers had been by looking at the interactive grass and seeing where they walked. Tossing smoke grenades was an excellent way to cover your advance if you wanted to ambush an enemy position, either with your standard M1 or from afar with the Springfield. The smoke itself looked spot on as well; if you ran through it, you literally could not see three feet past your face until you reached the other side. Everything in this level looked fantastic, right down to the rifle you were holding in your hands. The scope on the sniper rifle reflected light from behind you. It wasn’t a real-time reflection, but it could very easily pass off as such to an untrained eye.

Pushing through the forest and picking off the soldiers with a sniper rifle was fun, but the game got really intense when you reached the bunker area towards the end of the mission. Enemies and allies are shooting at each other at near point-blank range while you scramble for cover, trying not to get killed in a wall of bullets coming your way. One of the objectives you can complete in this area was planting a charge in a weapons cache or staging area of some sort. When planting the charge, up pops the Battle Action mode, which is essentially a little mini-game in which you have to follow the on-screen commands to successfully complete the action. For this mission, it’s a simple explosive plant, but in other places players will have to fight for their lives in hand-to-hand combat (which I’ll get to a little later in this preview). After blowing a couple Nazis to bits with an over-powered shotgun/canon, an attendant tapped me to pass the game along to another writer, but the precious time I had was plenty to put my fears to rest. The intricate work that went into constructing this level alone was impressive and should prove fairly indicative of the rest of the game.

But lest we forget that Nintendo hopefuls are also getting their own version of Call of Duty 3 to call their own. While I have gone on record as saying I think 3rd party developers will have a hard time grasping the Wii’s functions as many have with the DS, Treyarch has again impressed me thus far. The two Wii’s were set up with yet another stage named Crossroads, and it began with the player narrowly escaping friendly artillery fire in a small house. After rejoining the rest of the unit, players have to clear a courtyard of enemy forces and move through the small war-torn community, plugging Nazis along the way.

Before I could even get my hands on the Wii-mote and begin tearing through German soldiers, I was given an extensive walk-through on how the game controls. Though the list of actions wasn’t short by any stretch of the imagination, everything felt appropriate and responsive. Aiming was done by pointing at the screen with the wand, and movement was on the nunchuk’s analog stick. Firing your equipped weapon was on the B button tucked right where your index finger would grip the controller. Firing, pulling the pin on a grenade, and crouching were pretty much all that was done by pressing buttons; the rest of the action was all done with gestures. Reloading your gun, for instance, is done by jerking wand upward, switching weapons is as simple as sliding the nunchuk to the right, and melee attacks is a simple jab towards the screen. Tossing grenades was the only action that gave me trouble after ten or fifteen minutes of steady play of the game, which is a “fishing” flick on the nunchuk after selecting it on the controller. The problem I had was that while I was flicking the nunchuk I was jerking the analog stick and moving the wand at the same time, which I could probably correct with more time.

Coming down to see the Wii version after having laid eyes on the other two versions in the HD glory was tough, but the control scheme here could sell me where other games perhaps couldn’t. Playing Call of Duty 3 on Wii felt like a completely new gameplay experience from the other two. Sure, in both you are killing Nazis, but when the enemy soldier tries to stab you with his knife on Wii, you are physically fighting for your life by flailing the controller according to the onscreen prompts. On the 360, this element would be simple button presses. The PS3 guys told us that they were working on getting the motion sensor feature on the new controller integrated, though all we saw was a melee attack with a quick jerk on the controller thus far.

As fun as chucking grenades at my feet or dying at the hands of a knife-wielding Nazi because I didn’t turn the controller horizontally is, the most fun I had all day was during the Xbox 360 multiplayer session. The room was divided between Axis and Ally soldiers in a Capture the Flag match. After slinking into the room and getting auto-assigned to the Allies, I was immediately gunned down by a German heavy assault on his way to the flag. After getting my balance and learning the layout, I was instantly reminded of Team Fortress on PC. The stage layout was such that there were four or five obvious routes to the opposing flag; one on either the left or right of the spawning points, and two or three up the middle across a shot-up bridge. Players that took the obvious path across the exposed top of the bridge were easy kills for snipers lurking, while firefights in the bridges lower walkways were frequent. I being an inexperienced Call of Duty multiplayer gamer had a hard time sniping or defending the flag, so I instead chose to support flag-runners by choosing the heavy weapons layout and laying tons of fire. When I accompanied the flag runner, we nearly always were successful since either one would survive an encounter to finish the flag capture. And the vehicles…oh, they were a blast. Let’s just say that jeeps jumping the gap on the bridge with gunners in the back were an all-too-common sight that saw tons of vehicular casualties.

So, taking a look at three different versions, we are starting to see where the different so-called “advantages” and “weaknesses” are manifesting themselves in the gameplay. Wii’s unorthodox control scheme was something that I wish I had much more time to tinker with but felt intuitive and responsive. Along with those fancy controls were visuals that looked no better than what you would expect from the original Xbox. The PS3 gave the best visuals of the show, but I had the best time blasting, or getting blasted as it were, developers and other journalists on the Xbox 360. From what we can tell after getting some quality time playing and talking to the developers, no matter which version you choose you are almost guaranteed tons of fun. Call of Duty 3 stole the show for me at the press event for these reasons and it looks like it will pick up where Call of Duty 2 left off; pumping Nazi SOBs full of lead compliments of Uncle Sam and his allies.

Features:

The Power of Next-Gen – Built from the ground-up for next-gen consoles, Call of Duty 3 brings the battle to life with advanced graphics, a new physics engine, a procedural environment and detailed ensemble animations that deliver the most cinematic war experience ever.

Battle Actions – An all-new close-quarters battle mechanic allows players to fight hand-to-hand, improvise explosive devices, disarm traps and execute a host of other battlefield situations that require cunning and rapid reflexes to survive.

Branching Mission Paths – Next-generation level design provides multiple attack routes that let players decide how to confront the enemy – flank an opponent, or hit him head-on. Each unique mission path requires special tactics, from sniping and demolition to all-out head-on clashes.

Nowhere to Hide – Environmental physics allow players to destroy enemy soft cover hideouts, forcing foes out in the open. But be wary, opponents can eliminate your protective coveras well.

Team-based Multiplayer with Vehicles – Combined arms and team-based combat provides unprecedented depth and variety by allowing up to 24-players to battle it out online with the option of single or split-screen Internet play. Gamers have the choice to play as infantry or commandeer multiple-occupancy vehicles, including tanks, jeeps, and motorcycles with side-cars, leading to unique mobile combat roles for all-out, multiplayer mayhem. Call of Duty 3 also offers soldier classes, each with class specific abilities, and a ranking system for truly diversified squad combat.

By Patrick Evans
CCC Staff Writer

World War II is still the war of choice on the next generation consoles. by Vaughn Smith

Think about it for just a sec. A war that was fought over 50 years ago requires 21st century technology to do it justice. Built from the ground up for the next consoles while simultaneously delivering a snub to PC gamers who helped make the series such a hit in the first place, Call Of Duty 3 promises to be one of the most sought after titles this Fall.

Call Of Duty 3 X360 Screenshot

Following the events of the Normandy Breakout, which resulted in the liberation of Paris and brought the Allies closer to Berlin (that would have been a spoiler alert but I'm sure most of you fell asleep during history class and missed this info anyway) CoD3 breaks away slightly from the regular formula and introduces 4 different country campaigns: American, British, Canadian and Polish (the Russians are going to sit this one out). I wonder if they'll have some poor Canuck in the recording studio saying "After we shoot these hosers, let's go for a beer, eh?" As a Canadian it's nice to see the efforts of my fellow countrymen recognized in games such as this. I've spoken with countless WWII vets over the years and their stories scared me silly. It's a wonder any of them came back alive.

Other advances to the core gameplay include hand to hand combat, improvisational explosive devices, branching mission paths, destruction of environmental cover (ala Black) and more options for online multiplayer battles.

Call Of Duty 3 PS3 Screenshot

One of the areas we'd love to see addressed in the next gen iterations of FPS war games are the linear paths which often hinder the exploration and experimentation within the game. Often times you'll want to flank the enemy only to realize the game designers made it impossible for you to do so, as your path may be blocked with a high fence or some other obstruction. Other games warn you not to leave the battle area when you attempt to "think outside the sandbox".

Since Call Of Duty 2 was one of the most impressive X360 titles released at launch (and responsible for selling an army warehouse of X360 systems to boot) we can say that the screenshots of the third installment look mighty good on the next consoles. Even the Wii which doesn't have quite the horsepower of the PS3 or the 360 looks darn good, and it supports the funky Wii-Mote gun which will be mighty cool. We haven't seen screens of the current gen versions for the PS2 and Xbox, but we'd expect them to look downgraded from the Wii shots.

Call Of Duty 3 Wii Screenshot

In terms of multiplayer, expect up to 24 players to battle it out in cyberspace in either infantry positions or commandeer vehicles such as tanks, jeeps and motorcycles complete with side-cars. The online play of CoD2 was a little less than seamless when the game debuted on XBL last November, so let's hope Treyarch can ship the game with the online play in tip top shop - or at the very least, release a patch toots sweet.

If you're a CoD fan, no doubt you're in 7th heaven waiting for this one to come down the chimney. We'll have more info when we can. For now, grab your rifle, dig a foxhole in your living room and wait...

Features:

• The Power of Next-Gen - Built from the ground-up for next-gen consoles, Call of Duty 3 brings the battle to life with advanced graphics, a new physics engine, a procedural environment and detailed ensemble animations that deliver the most cinematic war experience ever.
• Battle Actions - An all-new close-quarters battle mechanic allows players to fight hand-to-hand, improvise explosive devices, disarm traps and execute a host of other battlefield situations that require cunning and rapid reflexes to survive.
• Branching Mission Paths - Next-generation level design provides multiple attack routes that let players decide how to confront the enemy - flank an opponent, or hit him head-on. Each unique mission path requires special tactics, from sniping and demolition to all-out head-on clashes.
• Nowhere to Hide - Environmental physics allow players to destroy enemy soft cover hideouts, forcing foes out in the open. But be wary, opponents can eliminate your protective cover as well.
• Team-based Multiplayer with Vehicles - Combined arms and team-based combat provides unprecedented depth and variety by allowing up to 24-players to battle it out online with the option of single or split-screen Internet play. Gamers have the choice to play as infantry or commandeer multiple-occupancy vehicles, including tanks, jeeps, and motorcycles with side-cars, leading to unique mobile combat roles for all-out, multiplayer mayhem. Call of Duty 3 also offers soldier classes, each with class specific abilities, and a ranking system for truly diversified squad combat.