First Call of Duty game by Treyarch, who would go on to make Black Ops. Largely a disappointment. The worst offense is the sound design, the game is incredibly quiet and music cuts out and doesn't start again after you die, making playthroughs on the hard difficulty often be just... silent. In all the presumed chaos everything is actually so quiet that you can hear the tracks of background noise looping. This does not fit with the tone it sets out, which differs from the previous games.
This is the first Call of Duty game that really feels like war is not treated as something truly awful. The narrator talks in this American TV voice from the time, by the end he goes "this many people from the division have died!" as if it's a badge of honor of some sort. The plot is actually character-driven (Brooklyn my boy) so there's a lot more quips and the characters do die, which means that there's more emotional attachment in theory, but it's all rather basic and forgettable, and it is largely due to the aforementioned lack of atmosphere.
The game is rather easy for the most part, easier than the previous games, there's certainly missions in the latter half that took a long time to beat on the hardest difficulty but that is the standard for those games at this point; the ridiculous ramp up in difficulty is as big a staple of these WWII-era games as the M1 Garand is.
The shooting feels great, maybe better than it does in Finest Hour, but their sounds are just as weird as everything else here, plastic almost, making firefights not as satisfying. The feedback for hitting enemies has also been slightly reduced. What has been added, however, is RAGDOLL. It can make for very funny moments, which I appreciate.
The missions follow the basic formula, and there is sadly no real standout. There are definitely missions that are more difficult and you spend a lot more time on those, but even with that they fail to make an impact. The tank sections are fun, different but still good. Really makes me wish they stuck with one control scheme and made a console-exclusive Call of Duty: Tank game.
Not really worth playing over any of the other games up to this point I don't think.
This is the first Call of Duty game that really feels like war is not treated as something truly awful. The narrator talks in this American TV voice from the time, by the end he goes "this many people from the division have died!" as if it's a badge of honor of some sort. The plot is actually character-driven (Brooklyn my boy) so there's a lot more quips and the characters do die, which means that there's more emotional attachment in theory, but it's all rather basic and forgettable, and it is largely due to the aforementioned lack of atmosphere.
The game is rather easy for the most part, easier than the previous games, there's certainly missions in the latter half that took a long time to beat on the hardest difficulty but that is the standard for those games at this point; the ridiculous ramp up in difficulty is as big a staple of these WWII-era games as the M1 Garand is.
The shooting feels great, maybe better than it does in Finest Hour, but their sounds are just as weird as everything else here, plastic almost, making firefights not as satisfying. The feedback for hitting enemies has also been slightly reduced. What has been added, however, is RAGDOLL. It can make for very funny moments, which I appreciate.
The missions follow the basic formula, and there is sadly no real standout. There are definitely missions that are more difficult and you spend a lot more time on those, but even with that they fail to make an impact. The tank sections are fun, different but still good. Really makes me wish they stuck with one control scheme and made a console-exclusive Call of Duty: Tank game.
Not really worth playing over any of the other games up to this point I don't think.