Review: Call of Duty
Score:
45%
Version Reviewed: 1.00
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War is not nice. That's a fact. But that's something the entertainment industry tries to hide, because you can make some great computer games out of war. The last few years have seen an explosion of games based around World War Two, and the N-Gage is no exception (see Pathway for Glory for one that works). Now here's Activision bringing their "first person shooter" franchise, Call of Duty, to the N-Gage.
Call of Duty isn’t going to set the N-Gage world alight, but it’s definitely a game that I’d like to set alight. It’s not exciting, it’s not playable, and it’s not fun. Let’s start with the 3D engine. Now whether a 3D engine works perfectly (Colin McRae) or has enough oomph to make a good game (Ghost Recon), they’re always measured in two main ways. Frame rate and rendering (pop up) distance.
Call of Duty is sluggish when you are playing it. The frame rate is pretty slow, and it’s almost impossible to spin round to check something in a corner without it taking a good five or ten seconds to look all around. Now imagine walking into a room, with enemy soldiers hiding behind boxes, some beside you, some in front. You’ve got to go in, take in where they are, decide on how to shoot them, and do it. It’s just not possible with the redraw time. And in the time that you take to work out where everybody, the enemy AI has sighted, fired and are reloading their armoury.
The rendering distance determines how far away something is before it is not drawn. In Call of Duty, this distance is incredibly short. In the first level you’re sneaking up to a trench system, when all of a sudden a massive Ack-Ack gun, inside a tented structure appears… with three soldiers taking pot shots at you. It’s not even a nice transition when it appears – more a case of bang there you go!
Both of these factors mean Call of Duty is more a memory exercise than a heart stopping action fest that it is on the PlayStation 2. Everything that people worried about in a 3D Shooter on a portable platform is here. And don’t even get me started that the basic physics of the game engine will allow me to shoot through a solid wall to get to an enemy that is hiding behind a corner. That should have been picked up in basic playtesting.
All this is a real shame, because Call of Duty does it’s best to be atmospheric and true to its World War Two roots. There’s a wide range of accurate weaponry, from pistols, rifles, machine guns and grenades. The levels are designed with a keen eye on historical accuracy (even if a few of them can be a bit linear), and taking on four different historical campaigns (over eleven levels) gives a good feeling of history.
But it’s all for nothing. The game might appeal to those with a masochistic tendency, but it feels like a rushed, by the numbers project. There’s little thought to how much the user will enjoy this. The menus are slow to react, and having to reload each level every time you die (or restore a save point) is long enough for someone to loose interest in the game.
As a game to get excited about, Call of Duty fails spectacularly. What we have is an exercise in frustration, and not something All About N-Gage can recommend. Some people may enjoy it, but they'll be few and far between.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at