Call of Duty is a first-person shooter released in 2003 for PC and in 2004 re-released for Mac OS X and the Nokia N-Gage. The game runs of id Tech 3, the same engine that was used for Quake III: Arena and Quake III: Team Arena. The game was developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision Studios, quite a well known publishing company at that time.
Call of Duty is a modest and humble shooter. If you are a fan of Medal of Honor then you will be a fan of this game. The game takes you across three different campaigns where you play as three different soldiers from three different nations across different fronts: American campaign you play as Private Martin, a paratrooper part of the 101st Airborne Division fighting the Germans in Normandy and later in Bastogne for one mission. The British campaign lets you control British paratrooper Sergeant Evans, part of the British 6th Airborne Division tasked to capture Pegasus Bridge during D-Day before being reassigned to the S.A.S. (Special Air Service), carrying out sabotage missions behind enemy lines in Germany. Finally you play as Corporal (later Junior Sergeant during the Battle of Stalingrad and then Sergeant during the Vistula-Oder Offensive) Voronin, a Soviet sniper fighting from the rubbles of Stalingrad, leading your squad through factories and railyards in Warsaw, commanding a tank squad during the Oder Offensive before capturing the Reichstag with your fellow comrades in Berlin.
Gameplay: Call of Duty was a tough game to play through at times, even on regular when the AI suddenly gets super human aim and can beam you with their MP44 and you end up dead within seconds out of nowhere. There are a few bugs here and there as well with grenades, where leaning against a wall with a grenade on the other side about to go off, it will still somehow damage you. Friendly AI can be nice with helping you kill enemies but most of the time, they clump up in narrow spaces and end up getting in your way, whilst the enemy shoots past all of the friendly AI to get to you specifically as if you have a bounty on your head.
It's a game that relies on squad play, for example: During the Brecourt Manor Assault, if you fail to cover Sergeant Moody rescuing a wounded soldier out in the open, the player is later tasked with having to recover the explosives off the Sergeant and destroy the rest of the Flak 88 batteries.
Multiplayer is pretty much dead, few Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch matches here and there. Quite fun to pass the time with some game modes or maps even allowing you to have fun with some vehicles, you can probably find some videos on YouTube with that.
Overall, Call of Duty is not a bad game but far from perfect. As for being called a 'Game of the Year', I guess for 2003 it was quite a revolutionary title, considering their rival was the critically acclaimed Medal of Honor series that dominated the World War II FPS genre, I would say it gave them a run for their money. If you come across this game for cheap and are looking for some early 2000s World War II action then I would say give this game a go.
Positive Points:
- Multiple campaigns: Variety
- Weapon balancing - each weapon good for different situation
- Emphasis on squad play rather than one man army
- Variety in missions
Negative Points:
- Loss of immersion at times (high speed car and lorry chases)
- Clunky friendly AI
- Overpowered enemy AI out of nowhere
- Missions for the most part can get quite repetitive, A to B, A to B, repeat.