If you have played Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island you’ll probably get the idea there’s going to be a third game in this thrilling series as that game ended in a spine-tingling cliff hanger. Also because the game’s manual is only four pages deep explaining absolutely nothing about the backstory and the cover art shows the Eiffel Tower under attack, one comes to assume the French Foreign Legion is about to embark their most electrifying mission yet…in their home ground and that’s a big deal because the Foreign Legion never have missions conducted in their soil…until now.
So when finishing this game, my assumption was correct to say the Foreign Legion did make history of doing their first mission in home soil however the game, even though it’s a sequel, has a new hero. So what that means that you never get to know the fate of Claude (the hero of CoH 2) however in CoH 3, there’s only one part where both games tie in – other words, I believe developers City Interactive wanted to reboot this series as quite frankly, the other two sucked big time.
So the game plays as your typical first person shooter (FPS) – that is kill all the bad guys then move on to your next objective. Of course you get a decent array of toys to use and every now and then, your informant pops up stating your next objective. Not bad considering however there are improvements from the previous two games as now you get to disarm bombs (press the ‘use’ key and wait for the timer to end) and Intel to collect (as I think there’s two per level). Whilst the Intel doesn’t provide you any extra bonuses, it’s quite refreshing to do something else other than shoot people and besides, it should have been added to the series long ago however I guess it’s better late than never.
Yet this game has a more mature feel than the previous two games as the main guy doesn’t act like a complete wanna-be hero straight from the comic books. Actually he doesn’t speak much period other than acknowledging his orders which is a good thing. The AI has also improved since the last two instalments and sometimes a little too good. For e.g. there was a scene where I didn’t realise a goon was behind a door so when I opened it, I died and died again due to his magnificent crack shot skills. There are ways to out manoeuvring this (like throw a grenade so the bugger runs away momentary) and because I played it on hard, it was challenging enough but like many modern shooters, you have that auto heal feature where you just stay still until the screen clears up.
There are other features like blind fire where, when you are hiding behind cover, a small arrow indicates where you can blind fire your weapon – it’s a good feature yet not required as you’ll miss quite often. Also items like chairs for example can be damaged so if some sucker is hiding behind a thin wall, you can shoot at it thus penetrate through it (shotguns works the best here for obvious reasons), night vision goggles (adds realism I guess) and because the French weapon of choice, the FAMAS is always with you, you can snipe or go open fire ballistic rampage by a press of a button.
The game only has eight missions and because of this, it’s not a long game. Yet considering most AAA games have similar lengths (I’m looking at you CoD) you’ll finish it in no time. The multiplayer function only sports your typical modes like death match and capture the flag, I wouldn’t worry too much with this feature as it feels like a tack on, as it uses the same maps during the single player campaign. However, and surprisingly enough, CoH 3 is a step in the right direction for this series and hopefully CoH 4 builds upon this.