Set during World War II, in Call of Duty 3 you will play multiple characters and as part of several armies all involved in the emancipation of France. It jumps all over the place story wise, but by the end paints a coherent vision of the international effort in Europe after D-day. It's an ambitious but well integrated story, and when you're playing as, say, the British, you'll come across references to the other armies and situations you've already played from other perspectives. The plot and characters of each section are nothing groundbreaking, but convey the type of camaraderie between soldiers that WWII movies and TV shows like to show. Each level begins with a cutscene introducing you to your setting, character and objectives, and then you're right into the action. Call of Duty 3 is heavily scripted and fairly linear, but this is necessary to convey the movie like sense of scale, and the feeling that you're playing a small part in a larger picture. The shooter gameplay employs a Halo type damage system, where your health re-charges if you duck for cover. This is pretty unrealistic, but helps with the flow of the game immensely.
You do get a feeling of the grand scale the game is going for
The issue that begs to be discussed is the control scheme. Initially, that frustration of Red Steel's 'bounding box' seems to be carried over to Call of Duty 3, as the aiming method defaults to a bounding box method. However, the first thing everyone should do when starting a game is to pause, select 'controller options', and set the 'dynamic aiming' option to 'off'. This locks the cursor to the centre of the screen, and while like any new control method it will take some time to get used to, it's ultimately the superior control method and worth the effort. It's initially more disorienting, and to begin with you'll find yourself looking at the floor and the walls more often than you'd like – as you probably did for your first hour of mouse-look or dual-analogue. But bear with it (adjusting the sensitivity as you go if necessary) and eventually you'll have an aiming method that is very precise, has no lag, and while still below a mouse in terms of overall precision, is almost indisputably superior to dual analog. The implementation is closer to a stick, since unlike a mouse you have to manually re-centre to stop turning, but there is greater articulation afforded by aiming with your whole hand as opposed to just a thumb.
Does this mean the world's top Halo player will be automatically smoked by someone using this method? Of course not, and Call of Duty 3's implementation isn't 100% perfect either (it could do with some higher sensitivity options). It's also slightly more work than tilting the right stick on an old controller, and longer sessions will require a more ergonomic seating position - we recommend your aiming arm is rested on a leg for stability while playing. There is certainly more headroom for player improvement, and after a while it becomes clear that if widely adopted, this is the future of console shooter controls.
Player models are decent
The rest of the main controls are mapped pretty well – the nunchuck stick is used for movement with its Z and C buttons mapped to crouch and jump respectively. The B trigger fires your gun, the A button goes into an 'aim' mode (and zooms depending on your rifle type), the minus button re-loads and plus pauses. Other controls are mapped to either buttons or nunchuck motion controls, both with varied levels of success. Melee attacks are accomplished by pushing the remote forward, which works great. It's both realistic and fun, as you really are whacking the enemy with your 'gun' – the Wii Remote. And while you have to quickly re-centre your aim afterward, this is both realistic and quite easy once you're used to it. Switching weapons can be handled by either pushing up on the Remote's d-pad, or by flicking the nunchuck left or right. The d-pad method isn't preferable since you have to change your hand position on the Remote, which affects your aim, but the nunchuck flick works brilliantly and actually feels like you're grabbing your other gun from your backpack. Grenade throwing can be mapped to left and right on the d-pad (for frag and smoke grenades respectively), or these buttons can also be used to simply select the type of grenade, and throwing can be accomplished with a throwing motion of the nunchuck. This is fun, but since you have to press the d-pad anyway it's moot from a pragmatic angle, and both options requite the aforementioned shift of grip. The minus button is also a context sensitive action button, allowing you to perform on screen commands, such as climbing over a wall, or picking up thrown grenades to re-throw them.
There are also some context specific motion control sequences. Sometimes an enemy attacks in a close combat scripted sequence and on screen motion commands pop up instructing you to 'punch' the remote and nunchuck forward to overcome the attack. These sequences are unnecessarily tiring, not very fulfilling, and overall just pointless. Other motion 'minigames' are equally pointless, forcing you to follow on screen commands, such as a rotating motion to 'screw in' the fuse of a charge, or a rowing motion for a boat. These sequences are designed to add immersion to the experience, but their infrequency, as well as the large controller motion icons displayed on the screen achieve the opposite effect. Driving, however, works very well. When you get into a vehicle, you pull the nunchuck and remote up in front of you as if they are the left and right sides of a steering wheel, and turn by rotating this position left and right (with the B and Z buttons as accelerate and brake). It's hard to fully evaluate the driving control, since it's featured in very controlled environments, but it works well and is both intuitive and immersive, so can be considered a success.
The grenade motion is one of the few that don't work so well
Of course, these paragraphs about control are as much a review of the Wii Remote controller as they are of Activision's implementation of it. And while Activision should be commended for being the first to use the Remote effectively in a shooter, we're reviewing Call of Duty 3 as a whole. And Call of Duty 3 on the Wii can simply be described as a revolutionary control method mapped to a decent, single player only, last-gen shooter. Graphically, Call of Duty 3 looks like it could just about be run on a Gamecube or Xbox, although perhaps it has a bit more going on in some levels then last gen could handle. However, unlike a lot of early Wii games, at least it looks like a very good last-gen game. Player models are quite detailed and well textured, and while there are some blurry textures in the environments, the scale is impressive. Plenty goes on in terms of on screen characters, bullets, smoke and explosions, and urban missions feature a long draw distance with a lot of geometry, and the framerate mostly stays stable at around 30fps. Really, the only obvious thing letting these levels down is the texture selection for objects you will see up close a lot – most textures look good from a few feet away, but are blurry up close. If Treyarch had simply put a few more system resources toward textures that may at some point be right at the camera (such as cover positions and some parts of the ground) the overall graphical picture would be a lot more complete. Missions set in more rural places are a step down graphically – there's less geometry and action, and the open settings make the often dull uniform lighting more apparent, sometimes making these sections look like a PS2 game, which is a shame, as these sections were probably the best looking parts of the Xbox 360 version. Overall, while it's far from impressive compared to the best looking Xbox 360 games, Call of Duty 3 is currently one of the best looking Wii games, whatever that implies we know the Wii is capable of more, but right now this is above par, and at least the scale is brought over well. Sonically, an excellent orchestral score and good sound effects and voices make the game an aural treat and really help with the 'WWII movie' atmosphere.
There are some nice visual effects
There are other signs that Call of Duty 3 was rushed for the Wii launch, including some problems with the game's presentation. Since the story jumps all over the place, to link between sections you'll be forced to watch some decently voice acted, but poor looking CG cutscenes. And we do mean forced – the cutscenes are un-skippable, even if you've already seen them, and even if your last checkpoint was mid-way through the level. The Wii's home button is even disabled during them, a disturbing revelation of a feature we thought was hardware based. The silver lining is that there is no loading when beginning a level, so it appears the forced cutscenes are there to mask loading. A more serious flaw is a game breaking bug that popped up a few times while we were playing – at these points, the game simply stopped registering controller input. It's not a hardware issue, as the Remote's power button still turned the console off, but it obviously renders that session unfinishable. Luckily, it only happened three times throughout our game (at random points) and checkpoints are frequent, so after a re-boot we weren't set back very far, but it's still annoying and a serious bug.
The game lasts a respectable ten hours or so, and is enjoyable all the way through. Content wise it's identical to the last-gen and Xbox 360 versions, minus the online multiplayer. Without any multiplayer (not even split screen) Call of Duty 3 for Wii won't last much longer than a single play though, and if you've played through any other version there's not much point buying this one. However, for Wii owners who've finished Zelda and want another meaty single player experience, Call of Duty 3 comes highly recommended. It's easily the best of the three shooters on the Wii right now in every respect, and leaves the patchy Red Steel in the dust. Call of Duty 3 is virtually guaranteed to be rendered obsolete eventually (even by Activision themselves) but right now it's a decent looking and fun single player experience, an excellent showcase for the Wii's unique controller, and a peek into the future of console FPS controls.
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