Despite being a little less polished than earlier entries of the series, I actually think the campaign of Call of Duty 3 is a great improvement over the one featured in Call of Duty 2. This was easy for me to decide since I had just beaten 2 (probably my third play-through, this time on Veteran) a few days prior to giving the third entry a go. I hadn't played it in several years, and couldn't wait to re-live the Enemy at the Gates-inspired Stalingrad mission or the capture of Pegasus Bridge. It wasn't until a few hours into the game that I realized, to my dismay, that I had been remembering the best parts of the original Call of Duty. So basically, I now consider Call of Duty 2 the worst entry in the series, especially after re-watching its pathetic ending: "Actually, sir, I think you should consider giving PLAYER 1 dat dere promotion; he sure did done a damn fine job shooting dem Nazis! THE END."
Treyarch did a lot more in terms of character development and with making battles seem large-scale and epic. In Call of Duty 2, I constantly found my squad of privates getting slaughtered, until I was left with only the invincible major characters watching my back. Call of Duty 3 gives you an incredible amount of friendly firepower, as well as way more enemies to mow down. I also thought the enemy AI was greatly improved, simply due to the fact they didn't constantly focus fire on my character specifically, as if they knew I was the protagonist.
Though you're now able to play as a Canadian and Polish soldier (something that hasn't been done before in the series), they really don't play much differently than the British. Other than the Pole's tank, they use the same weapons. I was disappointed there was no Russian perspective this time around, but in context with the story, it makes sense why that is. It's all about the Normandy Breakout, so the stories are interwoven. It's pulled off very well, and I feel the narrative is much deeper and way more detailed than any of the stories from the rest of the series, sans the masterpiece that was Call of Duty 4, of course. Though the story jumps from perspective to perspective a lot, I still found it easy to attach myself to some of the characters, like the cynical sergeant in early American missions or the "cowardly" Canadian radio operator who meets a sad fate in the final Polish mission. The fact the developers went to great lengths to explore many side characters is a commendable effort. Finally, I just want to say that the last few missions are simply epic. The final battle which sees the Americans cutting off a Nazi retreat is utterly satisfying and very climactic. Certainly not as satisfying and climactic as flying the Soviet flag over the ruins of the Reichstag, but it's up there.
Treyarch tried adding a lot of different gameplay elements, such as making mortars and artillery guns usable. There's also added weapon sway (as in, not just for sniper rifles), but thanks to the new aim-assist, it doesn't make targeting enemies any more challenging than in earlier titles. Also thanks to the auto-aiming, fire-fights are a lot more fast-paced and I feel shooting is a lot more satisfying. There's more too. You now have to set fuses on explosives before they're armed. You can cook your grenades and enemy grenades can be thrown back. Close-quarters combat has you dealing with short, scripted quick-time style melee battles against single opponents. The scenes are pretty intense and cinematic, but sometimes you'll be thinking "wait, where the Hell did this guy come from and how did he slip by my squad?" Then, there's driving segments, which while entertaining are a little wonky. The physics could have been a lot better and the camera swings around a bit too much for my liking. I also got lost on a mission that had you driving across town to save French resistance fighters being held hostage by the Germans, and unpassable barricades and invisible walls were primarily to blame.
The guns are incredibly detailed, their reload animations look great, and they all handle pretty realistically. Every weapon feels different. Sub-machine guns are poor at long-range and with their 9mm rounds are considerably weak. High-caliber rifles and light machine-guns on the other hand will take down Germans in one to two hits. There are subtle differences between weapons of the same type too. I felt Thompsons were a lot better at dealing with enemies at close-range than the MP40 and Sten, probably due to its higher fire-rate. The M1 Garand dishes out more damage than the Gewehr 43. The BAR and FG42 are a little less accurate than the MP44 and Bren. The developers really captured the weight of the weapons as well. Looking at some of the animations, you can almost feel their heft, and using heavier weapons will slow down your character slightly. You really need to choose your arsenal carefully if you want to do well in this game. The only thing that kind of bothered me was a small change to the Lee-Enfield: despite the fact you're loading in 5-round cartridges, you can reload the gun at any time (so if you have six rounds left, you can put in a 5-round cartridge and have 10). Call of Duty 2 only let you pop in cartridges if you had 5 or less rounds. If you put in more ammo with, let's say 3 rounds left, you'd be stuck with 7. I enjoyed little nuances like that. Oh, then there's my favorite thing of all: melee attacks for every single weapon in the game.
Environments are beautifully rendered, and I was actually surprised at just how open they were. Many missions even allow you to take point and choose a specific route toward an objective. Impressive, I thought, for such a linear FPS. I had some issues in houses when trying to find my way out of them though. Areas you should have been able to slip through just wouldn't allow it, so the game's really picky about exits. Besides that niggling aside, I really don't get the complaints about linearity. I felt a lot more limited in Call of Duty 2.
The effects look great. When inside buildings, lighting near windows and doors simulates your eyes adjusting to the brightness from outdoors, while blur aiming down the sights simulates your eyes adjusting focus. Explosions look decent enough and create volumetric smoke trails, and smoke grenades create big, billowing clouds of cover. Rain is just as good as it used to be and flowing streams of water (as seen in the mission The Island) look fantastic. There are also a decent amount of breakables, and they're pullled off pretty well. Grenades and tank shells will take out fences and parts of walls. Shooting through wooden rails on stairwells will have them whittle away. Powerful guns like the FG42 and Trenchgun can rip through wooden crates Germans use for cover. Shooting wine barrels will have them springing leaks. Signs will hang after an intense explosion or well-placed gunshot.
There are also some new rag-doll physics, but it's an inconsistent effect. Watching an enemy go limp and flip over himself two feet in the air after smacking him in the spine with the butt of a rifle is not only laughable, but just makes the game look unpolished. Sometimes Germans would go flying just from being shot. However, there were times I loved this feature. For example, chucking a grenade through one of the window panes in an office room caused a German to bust out another pane before sliding pathetically to the ground. Sometimes it succeeds in making a scene look more awesome, but other times it just falls flat on its face.
Despite all the positives, there are some truly annoying glitches and graphical issues. Members of your squad occassionally clip through walls or other obstructions just to return to your side. I understand why this would be benefitial to the player when they stray too far ahead, but it certainly could have been accomplished in a much more subtle manner, so as not to kill the player's sense of immersion. I also witnessed floating character models and objects. For example, a lantern placed atop a breakable wooden crate had no physics coded for it, so upon destroying the platform below it, it remained where it was, suspended by an invisible force. There are also issues with hit detection. Bullets will deflect off invisible barriers around trees and vehicles (sometimes these will extend a foot or more from the ends of objects), making firing from behind some forms of cover troublesome. I also witnessed what I have deemed "der Übermensch," a German who spawned in a couple levels that was literally impossible for me to kill. Only my team-mates could eliminate this monstrosity.
The checkpoint system really got on my nerves, especially on Veteran. The game seems to save only after primary objectives are completed, so it's not very lenient. Basically, you could do a lot, die and then have to re-play a major portion of the level again. Take the last checkpoint of the game as an example. You'll clear two floors of a house, snipe three mortar teams, take out an armored car with an artillery gun, another with a bazooka and then two tanks with another artillery gun after the first is destroyed, with no saves in between. In another mission, after constantly being killed at the last possible moment, I was forced to do all of this about ten times: get past a tank, clear out a trench, eliminate 20 or so Germans in a massive bunker and then secure its roof. Other times, the game would surprise me and give me a few checkpoints very close together, but of course, this was only during lulls in the fighting. God forbid I have to talk to my sergeant and walk through that barn again. No, I have to seal off three spawn points (with help from three quick-time events) while being shot at from every angle again, and again.
Sound design is incredible, and is stunning with a decent surround sound setup. Rifle shots will echo in the wilderness and ring off buildings in town. I was very impressed with some of the new sounds for firearms, especially the MG42 (it really does sound like a bedsheet tearing) and Gewehr 43. The soundtrack is decent enough, save for a few out-of-place tracks on levels like Fuel Plant and Mayenne Bridge. They sound almost digital, and actually reminded me of the music from the Metal Slug series, just not as good. There are, however, a couple high-lights, such as the final section of the score for The Mace, which features a very depressing medley during what seems like a hopeless battle before a wonderful, high-pitched relief breaks out at the very end, when green flares burst and Canadian reinforcements save the day. I think it's more memorable than the music from Infinity Ward's productions, but definitely a lot less consistent.
As for the online component, I don't know if it's because it's been two years since the game's release, but I hate it. It's just a cheap rip-off of Battlefield 1942 with ugly map design. Classic Call of Duty gameplay (squad-based Team Deathmatch) has been stripped away. The class-based system is poorly done and tanks are ridiculously overpowered. There's little to no time to take cover when being shot at by unseen opponents, and the focus blur is extremely distracting. The teams seem unbalanced too. For instance, why should one side's rifleman get a semi-automatic gun, while the other gets stuck with a bolt-action? Plus, it's just Americans and Germans again. What gives? On another note, the map packs, still priced at 800 MS points (10 bucks) each are way too expensive. Considering the fact that people picking up the game now will be spending around 20-30 dollars on the product itself (I spent 10 myself on a brand new copy), it's unlikely they'll lay down the same load of cash for some extra multiplayer maps.
All in all, despite some harsh criticism from the press, Call of Duty 3 manages to be a great entry in the series, and in my view (ignoring the multiplayer), better than its most recent predecessor that many consider a classic.
