One more cup of coffee

Call of Duty 3 review

Now that Zune has shipped, I've been spending more time playing video games again. First was Call of Duty 3. On the plus side, the graphics are great. The game play, not so much. The game is set in France, post-D-Day, as you play various Allied soldiers fighting towards Paris. The fighting takes place in the French countryside or in towns.

The first problem is that the maps aren't that big, and the game severely limits where you can go. Most attacks are pretty linear -- you have to follow a prescribed path, because there is a six-inch high hedge in your way the other way that you can't climb over. (Germans can spawn on the other side of the six-inch hedge -- or whatever is used -- and come over it. But you can't.) I understand the need to limit the map size -- it makes designing the campaigns much easier. But other games (e.g., Halo 2) do a much better job of making it feel like a natural limitation instead of a completely artificial one.

The second problem is that most homes in small French villages have armor-plated walls. Seriously -- you can't shoot through them. Some German soldier will be standing on the other side of a window shooting at you, and the only chance you have of nailing him is to hit the tiny portion of his body that's actually exposed. One of the rounds involves driving a Sherman tank. Even the main gun on the tank is incapable of putting so much as a dent in the houses. Who knew that they were made of such sturdy stuff back in the 1940s?

I haven't tried the online play, and so maybe that's more fun. But in the single-player campaign, the game play is too limited to be that much fun.