England losing in the World Cup. Tim Henman consistently underperforming at Wimbledon. Scampi and Lemon Nik Naks returning to the shelves. All of these things are sources of crushing disappointment to many, and put into perspective my thoughts on Call Of Duty 3. Okay, things might not be quite as bad as the aforementioned (particularly the Nik Naks), but given the excellent fun which Call Of Duty 2 had surprised us with back in the days when the Xbox 360 was just launching, you can’t help but feel disappointed by comparison with a sequel which, if anything, has taken a few steps back rather than forward.

Developed by Treyarch this time instead of CoD2’s Infinity Ward and being a proper console title much in the line of Treyarch’s Call Of Duty: Big Red One for the Xbox rather than a PC port, CoD3 sees the series resuming its standard way of allowing the player to control various different characters from a selection of nation’s armies across various points in World War 2, with the focus this time being on the happenings after the Normandy landing.

Differences between the game and its predecessor are immediately apparent from the initial training sections of the game. The whole thing has been given even more of a cinematic glaze, with troops strolling around chatting to each other and music blaring on a nearby radio. A late evening sun appears to be setting across your army camp, creating a warm, resplendent atmosphere. The game looks and sounds beautiful, which is what you’d have come to expect.

It’s during this training portion that you are introduced to the first change in the way you fight. Instead of simply being allowed to chuck grenades at enemies, you now have the option of ‘cooking’ them for a while, meaning that whichever poor blighter is on the end of your throw has even less time to respond than normally. Likewise, you are also able to pick up and return grenades chucked at you by enemy troops, although timing this initially proves quite tricky and will lead to many unintentional deaths whilst you learn the best way to carry the action out.

It isn’t until you’ve polished off a few levels of the campaign mode that you’ll begin to realise that the game feels frustratingly unfinished and buggy. Whereas CoD2 felt relatively solid, CoD3 suffers from strange graphical glitches such as gun effects going through solid objects and soldiers running through scattered bits of scenery. On the flipside, patches of grass and trees are now mysteriously sticky, sometimes clinging to the player and not allowing him to escape until he wiggles the control stick around a bit. Rag doll physics have been introduced this time around, but quite often see the deceased thrown into impossible positions and occasionally hovering off the ground. It all feels a little rushed.

Worse still is that the game is far more linear than its predecessor. A perfect example of this can be found on the very first level of the game when you begin progressing up a gentle hill towards the enemy. You are initially deposited right in the centre of the battlefield, and any attempt to head off to the right sees you coming across an invisible wall disappointingly quickly. Heading over to the left side of the battlefield reveals an even more frustrating moment when you can see a whole bunch of your comrades running up the hill the other side of a low wooden fence, which makes you think that it might be a good idea to join them. Oh, hold on a second, you can’t. Invisible wall. You soon realise just how narrow the area of play is, and you feel as if you’re being funnelled along in one direction.

It’s a feeling that persists for the majority of the rest of the game. Now, CoD2 certainly wasn’t massively free when it came to progression through levels, but it did offer the player the choice of a few routes more than often, and you did feel as if you could crawl along any side of a field or ditch and attack things from the direction you wanted. CoD3 sees you often being lead towards enemies right in front of you with no other option than to take cover and tough it out.

To add to the disappointment, Treyarch have seen fit to include some random elements to the game that don’t particularly add much. Occasionally a troop will rush towards you wielding a weapon, upon which you must mash the triggers in Track and Field style to overpower him. Setting bombs sees you being given a pattern of buttons to press in order to get the job done. Whilst this may have introduced a bit of tension to the game you soon become aware that you can’t actually fail the task, resulting in it feeling a little pointless.

The saving grace for Call Of Duty 3 comes in the form of the multiplayer mode. Increasing the number of players allowed in each server to 24 from CoD2’s 8, the game benefits from the addition of a few neat tweaks which add a lot of depth. The primary change from number 2 sees CoD3 offering each player a selection of different classes from which he can choose, ranging from Riflemen and Artillery to Medics and Anti Armour. Each different class has a different set of strengths; Scouts, for example, are provided with a sniper rifle and the ability to call on an air strike, whereas Medics have comparatively weak weaponry but can revive downed friends.

It all adds up to create a situation where teams can now be tactically formed with certain combinations of different troop types. A varied selection of maps are available, all offering unique landscape features which makes choosing how many of a certain type of troop you have on your team all the more tactical. Areas with long, open sections could lend themselves to having more than one Scout, whereas Riflemen would be sitting ducks and not as useful. Obviously your opposing team will be thinking exactly the same, leading to some risky decisions being taken.
Vehicles are now also available for use, most of which can be packed with a number of soldiers for drive-by shooting fun. Cramming yourself into the passenger side of a sidecar and taking pops at enemies whilst your mate slides it round corners and jumps it off ledges is an utterly brilliant feeling and adds countless tactical considerations to battles, with vehicles proving ideal distractions should you need to sneak up on a group of enemy scouts.

Six modes of play are available for you to battle within; Battle and Team Battle offer simple deathmatch fun, War and Headquarters serve up territorial battles and Capture The Flag and Single Capture The Flag see you dashing between bases with flags whilst being shot at. Of these, War and Headquarters are generally the most fun and often see huge, epic battles as teams launch wave after wave of counterattacks towards their enemy’s position.

In the end, whether or not you buy Call Of Duty 3 is based on a pretty simple equation. If you are primarily a lover of single player action and are after an epic, brilliantly executed solo campaign then you’ll be disappointed. CoD3 is packed full of annoying little bugs and feels much less vast than the previous game in the series, leaving the offline portion of the title with a distinctly sour aftertaste.
Conversely, if you’re after a game that will throw you into epic multiplayer battles across some great maps then you’ll struggle to find better than this on any console. The class system has meant that online skirmishes now have a much deeper, more tactical feel to them and as a result are thrillingly fulfilling. The only thing you’ll need to consider is whether the price of the game is worth the multiplayer side alone. In the meantime, we all have to hope that the next edition of the game will be good enough as a whole to avoid such quandaries in the first place.