Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Release Date: 11/7/2006
Rating: Teen
MSRP: $59.99
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Every FPS fan has played a WWII shooter and it was either Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. While Call of Duty is the superior WWII series it’s just as guilty for having constant sequel after sequel. The reason why the WWII genre is dry is that there is so much you can do with actual events that happened. You can only use D-Day and Market Garden so many times before new explosions and updated graphics won’t even save those scenarios. Call of Duty at least tried to use new events in WWII and this was the battle for Chambois also known as the Falaise Gap.
The game has you playing four, I repeat, four different people and these are the Americans, Canadians, British, and Polish. The game does develop some attachable characters that have personality, but since the game is so short this can’t be done properly. This is also the first “truly next-gen” WWII game that came out (no CoD2 was just a PC port) so you have high-res textures, flowing grass, realistic weather effects etc. The game looks really good even for today and helps add to the realism of the game.
Everything here is the same as the past though with all your WWII weapons and I can’t even tell which ones are new or old since it changes every time. You do have new gameplay elements such as button pressing sequences these are fun and break up some of the monotonous shooting. Now instead of just attaching explosives to Flak guns, you have to do button presses to do this. You do, however, have to use cover a lot more in this game since the AI has improved a lot. Your teammates will actually shoot back and HELP you and the enemies target you and run to cover you pretty well. You can’t just run around like Rambo shooting Nazis out in the open because you’ll die pretty fast.
One thing I do love out the CoD series is the sweeping orchestral soundtrack and that tear-jerking theme song! They put the right songs to the right moments of the game and it really makes the game feel epic (not as much CoD4 of course!) Basically, the single player game consists of 9 levels and is pretty much the same as before. You have driving sections, turret sections, tank sections, every WWII weapon you can think of, a decent story, decent characters, and a wonderful soundtrack so this makes things really solid.
When it comes to multiplayer things really shine since there are a lot of modes. You have all your typical modes, but what makes it great is you can play with 24 people on one map! This makes things chaotic and addictive and you’ll never stop playing. You have (I think) six or seven classes to choose from such as medics, riflemen, assault troopers etc. All of these classes are well balanced and the map is nicely designed. When you die though you don’t just die you can call for a medic (but no one is ever medic). The multiplayer is pretty straightforward, but it’s highly addictive and this is always a plus.
I just wish they’d make a game of WWI or the Revolutionary War! Once you finish everything here you can look under the extras for concept art, videos etc. The achievements make for playing the single player more than once and overall this is a solid WWII shooter, but we all know it wasn’t the last one.
