Call of Duty 3 Review

As great as the combat is, the game isn't without a few annoyances. The first is stupid AI squad mates. When you enter a building they'll often bundle in behind you, which is fine, but it's not so great when you try to retreat from a maniacal machine gunner, only to find the way to cover is blocked by said squad mates. With the screen flashing red, your escape route blocked, and panic rising, it's a sure-fire recipe for stress, and lots of it. What's worse is that at various points my character and AI characters became stuck on scenery, forcing me to restart from the previous checkpoint.

Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 was a fine looking game, running at an almost constant 60 fps, but it was still a port of a PC game. Call of Duty 3 takes the visuals up a notch, filling the screen with more explosions, smoke, and destruction than I've seen in any other game. It's not all fancy effects either, with some truly beautiful architecture and the best forest environment to grace a video game. Some of the character animation is a little clunky, and the frame rate certainly isn't as smooth as in the previous game, but this is one of the most impressive looking games available for the Xbox 360.

I've already mentioned the incredible audio, but it's worth emphasising how much this adds to the atmosphere in the game. Some of the weapons aren't quite as booming as they are in Call of Duty 2, but the overall level of audio is just as good, with thunderous explosions, constant chatter from your squad mates and enemy soldiers, and some impressive voice work from a fairly large supporting cast. On the presentation front the in-engine cutscenes are the biggest letdown, not because they're poor, but because they seem to take an age to start, with everyone standing around waiting for something to happen.

Ask any Call of Duty 2 Xbox 360 fans about the game's weaknesses, and online play would undoubtedly get mentioned a few times. The whole thing was a bit of a shambles, with a poor lobby system and lag issues being the biggest offenders. Call of Duty 3 makes up for these blunders by giving Xbox 360 owners one of the best online offerings the system has seen to date. Up to 24 players can play online (or over System Link) and you can even take four players online via a single system.

You get nine large maps to play on, with game modes covering all the favourites: Deathmatch (named Battle), Team Deathmatch (named Team Battle), Capture the Flag (plus a single flag variant), Headquarters (a defend a base mode), and War (battling for control over spawn points). It's pretty standard stuff, but added to this are drivable vehicles (jeeps, bikes and tanks), and a class-based character system.

It's brilliantly balanced, with each class having its own strengths and weaknesses, giving everyone a real purpose while on the battlefield. Achievement points have been split well between the single and multiplayer game, and they reward play with numerous character classes, so there should be a fair few players willing to sacrifice range and accuracy, for the ability to revive downed soldiers as a Medic. Lag has also been pleasantly absent in the games I've played, making it one of the most impressive online games available for the 360.

It would be easy to pick holes in Call of Duty 3, but bar a few annoyances they really don't matter. It might be a predominantly linear path shooter, but who cares? When the atmosphere and level of action on offer is this great, the fact that I can't wander off to see what's behind a tree half a mile to the East really doesn't bother me. I can certainly live without poor WWII first-person shooters, but when they're as much fun to play as Call of Duty 3, I'd happily play them year after year.