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| Call of Duty 3 |
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| Shooters |
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| Treyarch |
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| Activision |
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10th November 06 |
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7th November 06 |
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16+ |
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(T) - Teen |
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Call of Duty 2 was and still is highly regarded as a great game which introduced the Xbox 360 to the masses when it launched with the console back in October 2005. Whilst Call of Duty 2 wasn’t built from the ground up with the Xbox 360 in mind (it was a PC port) it certainly offered enough thrills to win over gamers. With an impressive attach rate and topping the charts for many weeks, Call of Duty 2 became the number one selling Xbox 360 game. Well less than 6 months after release and an announcement at E3 this year revealed that the team at Infinity Ward/Treyarch were working hard at producing Call of Duty 3 for all systems.
First a history lesson; Call of Duty 3 tells the story of one of the most brutal conflicts of World War 2 which became known as the Normandy Breakout which was a campaign led after D-day for two months and leading up until August the 25th 1944 as Paris was liberated from German occupation. During the bloody campaign over 210,000 allied troops either died or was seriously injured during the many skirmishes that took place in those two months and the Axis troops suffered huge losses in excess of 400,000 troops in the same period. In June of that year the allied troops managed to land over 1 million troops in Normandy for this conflict. Call of Duty 3 tells the story of the Normandy Breakout and begins on July 18th 1944 and follows key events leading up to the liberation of Paris. It will include elements from Operation Cobra and the closing of the Falaise pocket in which 250,000 troops were captured.
Earlier this month Msxbox-world was invited by Activision to the Medal Room of London’s Armoury House which is home to many medals from the Honourable Artillery Company who fought bravely during WWII. The Honorable Artillery Company originated as far back as 1537 and was officially confirmed by Queen Victoria in 1860. The Honorable Artillery Company is now the oldest Regiment in the British Army but, paradoxically, the second most senior unit of the Territorial Army. The medal room was the perfect setting, (despite some noisy building work taking place outside) for a presentation of the E3 playable level of Call of Duty 3.
The presentation began with an American assault on St.Leu which as history tells us was subject to severe RAF bombing in late June early July 1944. In one raid on the 7th-8th of July 1944 the Allies lost a staggering 31 aircraft. The bombing of St. Leu had a negative effect especially as up to 83% of the town was obliterated; this also meant that it was harder for the allied troops to move any armoured divisions into the town. St. Leu was a hotpot during the Normandy Breakout which took some 43 days to capture; there are even stories of un-exploded devices still being found there today.
With Call of Duty 3 the developers are aiming to continue the epic story telling, realism, cinematic direction and emotional experience that was generated in the previous games of the series. The developers are pushing for a narrative with a seamless woven story that captures the essence of the Normandy Breakout. The team are heavily focusing on the story aspect of the game for a less disjointed experience. For the first time, in Call of Duty players will be able to take control of a Polish tank commander, Canadian Mechanised infantryman, British SAS commando and US Army infantryman. Now whilst the action is strictly based around the Normandy area of France as opposed to various hotspots around the globe as seen in Call of Duty 2; the developers are keen to stress that this will not restrict the game play in any way as each of the various characters you take control of have very different roles and objectives working together as nations collectively to halt the German regime. The most obvious of the playing differences will be when controlling the SAS commando, who is likely to undertake more covert style missions or the tank commander undertaking vehicular mission objectives.
My first impression from the demonstration was one of sheer delight as the most noticeable differences that hit me immediately were the upgrade in graphics. In general, Call of Duty 3 displayed better, high resolution textures than before, more general environment details and a realistic grittier war torn look to the particular level that was demonstrated. Call of Duty 2 wasn’t an ugly game although some of the textures were a little underwhelming at times, however in Call of Duty 3 the developers have used an entirely new physics engine as well as utilising the power of the hardware to create even more smoke and lighting effects as well as having more action happening at any one time. The smoke was an impressive feature of Call of Duty 2 but now this has been developed further to incorporate lots of fine details such as the effect of wind, heat, differing colours and even the effect of bullets passing through the smoke. One example given was the fact that players could throw a grenade into smoke, the resulting explosion of the grenade would actually disperse the smoke. Perhaps the enemy AI will use this tactic against the player often or vice versa?
In typical fashion there was plenty of action going on with various Allied troops taking up positions behind cover and firing upon the dug in Axis troops. An aircraft flew overhead and smashed into the church steeple causing a huge cloud of dust as smoke which billowed from the destroyed church in a very realistic manner. We were told that should players venture into the church after that particular event that they would be faced by the debris from the impact but also the fallen church bell would be viewable inside. The developers have motion captured actors wearing authentic clothing and weapons to create the movements for the soldiers which looked very impressive indeed. The team are very much into their World War 2 history and have sampled the real life guns and equipment as research for their games. Using scanning technology as used by NASA to fix cracks on spacecraft the team were able to scan the fully clothed actors in their authentic uniforms to get perfect recreations for the game. In gaming terms this means that the look of cloth is far more detailed and realistic than before. The scanning technique which creates a high polygon count model also means that the team are able to place more assets in the game world than before. So if you can imagine the masses of troops seen in the first few levels of Call of Duty 2 and imagine improving on that further then you can get an idea of the levels of depth the team are creating here. It’s also worth noting that the scanning technology used is far quicker and accurate than more traditional modelling techniques and thus allows for more costumes and more realistic looking models. The team actually built some models of the vehicles in the game and scanned these to create perfect recreations in game. With the scanning technology it means that things can look more war torn as every bump and defect, exhaust pipe etc is scanned also.
One neat graphical effect was the grass which now flattens when soldiers move over it. We were told that this feature can actually be used to track enemy movements and positions in other sections of the game. The Shader effects have been massively improved since Call of Duty 2 and with depth of field effects and HDR lighting really brought to life the playing experience and this from simply watching the game rather than actually playing. The new physics engine was evident as during one section the player fired some bullets at a piece of masonry that was precariously hanging from a semi destroyed building causing it to fall to the ground. We’re not sure whether players will actually be able to shoot objects in this way and have them crush any foes that are beneath them. Call of Duty 3 will incorporate some cloth physics as well as some levels of destructive cover for more intense and strategic gun battles. We were told that the enemy AI has been tweaked to offer a greater but fair challenge and with things like destructible cover and more intelligence means that gun battles will be even more engaging than before. No doubt the extra tough Veteran level of difficulty will return once more for players looking for the highest gaming accolades and of course those achievements which should hopefully include some multiplayer goals this time.
One of the new additions to the game play is the introduction of a cinematic grapple with enemy soldiers which is part of a new feature called Battle Actions. In a clinch players get to see their opponents up close and personal as they wrestle back and forth for supremacy. During the moment that was demonstrated, the player had to simultaneously tap the left and right triggers to break free and shoot their opponent. We were told that these moments were scripted and couldn’t be initiated with any soldiers during close encounters; however we were told that the button sequence will become more complex as the story progresses. The battle actions won’t necessarily be restricted to soldiers as players will be able to scale tanks to open the hatch to drop a grenade inside as well as a whole host of other daring and courageous situations. The Battle Action was the last part of the level and after this moment the player is able to freely move around the area while being debriefed. During this moment the game actually loads the next level which continues the action seamlessly. Looking at the vehicular missions for a moment, we were told that these missions will be less on rails and will offer the player slightly more freedom of movement. With Call of Duty 2 the team studied the behaviour of the player and noticed that whilst certain levels offered open maps where players could choose which objectives to accomplish first; the team discovered that most players opted to head to the nearest checkpoint first. In Call of Duty 3 the team have decided to make the game slightly less open so as to create a greater level of cinematic game play as possible. That’s not to say that routes will be entirely linear as there will still be multiple paths to take through the levels. So if you can imagine an example where the commanding officer shouts to the troops to either move through buildings on the left of the street or to follow the street directly or perhaps take a route through the building cellars. We are told that player actions will have a direct impact on the team AI so for example if you decided to take a route through the buildings your actions will help the AI moving through the streets below. The general AI has been tweaked as the team has listen to the community which raised some issues from playing Call of Duty 2. Whilst the difference may be subtle the point is the AI will act and react more realistically than what was seen before. Hopefully this will see and end to the distant enemies’ focus firing on the player and ignoring closer targets as seen in Call of Duty 2. New additions to the WWII authentic weapons list are mortars and rifle grenades although were not sure if these will be restricted to the multiplayer only.
The multiplayer aspect of the game has been granted an entire team (Treyarch) to work on it so that when it’s released it is as perfect as possible with none of the hitches that dogged Call of Duty 2. Call of Duty 3 will feature multiplayer for up to 24 Live players (12 versus 12). In Call of Duty 3’s multiplayer there will be a ranking and class system where players can choose a class of solider such as Rifleman or grenadier and get ranked based on their team playing skills. There will also be vehicles which can take multiple occupants for those base storming runs. With an entire team working on the multiplayer component, expect a far more polished experience than what has been seen before. There will be 3 new modes of play which have yet to be named at this time however one will be based on capturing areas of a map , holding it and then moving on to capture more of the map effectively pushing the opponents off the map and controlling all areas for victory.
Looking at the pre Alpha build of Call of Duty 3 and it appears that the team are pushing all the right buttons to eclipse the success of their previous games. With a lot more ambition being portrayed in the scale of the battles and also the cinematic direction, I think gamers will simply love what the team have done to keep the familiar elements in place but also adding some really cool new things to keep the game play fresh. Whilst there have been plenty of war games on consoles to date and no doubt many more planned, I think the Call of Duty series has cemented itself as the definitive World War 2 playing experience. Call of Duty 3 looks set to continue this when it’s released at the end of this year on Xbox and Xbox 360.
You can view Call of Duty 3 movies by clicking here.
You can view Call of Duty 3 screenshots by clicking here.
Preview By: Robert Cram
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