WW2 #23: Call of Duty 3
Call of Duty’s first big stumble, but it didn’t have to be
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 24, 2019.
Initial release: November 7, 2006
Platform: PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3/XBox/XBox 360/Wii
Developer: Treyarch
It’s funny how a community can turn on a popular franchise in an instant. After Call of Duty had two smash hit games that redefined the FPS genre, one would think fans would be appreciative of a third title. I guess not! Now, to be fair, the game was kinda asking for it. Coming out in 2006, Call of Duty 3 fell victim to the fatigue over World War II games, especially since it was set in Normandy… again. And it wasn’t made by Infinity Ward, but Treyarch, who were relatively unknown despite having made United Offensive and Big Red One. And worst of all, Call of Duty 3 was on five platforms and PC wasn’t one of them.
It’s admittedly odd that the game never came to PC. It certainly plays a hell of a lot like Call of Duty 2 — and looks the part as well, at least on PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. As best as I can tell, it’s down to Treyarch’s inexperience in developing for PC (despite having recently absorbed Grey Matter Interactive.) A PC port WAS planned, but cancelled. Treyarch also were working under some extreme time constraints, with only 8 months to make the game. With that kind of pressure, especially with having to develop for five separate platforms, it’s easy to see how a platform they’re inexperienced with would have low priority.
As far as the setting in Normandy, this is another example of Treyarch forging their own paths when it comes to the traditional Call of Duty narrative. While they go back to the multinational perspective hopping, the plot focuses entirely on a single campaign: the Falaise Gap. In this way it reminded me a lot of the film The Longest Day, a film about the initial invasion of Normandy, depicting multiple perspectives in its attempt to convey the scale of 24 hours of battle as the Allies landed in France.
Similarly, with multiple participants in the battle of the Falaise Gap, it helps give a sense of the size of the battle that took place over a couple of weeks in August 1944 as the Nazis attempted their final evacuation from France.
The US and British are here (including United Offensive’s Major Ingram and player character Doyle from the Brit campaign) but you’ll also play the part of a Canadian soldier and a Polish tank crew member. All four perspectives have their own storylines that sometimes intersect. While you won’t have as much time to get familiar with a cast of characters like you do in Big Red One, there’s still plenty of characterization and drama to go around — such as a Canadian attached to the Polish refusing to pull back because his CO kept calling him a coward.
It’s a unique take for World War II shooters, which often seem to be cramming as much of the war as they can into a single game, and end up being shallow representations of all of it. While the end result might be considered “boring,” there’s something to be said for avoiding “World War II’s greatest hits.” Sure, most of the game’s in a bunch of nameless little villages, but there’s still setpieces to be found, like a tense defense of a hill, or keeping the gap closed at Chambois. Treyarch might be a bit better at writing than gameplay, but that doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun.
You know what’s not fun, though? QTEs. And Call of Duty 3 has a bunch of them, though I’m not sure they’re in all versions. Several times you’ll have to fend off an attacking German, or set up an explosive, or whatever, and it’s all a bunch of “press the button, wiggle the stick” shit. The PlayStation 3 version, which I played, also tried to make use of the Sixaxis controller for various little things, but the end result is a weird mess that doesn’t really work. You’re better off turning that feature off. I can’t imagine how annoying the Wii version must be. I’ll never understand this need to add console-specific features to games. All you’re doing is making them impossible to emulate later. (Which might be the intent.) It’s like some wii games using the Wiimote speaker; why would you do that, when you have a perfectly good TV to run sound through instead?
In any case it’s not a huge deal for Call of Duty 3 since it was initially developed for consoles without stupid motion features (the PlayStation 3 and Wii versions came out a week after the others.) But it’s still stupid.
In spite of all that, I think this game gets a bad rap, and that’s largely down to fans being unpleasable gits, most of whom probably never even played it. In spite of some jankiness (especially with model animations) it’s still a solid, underrated entry in this once-venerable franchise.
