Call of Duty review by Al Giovetti

 

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By Al Giovetti
Price:SRP $49.99 USD
Genre:shooter
ESRB Rating: T for Teen (Blood, Violence - content suitable for persons ages 13 and older)
Release:November 5, 2003
Developer: Infinity Ward
Engineering Lead:Jason West
Design Lead:Zied Rieke
Art Lead:Justin Thomas
Animation Lead:Michael Boon
Producer:Vince Zampella
Development Director: Ken Turner
Engineering:Robert Field, Francesco Gigliotti, Carl Glave, Earl Hammon, Jr., Jason West
Additional Programming:Bryan Kuhn, Fairfax Sheild McCandlish IV
Level Design & Game Play Scripting:Todd Alderman, Keith "Ned Man" Bell, Steve Fukuda, Preston Glenn, Chad Grenier, Farfax Sheild McCandlish IV, Zied Rieke, Nate Silvers
Art:Brad Allen, Chris Hassell, Jeff Heath, Justin Thomas
Lead 2D:Paul Jury
Concept Art:Justin Thomas, Kevin Chen
Additional Art:Dan Moditch, Sloan Anderson
Animation:Michael Boon, Ursula Escher, Chance Glasco, Paul Messerly
Additional Animation:Shadows in Darkness
Sound:Chuck Russom
Additional Sound:Jack Grillo
System Administrator:Bryan Kuhn
MANAGEMENT:
CEO:Grant Collier
CCO:Vincd Zampella
CTO:Jason West
Office Manager:Janice Turner
Testers:Clifton Cline, Oliver George, Chris Hermans, Scott Matloff, Gavin McCandlish, David Oberlin
Historical Reference:Mike Phillips, Josh Henniger, Dave Santi and the members of E Company 2/506 PIR 101st Airborne Division of Southern California, 8th Guards Mechanized Corps and the participants of the Camp Gruber Battle of Berlin Reinactment of November 2002
Infinity Ward Special Thanks:Ron Doornink, Bill Anker, Brian Adams, The Philly place, Gray Matter, John Garcia-Shelton, Spark, "The men and women around the world who gave their lives in defense of our freedoms, we will never forget you."
Publisher: Activision
Senior Producer:Thaine Lyman
Producer:Ken Murphy
Associate Producers:Daniel Hagerty, Eric Grossman
Production Coordinator:Matthew Beal
Production Testers:Robers "Paligap" Kirschenbaum, Patrick "Kewk" Bowman
Additional Production:Eric Adams
Senior Executive Producer:Laird Malamed
VP, North American Studios:Mark Lamia
Exec. VP, Worldwide Studios:Larry Goldberg
SCRIPT, VOICE AND MOTION CAPTURE:
Scriptwriter:Michael Schiffer
Voice Casting and Direction:Margaret Tang, Womb Music
Captain Foley:Steve Blum
Sargeant Waters:Jason Statham
Private Elder:Giovanni Ribisi
Sergeant Moody, Additional Voices:Gregg Berger
Captain Price, Additional Voices:Michael Gough
Sergeant Pavlov, Additional Voices:Michael Bell
German PA Officer, Additional Voices:Jim Ward
Russian Tank Crew, Additional Voices:Nick Jameson
Narrator, Announcer:Neil Ross
German Loudspeaker, Additional Voices:David Sobolov
Additional Voices:Quinton Flynn, Josh Paskowitz, Earl Boen
Recording, Engineering, Editing, VO Effects Design:Rik W. Schaffer, Womb Music
Voices Recorded at:Salami Studios and The Castle
MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS:
Original Musical Score:Michael Giacchino
"Age of War" (Intro Movie) Music:Justin Skomarovsky
GLOBAL BRAND MANAGEMENT:
Brand Manager:Brad Carraway
Associate Brand Manager:Richard Brest
Director, Global Brand Management:David Pokress
VP, Global Brand Management:Dusty Welch
Exec. VP, Global Brand Management:Kathy Vrabeck
Senior Publicist:Mike Mantarro
Director, Corp. Communications:Michelle Nino
VP, Trade Marketing:Tricia Bertero
Director, Trade Marketing:John Dilullo
Trade Marketing Manager:Julie DeWolf
BUSINESS & LEGAL AFFAIRS:
Director, Business & Legal Affairs:Greg Deutsch
Senior VP & General Counsel:George Rose
CREATIVE SERVICES:
VP, Creative Services & Operations:Denise Walsh
Marketing Creative Director:Matthew Stainner
Creative Services Manager:Jill Barry
Creative Services Assistant Manager:Shelby Yates
Package Design:Hamagami, Carroll and Associates
Manual Design:Ignited Minds LLC
Phone: 310-255-2050
Website: www.acivision.com/support
Requirements:3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX® 9.0b compatible 32MB hardware T&L-capable video card and latest drivers*, Pentium® III 600MHz or Athlon® 600MHz processor or higher for systems with Windows® 98/ME, Pentium® III 700MHz or Athlon® 700MHz processor or higher for systems with Windows® 2000/XP, English version of Microsoft® Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP, 128MB of RAM, 8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers, 1.4GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 400MB for Windows® 98/ME swap file, 600MB for Windows® 2000/XP swap file), 100% DirectX® 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers, 100% Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers, DirectX® 9.0b (included)
Multimedia Requirements:Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported, Internet play requires 56 Kbps (or faster) modem and latest drivers, LAN play requires network interface card and latest drivers
Recommended:

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Call of Duty

Summary * History * Company Line * Game Play * Plot * Graphics * Animation * Voice Actors * Music Score * Sound Effects * Utilities * Multi-player Features * Cheats, Hints, and Walkthrough * Journalists * References * Letters

History

Infinity Ward is a newly formed game studio, founded in August of 2001. The game studio encorporates 22 of the individuals, including all the production leads, who developed Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC. Grant Collier, President of Infinity Ward, was a producer on Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Postal, the Spec Ops series, Baldies, Magic Land, Enemy Infestation and CIA Operative. Vince Zampella, Infinity Ward Cheif Creative Officer, has been with the company since "early 2002". Vince was producer on Medal of Honor Allied Assault, IOsix, Vigilance, Skies, Baldies and NBA Jam. Vince has worked for Gametek, Atari, Panasonic/Ripcord, Sega and 2015. Jason West, Infinity Ward Chief Technology Officer, joined the company in January 2002. Jason worked on Aerofighters Assault, Skies, F-1, WGP-2, Indy Racing 2000, Spyhunter, and Terminator Dawn of Fate, and the engineering lead on Medal of Honor Allied Assault.

Activision owns 100% of Infinity Ward's stock as of October 30, 2003 for an undesclosed amount. Grant Collier, Vince Zampella, Jason West, and "key employees" have signed a "long-term employment contract" with Activision. Infinity Ward is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision

Summary

Company Line

Call of Duty transports fans into a gripping, movie-like World War II combat experience where they must survive the chaos of battle as ordinary soldiers fighting together as a squad. Through 24 devastating game missions, players take on Nazi forces through epic assaults, featuring scores of soldiers and incredible special effects, played out through three Allied forces - U.S., British and Russian, all fighting together toward one common goal - to defeat the German-lead Axis war machine. Call of Duty also delivers heart-thumping team-based, online mulitplayer action for up to 32 soldiers.

Game Play

The computer artificial intelligence allows you to act as part of a team. When breaking into a room, you can trust that your teammates will take out the odd enemy soldier in the room that you cannot take out. Most games of this type did not allow you to focus on one corner of the room, as you do in a real room assault. Call of Duty squad member artificial intelligence is such that you do not have to pull 100% of the weight in a conflict. You are still the main focus in clearing out most sticky targets, but the team will attempt to help you along the way.

The computer AI has the sophistication to work smoothly with the scripting and animation. Friendly and enemy AI react to the player and attack the player realistically. The enemy squad and the friendly squad lay down covering fire, use cover effectively, One squad member moves forward in tandem with other squad members who provide cover as the other member moves forward. in realistic ways to the player, your squad, and the battlefield environment. Some of the things the enemy and friendly AI's will do are: tossing grenades back to their throwers or moving away from grenades that have too short a cook-off time to be thrown out of harm's way. AI's will also overcome obstacles by hopping fences, jumping over walls, and moving through windows instead of needing to use doors. When being fired upon, AI's will move for cover and make use of the environment for tactical advantage.

Plot

To those who have played the Medal of Honor Allied Assault series of games, this game will seem similar. The plot of the first of three series of missions is similar to the plot of the original Medal of Honor game in that you are part of an airborne assault team of the 101st airborne. The difference is that you parachute in behind enemy lines in Call of Duty instead of assaulting Omaha Beach which was the plot of Medal of Honor.

In the single player campaign, you play the part of an allied soldier in three different units of three different armies. The first series of missions you play as a U.S. Ranger within the 101st Airborne Infintry in the events on D-Day and shortly thereafter. The U.S. campaign ends, and the British Campaign starts with the rescue of the British Major Ingram from a german concentration Camp.

The Second series in the single player campaign, you play Sargeant Evans, a member of the 6th Airborne Division of elite British commandos. You glide into the French countryside on a Horta Glider and capture and hold a bridge that leads into the Normandy area preventing the Germans from reinforcing their units attacking the beach landings. You go on later to destroy a hydro electric damn that supplies power to German factories and eventually end the campaign by infiltrating a German Battleship in the sea off Norway.

A very interesting component of the retaking of Moscow is that many of the Russian soldiers were conscripts forced into battle with only one clip of ammunition and only half the conscripts had rifles. The Comisars assigned to the red army were shooting anyone they called deserters. If you did not keep moving forward, you were shot. Stalin gave orders that no one was to take one step backward. In the first battle the only way to survive is to assist a Sargent in the regular Russian army in targetting machine gun nests by running in the open and drawing the weapons fire of the machine gun nests.

After you survive the first few Russian battles, you are promoted to sniper and given missions to clean out the sewers leading to an enemy held building that you also must clear and hold for reinforcements. After taking on the Warsaw railyards, a ride in a tank rounds out the missions just before the end of the Russian scenerio.

The final series of three missions you return to playing one mission as American, one as British and one as Russian. These final three missions are the conclusion or culmination of the prior three missions where the Allied forces are converging on Germany. You capture bunkers and documents to locate the V2 rocket launch facility as an American 101st Airborne soldier under Captain Foley. As British Commando Sargeant Evens you stop the V2 rockets from launching against the advancing Russians. In the final mission as the Russian Sargent sniper you attack the Reichstag and place a flag on the roof.

Graphics

Graphics are realistic and historically accurate. The graphics are varied enough to suspend disbelief and add to the product immersion.

Animation

Animation is fluid and realistic. Most everyone moves the same unless they are wounded and then they seem to drag the following foot as they move partially sideways. Human motion capture has enhanced human animation to make it look more lifelike.

Voice Actors

The voice acting of the sixteen member cast is exceptional. The voices seem appropriate to the time and setting of the events.

Music Score

The music is used for victory, mood, and location enhancements and is used to great effect.

Sound Effects

During my youth, I had occasion to fire an M1A1 Garand rifle and the animation of the rifle reminds me or the real thing right down to the ejection of the metal clip.

Utilities

Multi-player Features

Up to 32 humans can play in teams against one another.

Journalists

Put your review right here by emailing us the text.

    References

    Letters

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