Call of Duty 3- PS2- Row, Row, Row Your Bo- Oh, Shit!

Call of Duty 3 (2006) was developed by Treyarch and published by Activision

Out of all possible ratings: Terrible, Bad, Average, Good, Great....

My rating, based upon my playthrough experience, is: Average

Call of Duty 3 was Treyarch's first big CoD release, and as such, could be bumpy at times. Overall, it's an average WW2 FPS. Instead of following CoD 2s layout, where you fight on different fronts as different armies, you will fight as different armies all focused on the Normandy breakout. You will play as the Americans, English SAS, Canadians, and the Free Polish on your way to rout Hitler and his troops out of the French countryside. The majority of the game is infantry fighting but you do have a few tank levels mixed in where you command a Sherman Firefly equipped with the British 17 pounder gun. For some reason, in all Treyarch's infinite wisdom, they added minigames to the mix. Treyarch refused to admit they were minigames and called them "battle actions", which feel out of place and are irritating.

The graphical presentation is fairly solid, although there were visual bugs in by playthrough. Character models look good, cutscenes look good although they appear to be running at a lower resolution in this version, smoke effects look good, and vegetation is convincing enough. Where the visuals fall flat is on textures occasionally, and some of the weapon designs; the Springfield rifle looks like a square block. Overall, the graphics are good. The frame rate in this version appears to target 60 but frequently dips below when the shooting starts, which does not surprise me given the PS2s hardware and how intense this game gets.

Sound quality is good, but the voice lines get extremely repetitive. Either Guzzo saying "They ain't getting up" or Dix exclaiming "Outta here!" every few seconds gets grating by the end of the game. The Scottish SAS character is cringe as well. Explosions and gun pops sounds great, and some guns, like the Bren, sound really punchy.

Level design is a mixed bag; most levels are fairly straightforward where you get from point A to point B while clearing out and SS or Wehrmacht along the way. Other missions, like the SAS ones, having you going all around the map in a jeep. These missions can be irritating because the map layout is a tad confusing. The passenger will say "Turn left" or "Turn right" at points but you may not notice it with all the gunfire going on.

The online is dead, and has been for some time, which should surprise nobody. It's from 2006. But, I did get to play the online portion back then and it was very fun. It played like a mix of CoD 2 and Battlefield, with tanks and jeeps mixed in the gameplay where you capture objectives to score, like Conquest mode, or CoD's Domination. The only fatal flaw the multiplayer had was Treyarch's stupid decision to demand 3/4 the players in the lobby "ready up" before the match initiates. You can imagine the problems this brought. There was no better way to grief people that wanted to play than toggle your vote when you're that last guy, and people did just that. All. The. Time.

If you're interested in the past CoD games and would like to try this one out, I recommend the 360 and PS3 versions. The only reason I played through the PS2 version is because that's the one I own. I had the Xbox 360 version but it got stolen.

Call of Duty 3 is available on PlayStation 2 and 3, Wii, Xbox 360, and OG Xbox.

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DHG played Call of Duty 3 on PS2

Part 4