Call of Duty 3, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, follows a proud family history. The original Call of Duty sent shockwaves through the industry with its unique “three-front” approach to World War II, and the interweaving of storyline and compelling gameplay left players craving more. Call of Duty 2 helped to usher in the Xbox 360 last year and provided gamers with another excellent adventure through the European front. Now Call of Duty 3 has been given the opportunity to officially welcome the Wii to the console war.

Old Theatre, New Campaign
Returning with the same mix of story and action that made the other games in the series special, Call of Duty 3 chronicles the march of American, British and Polish forces on the French capital of Paris. As in the other titles, the storyline jumps between the three different forces throughout the game. The story serves to move the game along but never gets in the way of action for long, striking a good balance of explaining objectives without taking itself too seriously. There are fourteen missions overall. On normal mode, the game will present a challenge to most players, sometimes requiring several attempts before moving on to the next checkpoint. Since any estimates on how “long” the game is would be based on an individual player’s ability, some may whip through the title in ten hours while others may require double that time to complete the campaign. Disappointingly, the Wii version only

Fog of War
While the game will look a bit fuzzy and unimpressive to the graphical connoisseurs more used to the Hi-Def environments of the 360 or PS3, players just now making the jump to the “new generation” with the Wii should be pleased; the game certainly has more flourish than the standard Gamecube game. Smoke effects and destructive environments, as well as the constant scenes of action that surround the playing map, probably make the Wii flex a bit of muscle and definitely serve as some pleasing eye candy that makes the presentation more immersive. I ran into just a few strange bugs, including an enemy grenade that simply hung in the air after bouncing off of a friendly NPC. Overall, however, the visuals don’t suffer from any irritating issues. While the graphics are not anything worth writing home, they serve their purpose admirably enough and allow players to focus on what’s most important: the control scheme.

Bullets Buzzing
The sound design in Call of Duty titles has been outstanding in the past, and this new addition is no different. The well-scored music sets in on script, helping to set the environment in a cinematic fashion. The sound effects are also spot-on. All of the explosions and gunfire sound authentic and the voiceovers, while not quite worthy of an Academy Award, are still better than what is found in many other cases. The game does not feature Dolby 5.1 Surround, but this is simply because the Wii itself does not support any digital audio out. Instead, the team has utilized Dolby Pro Logic II as well as they could. Bullets will certainly zoom past gamers’ heads, and it’s difficult to fault the developer for a known hardware weakness.

How Wii Fight
Of course, the major question for the game is how well Call of Duty is adapted to the Wii controller. Players move the Wii remote around like a gun to aim, as might be expected. This motion moves the gun, which will then quickly begin to drag the character’s viewpoint with it. The A button brings up the sight or scope, while B fires. The d-pad controls grenades and melee attacks, while the 1 button quickly shows objectives and – serves to pick up munitions and reload. On the nunchuck side, the joystick moves players, while Z toggles crouch and prone positions and C makes the character jump.




Players must keep in mind that bold movements are not necessary when aiming the Wii remote. In fact, subtlety is the order of the day; an inch on the Wii remote is very close to moving the gun an inch on screen, which can mean several degrees of firing range, especially if a target is off in the distance. This does not hold true for tank missions and sniper rifles, however, as these both require gamers to move much more significantly to get much of a result onscreen. While it’s obvious that this is meant to allow for easier fine-tuning while firing long distances, it in fact feels a bit off in comparison to the pin-point accuracy gamers are taught in all other aspects of the game.