Call of Duty 3 Xbox 360 Review
I waited a few days to fully digest the game before i just jumped into a review. Upon first initial impression of the games multiplayer and campaign modes i was disappointed. The graphics seemed subpar to even Call of Duty 2 and especially to recently released Gears of War. I played a total of an hour. The campaign starts off with intese, crazy action and the difficulty is ramped up pretty hard even on the middle setting. Besides the graphical disappointment it was still pretty fun. I played for about 20 minutes then i popped in the multiplayer. I was lost. I was playing a game type called war and didn't know what to do. People were being dicks and not trying to help explain it. I didn't understand all the class types you could switch and what they did and it got pretty frustrating. I did like the huge varied maps and now the 24 total players which rocked. But i was still frustrated and bummed and turned it off. A few hours later i decided to tote it to the living room and hook it up to the hd tv and play some campaign. Damn what a difference that made. This easily has to be the biggest difference between standard and hd game ive ever seen. Quake 4 is the only other one i can think of that comes close. Most games even Gears of War looks still very good on regular tv. Call of Duty still looks good but not great like it does in hd. After i finally relaxed, i decided to give multiplayer another go. This time i chose some modes i was familiar with like Team Deathmatch and Capture the flag. After i few hours after that i could definitely say it was fun and had mass potential.
Now that ive played it for a week i can say without any hesitation that the game is a friggin blast. This might be blasphemy to a lot of people out there but in my opinion in multiplayer battles i am having more fun than even Gears of War. Now Gears single player is better and even co-op campaign online is awesome but as far as pure multiplayer battle Call of Duty 3 has taken over as my favorite game. Besides the standard games play there are two new unique ones: Single CTF and War. In Single Capture the Flag, each team starts off on their own side of the map and you have to rush to the middle to grab the flag. Once you grab the flag you dont take it back to your own base but back to the enemies! Its total chaos and hard to even score one point. If you kill everyone it could go against you because the enemy will spawn right up at their base which you are trying to go to. If you have good teammates you can communicate and choose different classes of characters. Each has their own specific weapon and special feature. The medics have a shotgun and smoke bombs and when someone dies you can bend down and revive your teammates instead of having them spawn back at the base. Some soldiers such as support can drop off extra ammo while the scout has a sniper rifle and can call in air strikes. The first time you call in an air strike and take out their whole army is just a kick ass feeling. The other new game type is called War which is kind of like territories, which you try to take over each others flags with one main flag being in the center of the map. You either win by capturing all the other teams territory or if the time runs out whoever has the most points accumulated wins. One thing they have which was lacking in COD 2 is online rankings. Unfortunately just like PDZ, Far Cry and other games ive noticed that more people play player matches instead of ranked. Ive also noticed its very hard to connect to a server for a match. It usually takes a few minutes until it allows you to connect, but once you do you can stay with the same group of people match after match, which is ok because once you are connected, each game last 20-30 minutes each.
So overall the game is a blast and i definitely recommend it to any WW2 shooter fan or anyone wanting a robust multiplayer game. Hopefully like Cod 2 there will be more maps to download. There are only 8 of them so far but they should be enough to tide you over until the new map pack is released. So what started initially as a disappointment has turned into one of my favorite current games. The single player warrants a solid 8.0 while the multiplayer i would give a 9.3 so overall i would give the game a solid 8.9

Addendum:

Now thats its been out awhile the connecting and lag issues have been fixed with a patch. Also since this is fixed there is a lot more people playing ranked games than before. The new map pack does rock and add a lot of replay value for multiplayer. I was crazy saying multiplayer was more fun than Gears of Wars. Its a blast but not even close to the brillance that is Gears.

Heres Gamespots review