Retrospective - Call of Duty

This multiplayer map was copied almost identically from the real-life location of Carentan, Normandy. That's dedication.

Back in the day, when the Call of Duty franchise was based on the Quake 3 engine, there were no perks or weapon modifications, no ridiculous far fetched Russian world invasions, no online ranking or prestiges, and the series was most definitely rooted in the meticulously recreated reality of World War 2. No matter how addictive or widely selling the current Modern Warfare entries of the franchise are, I miss World War 2. I miss having a bash at taking down the Third Reich single handedly, and the gritty atmosphere of a digitally-rendered occupied Europe.

MOH: Allied Assault - defining the genre

Sometime during the creation of blockbuster movie Saving Private Ryan (1998), Steven Spielberg decided the Second World War would make a pretty cool video game, and if kids were going to be playing games and shooting at things, they should be learning something aswell. His concept was for an action game based on the war with the Nazis, and he set about directing and producing the first Medal of Honor (we English spell it Honour btw) with his own company Dreamworks Interactive. The game was a huge hit on the original Playstation and spawned numerous sequels, including Medal of Honor: Underground, which follows the movements of resistance operatives fighting the Germans in occupied Europe, and the particularly successful PC based Medal of Honor: Allied Assault by game developer 2015, which closely mirrors entire sequences from the aforementioned Spielberg movie. Still under the guidance of Spielberg, it featured groundbreaking gameplay which allowed the player to storm the beaches of Normandy, and became the template for every WW2 shooter to follow.

Call of Duty - clearly using the Allied Assault template

While the Medal of Honor series branched out further, spawning titles for various platforms and delving into the Pacific conflicts, members of the Allied Assault development team at 2015 went on to establish the Infinity Ward studio. Their objective was to continue developing their previous concepts under the Call of Duty name, in an environment where they would have more creative freedom.

The first Call of Duty game from Infinity Ward, released in 2003, plays like a very refined and more realistic version of Allied Assault. It deservedly won numerous Game of the Year awards, and made quite an impact on me as a gamer. I'd been a massive fan of Allied Assault, and to find Call of Duty had improved on such a flawlessly entertaining game was mindblowing. It doesn't matter how many COD or MOH games I've played since, I just can't forget some of the incredibly convincing and atmospheric moments in that game. And as I watch the evolution of the Call of Duty franchise - from the graphically superior but mostly underwhelming sequel Call of Duty 2, to the Zombie Survival modes and Michael Bay-like destruction in Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 - I wonder what Mr. Spielberg thinks of the latest iterations of the gaming series he helped create back in the late 90s?

Pegasus Bridge - the finest level of the single player campaign

Maybe I'm overly nostalgic, but I genuinely think Call of Duty is the best game in the series, and superior to anything else in the genre. The game features a campaign that flows effortlessly from start to finish. It's one of the only games I've restarted immediately after completion and gone for a second consecutive playthrough - the number of times I've played through the campaign far exceeds any other game.

The multiplayer features the best range of maps the series has ever seen - particular highlights being the wide open hedgerows and fields of Bocage, the trenches and open country of Brecourt, and the narrow town streets of Carentan. The maps are wide open and so well designed, that the developer seems to reskin and revisit atleast one of these maps with every subsequent Call of Duty game.

The game atmosphere is pitch perfect, capturing the unique feel established in Allied Assault and refining it to perfection. Music by Michael Giacchino (Star Trek, Super 8) is possibly the best written for a video game, being every bit as good as the music heard in any Hollywood production. The music underscores the key moments of the game for full dramatic impact, rather than take a redundant ambient role which would have been the more obvious and less exciting route for a composer to take on a game like this. Dynamic and high-profile scores from composers such as Joel Goldsmith, Graeme Revell, Harry Gregson-Williams and Hans Zimmer have since become a staple of the Call of Duty franchise.

Call of Duty was created back in a time when Infinity Ward was free to make whichever game it wanted to, and as a newly formed company they really had something to prove to the gaming community. They were trying to make the definitive WW2 action game, and the first time round they succeeded. While Gray Matter Studios handled the United Offensive add-on (the last time Call of Duty saw a full expansion pack if I remember), Infinity Ward worked on Call of Duty 2, in which we received a nice new graphics engine developed in-house by IW. The visuals were a huge upgrade from the first game, but there was just something missing from this installment in terms of the feel of the overall package. Notably, the best maps in the multiplayer here were the re-textured ones from the first Call of Duty.

With Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, IW delivered the goods again with a modern era campaign that felt convincingly real, but didn't resort to the action movie cliches that would later blight the series. The game here uses an even more advanced Infinity Ward Proprietary Engine that made the series look better than ever. I enjoy COD4 immensely, and would happily rate it as a close contender for best Call of Duty game, but regardless of how highly many other people rate it, I still prefer the ironsights and bayonets of the classic Call of Duty to the laser targeting and chopper strikes of the newer games.

Call of Duty 4 - the sniper level

Call of Duty1 and 4 have something in common - they're rooted in reality. They both strive to achieve a convincing approach to their depiction of warfare, and this feel of authenticity adds to the gameplay experience in spades. Anything beyond Call of Duty 4 brings far fetched ideas such as Russians (most overused modern era villains) trying to take over the world (again), resulting in American forces fighting them off in downtown burger bars and on the front lawn of the ruined White House. I couldn't stomach this, and the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 looks about as over the top and fantastical as a real-world shooter can get, responding to the demands of the competition by trying to make each subsequent game bigger and more explosive.

It seems that these days, Infinity Ward is merely part of the Activion money-machine which involves routinely releasing a new Call of Duty game every year, juggling the load between Infinity Ward and Treyarch. The newest entries in the COD series feel manufactured and created out of contractual obligation, wheras the original Call of Duty feels like a game with some real heart behind it.

There was a point when the games market was so overcrowded with World War era shooters that gamers everywhere cried out for something new, and they got the Modern Warfare games, modern era Battlefield games and the Medal of Honor reboot (developed by Danger Close, a reformed division of Spielberg's Dreamworks Interactive). Now it feels like the same is happening all over again, and I'm genuinely getting tired of the hi-tech contemporary action games that are flooding the market as every developer takes a crack at being the best. Right now, I'd really quite like to see somebody go back to basics and make a WW2 shooter that ups the ante again, and does it better and more convincingly than ever before.

Modern Warfare 3 - Michael Bay would be proud

In late 2010, Activision fired key members of Infinity Ward for apparent 'insubordination,' and as a result 46 members of the key development team upped and left for undisclosed reasons, all but disbanding the company that had been designing our favourite military shooter for 7 years. This has caused Activision to contract developer Sledgehammer Games to co-develop Modern Warfare 3 alongside the remainder of the Infinity Ward team. For this reason, I don't hold out a lot of hope for the Call of Duty franchise. The key ingredients which made it so successful are slowly being watered down to a rag-tag Activision team, and the not so talented Treyarch.
As far as I'm concered, Infinity Ward is no longer the games developer it used to be, but merely a name printed on the cover of a game to help Activision convince us to buy it.

For anyone who hasn't played the game before, the original Call of Duty is highly recommended and is also available to download from the Xbox Live Arcade. For those fixated on cutting edge graphics, perks, weapon attachments and killstreaks, the game may seem primitive in comparison to what's available now. For me, Call of Duty is the definitive title in the history of WW2 action games, and a striking effort from a group of developers who had been working to perfect the formula for many years. It's a classic bit of gaming which is in many ways superior to the subsequent efforts in the genre.

Music from the Pegaus Bridge level by Michael Giacchino - the most memorable section

of the game and possibly one of my all time favourite gaming moments.

Interestingly, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX developer Z-Axis was working on a Call of Duty game between 2007 - 2009 when it was cancelled by Activision. Call of Duty: Devils Brigade would have been set entirely in Italy during World War 2, and would have been Call of Duty 4 had Activision seen the project through to completion. By this point though, the World War 2 setting had become overused and stale due to such an overabundance of WW2 games on the market, so Activision returned to Infinity Ward and decided to move the game setting to present day. Below are screenshots of the Devils Brigade in development.