IFTTTG

Call of Duty (2003)

*projector slideshow clicks to life* welcome soldier to Call of Duty (2003). oh, i forgot something; ahem. welcome soldier, to Call of Duty® (2003).. y’ere we go.. it seems you’ve enlisted to read about this here game. i am Major Sergeant Yips. allow me to show you around.. before becoming the phenom it was in the early and mid 2010s, and eventually jumping shark with its 2012-2016* spout of futuristic entries, stands the original Call of Duty trilogy. three games long forgotten to time. kind of. compared to the deep fatigue that’s set in over the last few years, the first few games were once greenhorns themselves. simple military shooters spanning the course of the two world wars. showing you just exactly what it means to go above and beyond the ‘call of duty’. you could say they had an earthing quality. games like these used to be a dime-a-dozen. marking a rare moment in time where Call of Duty wasn’t the video game zeitgeist. a time where a new FPS game selling more than it was its own unit of measurement (i’m talking about Battlefield 6’s release statistics). when the genre was oversaturated, and everything was another Medal of Honor clone. i mean Medal of Honor.. Men of War.. Call of Duty. notice how they all say ‘of’? buuuut it wasn’t for a lack of creativity. it was just ‘the thing’. it was novel for the time. the elements that would go on to revolutionize the series would only go on to appear in later games. between Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Black ops 2. because of that the games have received a newfound interest over the years, with many curious to revisit its unassuming roots. considering.. *projector crackles* how many games are we on? as i write this it seems we’re on.. the seventh.. Black Ops entry and Modern Warfare entry (if you consider the reboot to count towards the total). it’s no secret that they’ve been in a downward spiral with each game considered worse than the last. in fact my interest has also reached ultra low levels.. i wouldn’t have even bothered playing and writing about this if it didn’t stand out as the only CoD release not a part of my PS3 library.. i own a physical copy for all of them except for this one and the Black Ops III port, but that doesn’t count. that was worse than a downgrade.. it was like a demake.. meaning this is technically a write-up on Call of Duty: Classic, a digital only port of the original game by Aspyr Media, Inc.

set in the penultimate moments of World War II you take reign of three minor soldiers encompassing the ‘Big Three’ allies of the war – Pvt. Martin of Baker company (the United States), Sergeant Evans (U.K.), and Cpl. Alexei Ivanovich Voronin (Soviet Russia) – in their attempts to liberate sporadic POI’s in Europe from German control. as part of the Operation Overlord campaign. going from one POV to the other before culminating in an epilogue seeing one final mission for each. as someone who is not a WWII buff, this small detail was enough to keep me vested, interested in seeing the tonal differences of each side. historical inaccuracies and westernization aside it still shows just how severe the war was. from the easy-going (gameplay), picturesque fields of the American sections – it comes off as your usual cliched action stunt war movie – to the bleak shattered Earth that’s depicted in the Soviet sector. they all have something different to provide that keeps it fresh. for example; the British campaign sees you rigging the Edersee Dam to explode before a high stakes car-chase to an airfield, where you defend yourself against German stukas. then quickly transitioning into a covert mission wherein you sabotage a German vessel a part of the Deutsche Marine. it can get repetitive (especially with the lack of enemy variety) and it shows its age. but you’ll always have an eyebrow arched in anticipation for what’s next. it’s clear why it shook the gaming sphere. not bad for a first entry.

now i’ve played a lot of CoD campaigns. and a looooot of CoD: WWII (2017). my first PS4 came as a part of the Limited Edition Call of Duty: WWII PlayStation 4 Bundle so it became soul-bound to my time with that console, and one that always seemed to be installed. many elite gaming sessions.. many grinds.. over the years i put a lot of hours into its multiplayer and even the campaign. in hindsight i realize that might be bad.. but also, i’ve started to notice that grinding out CoD campaigns in 1-2 late night sessions is not the way to go. especially with these two (Call of Duty 2 by extension). lemme explain.. *projector reel slide changes* these are the only entries to forego regenerative health. Call of Duty 1 & 2 being the only ones to expressly not use the mechanic as it wasn’t the norm at the time. WWII following suit and doing the same. instead you have to pick up health packs from around the map, or ones dropped by soldiers. a bunch of people like to complain about your health ‘magically restoring’ from out of nowhere, and praise older games for not being that unrealistic. this leads me to believe that these (very real) people have never played a game like this. or really any older FPS for that matter. okay it’s not really that bad, but it can make for some really irking moments.

none of which is more annoying than when the AI whips out its aimbot, predicting your every move. this isn’t the main issue since two can play at that game.. (the aim assist is quite generous) but it’s the fact you can’t counter it. no matter what you’ll do they will anticipate your move and land a few shots. they don’t have to land all of them for it to be a problem, because of that pesky health system. as the game progressed so did the firefights, throwing dozens of Germans at you at a time. slowly ticking away at your health with packs becoming few and far between. all of that is standard, business as usual. but things can change within a fifth of a second, like a rogue enemy gunning you down with an entire mag. surprise encounters or pseudo-QTE nulling all your progress. the lack of sprinting compounds with this sluggish, repetitive feeling. instead of a quick recovery, you have to play through the same 15 minutes again. i tried my damnedest at times with a sliver of health so low, i couldn’t even see it on the meter. to no avail.. even using the in-game lean mechanic to my advantage. oh yeah, did i forget to mention there’s leaning? pressing left and right on the d-pad freely toggles it. it’s nothing at all like Ghosts or even MW’s leaning. it’s a surprising inclusion for a game like this. but i think i know why they added it.

Call of Duty at its inception was first and foremost meant to place you in the shoes of what many consider to be mankind’s lowliest moments. a simulation of the grueling experiences, stripped of its machismo frills. your characters were faceless. nothing more than a pair of viewer model arms. they had names but they were seldom mentioned. they wanted you, the player, to be immersed. to be gung-ho. they wanted you to face-off against the Axis powers using similar tactics. to army crawl from cover to cover. scavenging weapons dropped by your fallen comrades. peaking over (leaning) behind cover and taking calculated potshots. one false move and you probably won’t make it to the end of the mission. your untimely death cutting the advances short. not quick enough? your teammates are dead.. and now you’re without help. no more cannon-fodder to aid you at your side. they may have spruced it up a little, i mean it’s still a video game. it wouldn’t be as much fun without some action packed set-pieces. even if it can get a little too chaotic for its own good. there are moments where you can hear your friendlies spamming hurt SFX since there’s either not enough cover, or too many enemies, etc. realistically the game is ride up an infeasible mountain of circumstances – you just have to reasonably detach yourself from a true one-to-one WWII experience.

what do you picture when i say the words ‘war-torn fields’, ‘ruined farmhouses’, or ‘M1 Garand’, ‘Carentan’, ‘fancy chateau’, and ‘Steve Blum’ (swear this guy voices a SARGE in every game). your first thoughts are probably most conducive to how this sector of the game looks. unassuming, run of the mill. these missions are bite-sized in scale, artificially lengthened by the lack of sprinting with the first mission technically being the tutorial. an in-game themed obstacles course. the second one is a quiet assault on the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, Normandy. as the overture glides to peak an all out firefight begins. a successful call for reinforcements sees paratroopers falling from the sky. games utilizing NPC on NPC warfare was a feature that used be fresh out the oven. not many games utilized this. and i’m not talking about something like companions. i mean full-fledged convoys at your side. think of The Silent Cartographer in Halo: CE. that moment where the drop-ships deploy you onto the Forerunner beachhead, and you’re surrounded by a bunch of marines. dropping silly quips just before you meet your first Covenant match-up. you’ll be too busy waging war to notice that your crew has been slowly dropping off. sporadically, i might mention. they might make it farther on other restarts depending on your ability to carry. on my play-throughs i was alone by the time i entered the Forerunner structure (you know that little room with the door that shuts just before you can enter it. with the golden Elite easter egg. where you can glitch through with a mongoose). a forlorn sense of sacrifice that weighs heavy on your thoughts.. “could i have done better?”, “would they have lasted?” as much as i like personifying glorified lines of code, voiced by David Cross (in Halo 2), they cease to exist as you continue on to the next mission. becoming nothing more than vague recollections as they’re replaced with dozens more soldiers. of course this extends to Call of Duty. but in a way these were the very ‘real’ experiences of very real people. men dying in the line of fire, in the hopes of countering Hitler’s plans for invasion. often dying in unassuming plots of land far from home. so seeing them rain down from above as their parachutes litter the ground around you. seeing them do the dirty work alongside you. on one hand it bolsters your confidence in battle. i found myself readjusting my posture, sitting straight up. reinvigorated by the power of camaraderie. but the other hand is nothing if not dejection. thinking about it, it’s kind of dirty to find myself proud of my participation. even if it’s Nazis that we’re killing.. the soldiers (which are named in these games, an amazing detail) rarely see through to the end. a feeling that continues to grow as the war-movie aesthetics of the American part of the campaign fade and the outcome ebbs between being bleak, and downright criminal. especially in the Soviet bit. “War is delightful to those who have not experienced it” – Erasmus.

the tail-end of the nine mission experience as Pvt. Martin sees you rescuing two British POW’s both locked in a Chateau in the Alps. a ‘Major Ingram’ and one ‘Captain Price’. but the pre-pre-reboot Price. the Price whom they later refreshed for the 2009 run of the Modern Warfare series. in his original incarnation he dons a beret while having a similar disposition, though noticibly more elder in tone. his face is definitely a sight for sore eyes as this is the part of the campaign where it began to drag. Price is stern, but allied in our cause. Major Ingram is nowhere to be found and as Price explains has been relocated to a different encampment. the final mission starts to pick up the pace again. you’re given 10 minutes to get in and get Ingram out. a tight race against the clock, where the games real difficulty sets in.

to be frank; i’m not a fan of the armament at your disposal in most parts of the campaign. the ones found here are those carried by the American and German forces. starting loadouts include the M1 Garand (of course), the Thompson, the Kar98k, and the Bren. i can admit that i wasn’t playing the game ‘correctly’, so to speak. you can’t exactly spray and pray with the Bren or the Garand. i skew in favor of SMGs. always have. but to my surprise, the most fun weapons class to use throughout had to be the snipers. the aim assist allows for instant lock-on.. and quickscoping ( う-´)▄︻デ══━一 it was consistent in taking out hordes of enemies in style. shots feel punchy. you can find scoped or iron-sight variants. and you can’t beat the sound of racking the gun. but a major issue i have with the game is the sheer abundance of German-made weapons, mainly that of the MP-40 and Kar98k. in times where you don’t have expendable allies to drop ammo refills you’re forced to pick up weapons dropped by the Nazis, as by the missions end you’ve killed hundreds making their drops the most common. they don’t even drop the good weapons like the STG. even the fun American weapons are hard to come by. think i found the FG42 twice and the Bar once, respectively. the game boils down into a repetitive formula of running out of ammo for the gun you like and scavenging dead bodies for a ammo or a new weapon but nine times out of ten it’ll be the MP-40 or a scoped/non-scoped sniper rifle.

not to double-down on being a Negative Nellie but i found the British campaign to be the most trying. being more tedious than challenging. i think older games used to excuse ramping up raw, still incubating mechanics as ‘being difficult’. having old-heads touting it as an experience only for elite gamers, when in reality it’s just busted. made to be impossibly more cheese.. sometimes they throw too many enemies at you and there’s not a lot you can do about it. other than take it. pivoting into high stakes infiltrations, the British side of things puts you under the wing of Captain Price. on paper it has the best missions. taking and defending ‘Pegasus Bridge’ in a days long battle against the Germans who come back at us harder than ever before nearly forcing us to retreat and reducing our numbers just to a handful of soldiers. fending off a horde of tanks with a flak gun. the next one sees you destroying the aforementioned dam. and the last is a covert infiltration onto the Tirpitz Battleship alongside Price. it has it all.. espionage.. sabotage.. dead of night.. silenced weapons.. though weirdly Price becomes another causality. his death came as a surprise to me as just a moment ago we were exfiltrating after rigging the place to explode, dying at some point during the escape from the armory while i was distracted by the shootout. but don’t worry! he re-appears in Call of Duty 2 (2005).. and like ~ 18 other games by my estimation. this certainly won’t be the last we see of him.

[queue this as you read] last up is the Soviet chain of events. this had to be my favorite part of the game. narratively we’re in the homestretch. swelling into some of the biggest battles yet (casualty-wise..) the depictions of pure disregard for the thrall reinforcements, made to do the bidding of the state is unparalleled throughout the rest of the game. due in part by its attempts of portraying the deciding moments of the war in the Battle of Stalingrad, and the raising of the flag over the Reichstag. it’s pure gruel.. grit.. the initial set-pieces err on the side of simple cities of rubble, less bombastic than the British chapter before it. still, it remained as the most action packed seeing intense battles between the Russians and the Germans with soldier drop-off unlike anything i described earlier. crossing the Volga River sees a lot of the Soviet Flotilla going down. aside from some armored boats a lot of the fleet is made up of these oddly vulnerable canopied riverboats. Soviet commissars bark orders at the militia advising them not to break rank. “There will be no mercy for defeatists, cowards or traitors! Anyone caught deserting his post will be shot! Remember great Comrade Stalin’s order – not one step backwards!” it’s beaten into your head by the end of the campaign.. not one step backwards. as boats fall in your peripheral. dozens of soldiers dying at a time. all for their leader. for the pride of their country. the boat’s annihilated just as it reaches the coast of Stalingrad, seeing Alexei (the player ‘protag’) be the only one to make onto the docks. it’s hard to even notice as through the shellshock, you can still hear the exact same orders being shouted by another commissar. the pressure.. the worried faces of other Soviet soldiers as we fight uphill.. it’s all so overwhelming, and if it weren’t for my PlayStation nosediving in frames.. this could’ve been the most remarkable moment of the game.. you’re without direct orders, as unlike earlier missions there is no squad commander. laissez faire as they say.. soldiers everywhere running between each other like headless chickens. you’ll eventually bump into one ‘Sergeant Borodin‘. the two of you strategize a plan to flank from cover to cover, distracting the machine gunners at the top of the hill and giving Sgt. Borodin a chance to take ’em out. a memorable moment to many. he quips; “Well, my friend, you are either very lucky, or you have a small head! We’ll be safer in that building down there! Don’t worry about that Commissar, I’ll take care of him!” as we reconvene with a Soviet radio operator, who groans in fear of literally being blown out of the water – with the Soviets facing severe loses. i’ll admit i saw this clip prematurely forever ago. Borodin berating the other soldier as he radios in reinforcements. the two of them speaking in this eyebrow-raising Russian/English accent. it’s a funny moment that’s accented by triumph as we continue on to take the Red Square.

German forces start ramping up in the final quarter of the game. tanks become more prominent and so do mounted MG gunners. i’m notoriously bad at snow maps because of just how well the soldiers camouflage into parts of the map. prepare for lots of deaths.. lots ‘n lots.. that is, if you’re trying to rush through it (like i did). this time slow and steady wins the race. cover is abundant and luckily our advances are through literal holes in the wall. making for an effective push. through the sewers of Stalingrad, and other factories. most notably is the nineteenth mission, ‘Pavlov’s House’. it be surprising to hear, but i’m not a WWII scholar (even if it was the only subject i cared to learn about in school xD). the story of Pavlov’s House is an interesting read. in game it’s a rather immense standoff against the Germans who have taken up residence in the house, an actual apartment complex, who we’re forced to evict. the Reds hold up in the house before waves upon waves of Germans storm the place. tanks and all. you’re forced to hold the spot for over 10 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot.. but boy was it tough hill to be dying on. set in the center of Stalingrad it’s already in a state of disrepair, being eyed by both sides of the war. gaping holes give the enemies an easy opening to take potshots at you. with the Soviets now in the same spot as the last inhabitants of the building. using the mounted LMGs and (what i’ve now learned are designated anti-tank rifles) PTRS-41s that were already installed before our arrival. the story of the real life counterpart is similar, though the push lasted for over 2 months! in that shit-hole? the house is named after the senior sergeant of the platoon that took over the house, Yakov Pavlov. though some of what i’ve read defers to Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev as the one who truly held the spot. and to be fair, many readings purport that this story is mostly fiction. holding up Pavlov as a war-hero, as this slightly altered version of events was more conducive to the Soviet’s stubborn ferociousness. the fact that the building still stood even though it was regarded as a fortress of sorts, while the building directly adjacent to it – “Zabolotny’s House” – seems to have faltered to artillery is interesting to say the least. i can’t say for sure how it truly played out as this is just the tip of the iceberg, and a lack of historical documents makes it all the more difficult to follow. but from what i’ve read this isn’t a fiercely debated topic. Pavlov’s house did stand as an important footnote in the war. whether or not if either of these accounts are accurate, it was still a story of heroism. one perfect for a game like Call of Duty. interestingly enough the map would go on to silently be remade in Modern Warfare II (2022) and brought forward into the sequel, with the building now being a ‘dormitory’.

the Soviet missions, just like the American and British ones, also suffer from a deficiency of imperial firearms, forcing you to surrender your PPSh for an MP-40 once again. i would’ve been at my wits end if it weren’t for the PPSh’s generous drum mag. if you’re conscious enough of it, it can last until a point of reset (where the ammo replenishes at the start of a chapter). i mention this because the selection of Soviet guns far and away elicited the most joy. the PPSh, the Luger, and the Mosin-Nagant. but before long the usual doom and gloom of Mother Russia’s skybox almost seems to waver. like a cerulean tinge symbolic of our hopes steadying persistence was overlain. the layers opacity dialed to 15%. it was feint.. there’s a chance it might not even be true. i could’ve just been projecting my sense of satisfaction onto the skies.. technically the war is not over. we’re still deep into the homestretch. the final two missions see you taking on the Germans in tank-to-tank warfare giving you a break from the irksome rigamarole of spraying down mooks. a surprising alternative to the gunplay that i wouldn’t have expected this early in the franchises footnote, but still fits right at home. albeit difficult.

a quick prologue ties the three stories into a neat ribbon. giving the enemies one hell of a final fight (respectively) ‘Festung Recogne’ sees you accompanying another squadron of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. face to face with the gang once again. Captain Foley, your commanding officer in the missions years before (voiced by Steve Blum) is still a part of your company. this time the assault is on German soil, as their forces have been severely weakened. a surprise sideline assault on bunkers tucked away deep into the forests of the small hamlet. these bunkers – or fortresses, where the ‘Festung’ comes from – are said to hold confidential documents pertaining to ‘V-2 Rockets’. a weapon of destruction helmed by Hitler himself. V-2’s were built to be in direct response to their faltering defensive efforts, as one final middle finger to the world (well.. the real final finger would’ve been when he.. y’know..) said to be strong, they weren’t accurate enough to be useful for their intended use. instead of fear they instilled an interest in the Allies to assume the rockets for themselves. reworking them, gutting them. seeing how they tick. short and sweet. the mission was also prescience to the end of the game. not much else to say. chaaaarge..! onto the next mission. the British side of things is a lot more interesting. fighting your way through an even thicker brush to the site of an alleged V-2 storing grounds. taking out a convoy of trucks in a tactical bombing before going on to rig the V-2’s in a not so tactical bombing. straight rushing the place and planting C4’s in a close quarters attack. i think rigging the bombs to explode subsequent to each other wasn’t so smart. in reality. but it made for a badass set-piece.

with the rockets taken care of the stage is set for the final mission. that’s right.. storming the Reichstag. away from the small hamlets of our last few skirmishes and straight into the heart of Germany. the makeshift brick alleyways constructed from airstrikes. some heavy flak and anti-artillery stations block our route in an encounter that was awkwardly difficult. MG gunners have a punish to every encroaching step, making it impossible get a shot on them without losing half a health bar yourself. the flak guns (which you could have sworn you destroyed all of..) sit scattered from one other forcing you to make for mad dashes in plain view across the war-zone. and a tank that you have to blow up (which by its stationary position i assumed was set dressing, or destroyed) instead you can just walk up to it and plant the C4 without it shooting at you. that’s neither here nor there. considering it’s the last and final mission, it would make sense for them to be so ‘amped’ in difficulty. who knows? doesn’t matter.. i just felt like ranting.. – with a way through cleared through for a brigade of Russian T-34-85’s, we are left with a straight shot to the building. seeing the tanks ease out outward from a bunch of clearings, closing in on the ‘bad guys’ like an on-rail ride wrought with fixed jumpscares. like a moment out of a war movie. oh wait.. backs up against the wall with nowhere left to go. visible chunks of the gebäude crumble right before your eyes (and killing you if you’re not careful enough!) chaos pooling into the courtyard and hellfire from every which way. ironically enough the political podium room was devoid of any serious damage. only some furniture and debris clog the way along certain entrances. instead it’s like a game of cat and mouse using the rows of pews to hole up in. one great big firefight before reaching the roof (victory declared in a new PB time) a squad of soldiers soon arrived, victory banner in tow. as i was soaking in the rays of total destruction this fella below came over to greet me. he seemed mighty proud of our work.

going back in time to see the belly of the beast was like seeing the birth of an entire generation. seeing the roots of something like this made it feel like i was a character in that one movie where they go back in time and change the course of history. i’m blanking on the name.. future.. going to the future.. something about the future.. it’s on the tip of my tongue.. oh! The Butterfly Effect. the ending of the game caps off on a sentimental letter written and spoken by Alexei Voronin (if you recall) to his mother about the final moments of the war. even though it felt like something credited to a Russian but was actually said by an American in some sort of self aggrandizing revisionism, it still had me weepy. at the end of the day we’re all brothers. this disgusting feat of brutish behavior doesn’t change that fact. it only makes it more bitter. you’re worse off ever had participating in the first place. its realistic display of this puts it leagues above the other WWII shooters i’ve played. and there’s an abundance of them. take my recent write-up of World War Zero. maybe it’s tacky to write about this game nowadays but just like the characters you embody, i’m hoping this write-up can serve as cannon fodder for my website. as well as a neat case study. with its own stories and tidbits of lore. it’s a mixture of both fun and irksome, the classic DNA makings of a CoD game. being the first in a franchise means it doesn’t reach the same levels of bombasticsm as subsequent releases. leaving behind a grounded, realistic, and somewhat forgotten legacy. but it’s carried by a deep fervor. and fun gunplay. thanks for reading. *film reel burning*.

Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment