Just got Activision's
Call of Duty Deluxe Edition (COD2 wont run on my proc, doesnt have extended instruction sets games are all coming out with these days).
Overall this is a great game. There are a few major aspects of it that really piss me off, but id def reccomend it to people into FPS (it sure as fuck is no competition for the halflife games, thats for sure).
Very smooth gameplay, decent graphics engine, very realistic and historically accurate as far as environment goes. Storyline is really cool too, only thing i hated is when you destroy the tripitz cuz thats totally robbing history of what is one of the greatist espionage feats of all time. I really liked their depiction of the russian front tho, highly accurate. Its really addicting, i pretty much beat regular COD in one night in regular difficulty mode, and am onto the expansion allready. Just couldnt stop wasting them nazis.
They excel at creating a realistic environment, immersive gameplay, and equally engrossing storyline. The game has the solid "fun" factor. I also think its really cool adding extra dimensions to gameplay, like using flak guns, heavy machine guns, aircraft weapondry, things like that (course i think the
Battlefield series does it better, but thats more focused on multiplayer while
Call of Duty is a lot better single player title).
Now the fact that Maxim magazine rated this "5/5 stars" should clue you in that this is probably going to be a spray fest for nubs who just wanna sit around slaughtering hapless targets with no real resistance other than game engine interference.
What I detest about this game is the nonexistance of the AI engine. Also there is extremely simplified collision detection, which really takes away from realism.
The antagonist objects (nazis) have access to your exact XYZ location in the game world at all times. This is pretty f'en lame. At this point in the industry's development, simple agent AI is *NOT* at all hard to create for an FPS. Amateur's make their own AI bots all the time for games like Halflife (CS/DoD). Why cant Activision spend another week or so in the games development writing about 15 lines of code and debugging it? Really tells me who theyre trying to market to here, defying accepted standards in such away. Then again I believe this title originally was designed for console systems...
What this does is make any form of stealthlike or otherwise "sneaky" gameplay impossible since the mobs only dont have knowledge of your location when theyre scripted not to. Once the game engine triggers their awareness, they basically have xray vision and radar and satellites pinpointing your every move.
Also on some levels, when you outsmart the AI and find a nice little nitch where it cant path its way to you but you can slaughter it, the game engine presses its "i win" button and blasts you with invisible artillery that materializes from the etherworld of games beyond.
Your allied troops scripts flow very nicely tho, im very impressed with that. I tried for a while to glitch their actions by blocking their paths and killing key people off and whatnot - the game maintains some realism here b/c its difficult, if not impossible, to disrupt the flow of the game by disrupting your own troops actions.
IMO the gameplay factor takes a massive hit with the lack of real AI.
I also hate the collision detection. Its def accurate, but its so oversimplified. Every object has a set number of hitpoints (you and your troops having a hideously larger pool than the enemy of course), and some places do more damage than others, however, it hardly reflects any realism. I feel like im some space age combatant half the time with a force field, getting shot 45 times by a machine gun and just grabbing some health packs like it aint no thing. You can shoot an enemy directly in the face, and they kind of scratch it off and keep charging. The CD doesnt seem to really differentiate a whole lot between ares of the body, except for the head which seems to do more damage. Also, you cant shoot through even the thinnest of walls, you cant shoot at an angle through doorframes, hell, you cant even shoot through stupid things like ropes and guys on catwalks and crap like that. Terribly oversimplified collision detection. Again, just a couple more lines of code and the game would be a lot more solid.
Even simple homemade games in OpenGL have more advanced AI and CD than this title.
So basically it boils down to what kind of gameplay you like. If you like to be real tight in FPSs with movement, slick manuevering, and L337 HS's, go back to
Counterstrike: Source. Allthough it does not compare whatsoever to a title like
Doom 3 as far as FPS immersion goes, this title is a lot more focused on interactive artwork and linear storytelling than more competitive shooters. Its a great game and well worth the purchase if you enjoy FPS mayhem.