Second World War-themed FPS games are legion, almost a PC gaming sub-genre in their own right. There is good reason for this: the Good War’s legacy of horror and heroism is vast, and programmers have been mining game ideas from this huge deposit for almost as long as computers have been running them. The results of late have been very good. Medal of Honor, Day of Defeat and Castle Wolfenstein are among the more notable PC game franchises to successfully take up arms against Fascist tyranny, and the parade of sequels and comparable games shows no sign of slowing down. Yes, leave it to the world of PC gaming to take the most catastrophic event in modern human history and turn into fun for the whole family.
In 2003, developers Infinity Ward added Call of Duty to this illustrious duty roster. In addition to using all the standard touchstones associated with WWII shooters, Call of Duty attempted a couple of daunting feats: the implementation of truly effective squad AI that could affect the way the game worked for the player; and a realistic game world that could give gamers a glimmer of the wartime experiences of the soldiers who fought on the front lines.
For the most part, it worked. Call of Duty was a very enjoyable and intense gaming experience. No PC game, of course, will ever come close to reproducing even a shadow of the experience of frontline soldiering in a real shooting war. However, Call of Duty’s detailed game world and effective AI gave gamers a taste of the confusion of battle, and its well-crafted missions were tense and entertaining slices of World War Two nostalgia.
Call of Duty’s new expansion pack follows in the footsteps of its parent. Call of Duty: United Offensive, developed by Gray Matter, makes squad-based action the primary focus, and in the process adds 13 new single-players levels, a slew of new multiplayer maps, and some dynamite multiplayer enhancements that go a long way towards juicing up Call of Duty’s original multiplayer module.
The single-player levels are all loosely based on real battles and real campaigns, and they are soaked in authentic-seeming World War Two ambience. Like the original, the levels are all set in the European theatre, and involve three different nationalities – the Americans, the Brits, and the Russians. Dates and places range across a significant portion of WWII’s geography and timeline.
As an American you will fight your way through the Battle of the Bulge in 1944; as a Brit, you will get involved in the bombing campaign against Germany, and finish off with a dynamite covert mission behind enemy lines that successfully apes the film The Guns of Navarone; and as a Russian, you will fight the battle of Kursk, including all-out tank melees, harrowing house-by-house city fighting, and brutal trench warfare, the nature of which lends credence to the Eastern Front’s reputation for savagery.
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The new campaigns work beautifully, and this is largely due to Call of Duty’s AI, which makes a welcome reappearance in United Offensive. Your squad mates are pretty handy fellows to have around in a fire-fight – they know where the bad guys are, they now which end of the rifle is the nasty end, and they know how to duck and cover when necessary. Also, enemies populate the levels in greater numbers than before, and their AI works well, too – the Jerries are well armed and smart, and they are everywhere. Well-manned machine-gun nests lurk around every corner, snipers haunt the rooftops, and don’t turn your back on a dark corner or blackened window, or one of The Fuhrer’s minions will be putting a few rounds between your shoulder-blades.
All this conspires to create a truly chaotic battlefield that forces you to rely on your squad-mates in order to advance, and it is this element that separates United Offensive from many other war-themed shooters. Rather than simply tear through the levels as a one man army while squad mates get stuck on boulders and wander off in strange directions, you and your buddies move as a single entity, flanking and routing enemy strongpoints methodically, or holding a strongpoint of your own while desperately repelling wave after wave of determined attackers. United Offensive’s game-play is so intense and well-balanced, you would never achieve your objectives without fellow soldiers bearing some of the burden.
However, great as it may be, this AI has limits. Yes, your squad mates are essential, and your sergeants useful, but make no mistake – you are still The Man. All the dangerous and/or exciting jobs are yours – whether it’s nuking a tank with a bazooka, planting explosives on a train bridge, or leading some mates on a house-clearing expedition through downtown Kharkov. This makes sense, of course. We play these games for the fun stuff, not for the truly realistic experience of soldiering, which in World War Two involved a lot of sweating, a lot of bad food, and a lot of getting shot at by surly Europeans with steel hats.
A heavily modified version of the Quake III graphics engine powers the game, and so while they are a bit dated, the visuals are still effective and well-crafted – and surprisingly evocative of war torn Europe. The battle-ravaged ruins of Russia are particularly spectacular – all maze-like rubble and ruined buildings, lurking under a pall of black smoke. Textures are sharp and very realistic, and the particle, water, and lighting effects are striking.
In fact, all of United Offensive’s technical elements are straight from the “A” list – sound, music, voice-acting, and level design are all top-notch – and the story holds the sections together nicely. The game play is nicely varied, ranging from straight-forward infantry combat, to covert-ops blow-it-up-and-run, to tank driving. A number of highlight moments stand-out: manning the various crew positions of a B-17 Flying Fortress is a blast, as is knocking Messerschmitt 109s out of the sky over Holland. Giving a few German coastal gun emplacements the “Gregory Peck” treatment never gets old, and nothing beats the sublime joy of hopping into a Russian T-34 tank and duking it out with a herd of German tanks.
Weaponry is well modeled, and you can pick-up whatever weapon you find lying around, regardless of nationality. Ammo is rationed; med packs are in short supply. The only thing in abundance is high velocity ordinance coming at you from all directions.
The multiplayer add-ons are significant, and enhance the value of the original game. Gray Matter has obviously noticed the Battlefield:1942 craze currently raging in the online gaming community, and dutifully added such enhancements as drivable tanks and jeeps. The tanks, in particular, are a great fun to use. Happily for the other side, good anti-tank weaponry balances them out very effectively. Other new weapons making an appearance include satchel charges and flame-throwers.
All these additions lend a whole new dimension to the multiplayer maps, and the results are a lot of fun. Nothing better evokes 1945 Berlin than driving a T-34 over piles of smoking rubble under a black sky aglow with firelight, while die-hard defenders launch panzerfausts at you from every conceivable nook and cranny.
United Offensive is a literal and figurative blast from start to end. It’s an expansion pack, of course, so it doesn’t run as long as the original game; competent FPS gamers will be able to run through the whole thing in about 8 hours. But it’s a frantic 8 hours, crammed with all sorts of great moments and varied gameplay, and its multiplayer enhancements are a great deal of fun. It is a rare expansion pack that manages to bests its own parent, but Gray Matter has succeeded in pulling this feat off. Call of Duty was already a great game; United Offensive makes it better. Highly recommended.
