Call of Duty 3 (Wii) Review

The start to CoD 3 is frankly scary. If you have a decent home entertainment set up then you will get one hell of an adrenaline rush. You see, it all starts off in a relatively calm manner. Music playing softly, some guys making bets and even some witty banter... it's less "Saving Private Ryan" and more "M*A*S*H". It then turns a bit nasty as you are shelled; suddenly the old CoD style kicks in as you are dragged to safety before being plunged headlong into a frantic battle in a graveyard. Bodies fly everywhere, your vision blurs and the noise of your gun is interrupted only by the ring of tinnitus in your ear. This is it, first time to get really up close and personal with war thanks to the Wiimote...erm...if only it were to be a good experience.

When Nintendo showed off the Wii anyone who knew anything meaningful about gaming knew that things would change. The accuracy of an analogue stick was gone and inherent human error would have to be factored into games. Things like heartbeat, breathing and natural hand tremors would start to have an effect on gaming and ergo some games would become very tough to play. CoD 3 is sadly one of these games. Anyone who has played the series will know that accuracy is key, if you can pull off headshots from miles away with your standard rifle then the levels will start to move that bit quicker. Not in an abnormally easy way but simply that skill has its reward.

Previously (and on the 360 version) this meant lining up your cross-hairs with a tiny head and pushing the trigger....pretty simple thanks to the accuracy afforded by the analogue as you just nudge it towards the target. With the Wiimote you have to point, hold and shoot. With the aforementioned problems of being a human and having a heartbeat and the need to breathe...well...it becomes pretty much impossible on high difficulty levels. That's not to say it's possible on low difficulty levels, just that it happens (usually down to luck) and even when it does you have no feeling of fulfilment.

It feels like the developers hadn't played with a Wii for a great deal of time before doing this control structure as it's so full of little problems that ruin the game. For instance you have the grenade woes. To access grenades (a vital part of any good soldiers arsenal) you push on the d-pad. Doing this invariably means moving the Wiimote, thus adjusting your aim and finally meaning that when you do throw your grenade (by a flick of the nunchuck) that it will not be on target. The anger felt as you see a grenade hit off of a piece of scenery and land at your feet purely down to poor controls is quite spectacular. Even things like the vehicle levels (which thanks to their rarity manage to be quite fun) are ruined by fiddly controls. You hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck up like it's a big steering wheel and use it this way. It's temperamental and usually ends up with you slamming into both sides of the road in driving that would've given the Nazi's hope that the war was not lost. You then have the set piece sections which involve doing Wario Ware-esque drummings with the controls to wrestle a Nazi to the ground. Those are fun but tiring and there is a major chance of slamming the controls together (rest in piece Wiimote...).

Alas the problems continue into even the most basic of gameplay mechanics. Once more the Nintendo version fails to have even split screen multiplayer. This is getting beyond a joke now, fair enough if there is no online play (to be honest we're used to that now) but there is no excuse not to have some split screen fun. Hell even just single player with bots would prolong the life of the game. It's just plain lazy and screams "this is a late port" just like the rest of the game. Even look at the graphics, considering it's a game that is used to show off HD gaming on the 360 you'd think an effort would be made to make it look half decent on the Wii. It is possible to have nice looking games on Wii (Zelda, Red Steel, Madden) but these are looking like original Xbox quality. Utterly shameful and frankly no excuse for such pathetic graphics in a game that is just begging for an atmospheric look.

Word on the grapevine is that the next CoD will not involve WW2, and it's very sad to see the standard bearer for the last Great War have such a lacklustre end of Nintendo consoles. We reviewed CoD: Big Red One a while back and it was superb fun, looked amazing and could stand proud next to the other platforms. Is the jump to the innovative Wii resulting in lazy ports and developers not viewing the console with the respect Nintendo and the fans crave? It's certainly possible, just one look at the rate Ubi Soft are firing ports out and you'll see that the Wii is turning into the console of ports at an alarming rate. The annoying thing is CoD 3 on Wii could've been avoided by a simple look at gaming in general on it. Anything involving speed and accuracy no longer works on Nintendo consoles. Red Steel has gained a small level of success as it's a much slower paced FPS and has more in the way of close quarters combat instead of long distance shooting. CoD as a series centres on frantic gameplay and long range sniping without the sniper scope... now if a game journalist can see this then how the hell did this get out of R&D? Simply speaking if you have to buy this then get another version, buying the Wii version will encourage publishers and developers to think that we will put up with this kind of rubbish.