Call of Duty Review (c5)
Revisiting the original Call of Duty in 2023 is a fascinating experience. Partially because it still holds up as a damned fine game and partially because of it's place not only in the context of it's time, but also in what the franchise would grow into.
Call of Duty feels less like the start of a new franchise and more like a sequel/spiritual successor/refinement of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and that's no coincidence, since the majority of developers who worked on that game formed Infinity Ward. I don't know if the gaming medium has it's equivalent word of "cinematic" or "literary", but compared to Allied Assault, Call of Duty feels more... "properly gamified" than its predecessor. Allied Assault certainly has lots of great missions, but it also has missions and moments that border on the unplayable and there are parts that feel like the battle was made first and the player was dropped into it randomly without thought given to creating a proper path or sequence to actually succeed. Now granted, that is more realistic to the experience of actual warfare. You probably would die in three seconds if you were dropped into D-Day, over 9000 people died in that battle alone, and there is an interesting artistic statement in making something deliberately un-fun to drive home some kind of point about war, but if I'm picking which game feels more curated and well-designed, Call of Duty takes it.
Call of Duty also presents a more plausible take on combat than Allied Assault. Allied Assault might be known for it's massive D-Day landing, but the majority of it's missions were these weird sort of Goldeneye-esque almost stealth missions where one man Die Hards his way through a german base. CoD has one or two of these bits, but by and large you're part of a reasonably-sized squad doing either house-to-house urban warfare or large-scale battle and the atmosphere is always credible even if the game itself is easier.
The combat and level design is excellent. Modern-day Call of Duty titles are known for being these very tightly scripted, extremely linear action movies that constantly push you forward. While that heroic war-movie bombast is still present even in this early installment, the pacing is far more methodical. Slow and steady wins the race here, you move up a little, take a look around, check for snipers, prioritize targets. The level design is a lot larger and more open than newer CoD games and you have a lot more freedom in how you want to approach fights. You need to make sure you've cleared out the road ahead or you will get cut down. The game lets you take your time too, and the thrill of trying to spot enemies while being pinned down, only to finally make that heroic rush once the coast is clear feels more cinematic in its emergent gameplay than the more deliberate setpieces of the game's successors. It might not be as wide open as say Crysis or the original Far Cry but the pacing gave me a similar feel and if you like those games you'll be right at home here.
The weapons also feel great. Submachine guns in particular are absolutely monstrous and the muzzle-flash is so huge you won't even be able to see what you're shooting at, but believe me, he's dead. Even better though are the rifles, picking off bad guys from a distance, peeking around corners and quickscoping in, it's incredibly satisfying stuff.
While the game's technical aspects might show age, the art direction and atmosphere are great. Certain level have an almost apocalyptic feel and the lighting and color do a great job selling the desolation of war. The story on the other hand, isn't much to write home about and really a lot of World War 2 games at the time didn't have much of a plot beyond "it's World War 2 I guess, go kill Hitler". The game is split into three campaigns, American, British, and Russian, and they can all be described as "here's this battle, do it, now here's this other battle, do it". You never learn anything about any of the characters, nobody's got any kind of arc or motivation, it's all very workmanlike point-a-to-point-b stuff and while the gameplay of each campaign reaches an epic climax, none of the plots really have any kind of dénouement or payoff. At best you get a "good job lads" and the game plops you into the next campaign, but the Russian campaign doesn't even give you that and just stops once you've successfully left the battlefield. We do get the first appearance of Captain Price's WWII incarnation, but he does about the same stuff any other character you're paired with does and I'm convinced the only reason he took off as a character is because his sideburns made him the one guy you could kind of remember.
Yet despite the rather thin plotting, Call of Duty does attempt to make a point. Francois Truffaut once said there's no such thing as a truly anti-war film and while there are certainly some movies I could point to to contest that, his point was that a lot of war films make war look glorious and heroic. CoD 1 has a very solmen, sober tone. The iconic death quotes that appear when you die are present even in this first installment, but they hit a lot harder here. Where later installments keep these to short, punchy one-liners, sometimes you'll get a full paragraph or an entire poem about the futility of war and it does make yous top and read for a second. It's a far cry from Snoop Dogg doing wacky action one-liners while fighting zombies in WWII, which is a thing that apparantly happens in Call of Duty: Vanguard.
The American and British campaigns do fit Truffaut's thesis quite nicely with a bunch of gung-ho heroics that look awesome and cool set-pieces, but the Russian campaign does drive the point surprisingly well through gameplay and atmosphere rather than crafting an explicit plotline. You're constantly being reminded of how much it would suck to be in the Soviet army, officers are constantly screaming that they'll shoot you if you so much as look like you're walking backward. Corny propaganda is blaring at you, your comrades know it's all BS, and all the while the Germans are also blaring their own propaganda at you which not-innacurately points how badly Stalin treats his men (of course, their guy isn't any better which drives home how much this sucks even further). While the storytelling in this game might not have much in the way of characters or motivation, the Russian campaign manages to be suprisingly compelling through the sheer experience alone.
Call of Duty's place in the gaming landscape is complex. The series has influenced gaming in some good ways, some bad, but it's safe to say the game that started it all is undoubtedly a classic and well worth your time.