Call of Duty ECTS preview

London
You find yourself in a small motorboat sailing on the river Volga. Before you lies the massive, smoking pile of rubble known as Stalingrad, and twenty of your fellow soldiers sit shivering around you. They’re all completely green Russian recruits, who, just like thousands of other soldiers must defend the city of Stalin from invasion by the German Wehrmacht. The Germans are just a few hundred metres from reaching the riverbank and if they succeed all hope will be lost. A commissar is shouting unintelligible orders into his megaphone. You can’t understand them, because fear has paralysed your senses. In the midst of the mayhem, you try to take cover from enemy fire and grenades, while splinters and debris are turning the river into foam. Many of the boats around you blow up in fatal displays of pyrotechnics. And suddenly they arrive from above, like pitch-black ravens on the hunt for prey they dive towards your boat. German Stukas. The eerie sound of Jericho sirens causes outbreaks of panic among the Allied ranks, and only the weapons of the commissars are keeping the soldiers in check...

The above sequence could easily have been lifted from the opening sequence of Enemy at the Gates, but is, in fact, from Infinity Ward’s upcoming 3D shooter Call of Duty. Infinity Ward consists of former employees from 2015, the company responsible for the original Medal of Honor. Obviously, the team borrowed much from Saving Private Ryan when making MoH and this time, it seems they’ve been at the movies once again. Once you’ve gotten ashore you are issued five pieces of ammunition, along with the order to take a rifle from the first dead comrade you see. We’re just short of expecting to find Jude Law and Ed Harris among the ruins here...

From the London Suburbs to Stalingrad

We had the pleasure of trying out a beta version of Call of Duty (build 3907, dated July 25) in London, at Activision’s UK headquarters near Heathrow airport. The place was smaller than you’d expect, but packed to the brim with games, computers, consoles, coffee and other good stuff. Any gamer would feel right at home here.
At one side of a long table filled with computers we found Activision’s PR Manager, Tim Ponting, playing with more concentration than a CS player at the CPL finals. With his eyes locked on the screen and the attacking enemies he began his demonstration. We’re drawn into the Soho of Hell, otherwise known as Stalingrad.

Call of Duty is a WWII-based FPS, very much in the mould of Medal of Honor, only with more focus on the feeling that you are truly a part of a complete platoon. In contrast to Medal of Honor you don’t control one single character throughout the game but take part in three different campaigns as different soldiers, namely an American, a Russian and an Englishman. The style of play will vary so that the English campaign will be stealth-oriented whereas the Russian one is all about raw action.

Wolfenstein Overdrive

Call of Duty is based on the code from Return to Castle Wolfenstein (with a brand new rendering part, though) but it’s been altered to the point where it’s almost unrecognisable. The most impressive part is the game engine’s ability to handle no less than 300 on-screen soldiers simultaneously. The effect is impressive, to put it mildly. It is now possible to simulate the onslaught of huge, bloody battles much more effectively than ever before. But not only is the game more jam-packed with people than Havana Beach during the height of the season but Tim Ponting had more to offer.

The game also sports extensive background animations, which increase the feeling that players are just a tiny part of the battle. If you’ve tried the demo, you’ll probably have noticed parachute troops gliding down, illuminated by artillery fire in the night sky. But it gets better. After you’ve scaled part of the hill that leads into the ruins of Stalingrad one of the officers calls for artillery support and then the horizon in the Russian-controlled part of Volga lights up. Then you’ll see grenades passing overhead and wreaking havoc on the entire city.

My grenade or yours?

In the very hectic grand battles, when bullets are flying all over the place, there are places where you can get killed by enemy fire and places where you won’t be, for dramatic reasons. You can, however, already get shot aboard the boat in the opening sequence described above. But you have to worry about more than enemy fire and grenades; the enemy AI is no pushover itself this time. According to Ponting the computer-controlled soldiers are now able to use their surroundings effectively, which you will probably have noticed if you tried the demo. It’s possible to use grenades to lure them out, though, because they will try to evade them and take cover elsewhere. That is, if they don’t decide to throw the things right back at you...

The second Stalingrad mission is an attack on Red Square, which again seems like something from Enemy at the Gates. German tanks and MG42 machine guns are waiting to massacre the oncoming, poorly armed, Russians. You actually have no weapon yourself and must find a sniper rifle, which you can then use to take out the German officers. Call of Duty focuses a lot on the platoon structure and you will often find yourself operating with a number of fellow soldiers who provide cover for each other and coordinate attacks. A welcome improvement over Medal of Honor is the ability to pick up and use any weapon. Fancy a German Luger? Just take it from the nearest German officer.

CIA-style secrecy

Tim Ponting wouldn’t disclose anything concrete on the multiplayer mode. He only stated that we could expect to see the usual array of multiplayer modes, in addition to a couple of new ones. But, of course, he refused to say anything about them.

He did, however, spill the beans on the subject of the future of Call of Duty. Activision have already announced that Call of Duty will be an entire series of games, but there won’t be a new instalment every year.

- We don’t want to rush the next Call of Duty games onto the market before they’re ready, high quality products , he said. It’s not even sure that the next game will be based on the same engine .

This leads to the obvious question of whether or not the next Call of Duty Game will build upon Half-Life 2’s Source engine. Activision already has one upcoming game that does so, namely Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Just imagine a Call of Duty game with that kind of technology...

But first things first: Call of Duty is due out this Fall.

Translated by Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)