When Call of Duty: Finest Hour was released on
consoles last year, something was a bit lost in the translation between the game
and its older PC brother. The game was lacking in terms of intensity and a sense
of realism and paled when compared to Call of Duty and its PC expansion pack.
However, Big Red One, the next COD to hit consoles, is looking to reintegrate
the sense of action and intensity that was missing by featuring a brand new
campaign that takes the player around the frontlines in places like Sicily and
North Africa. This time around, you are placed in a true to life squad of
soldiers, known as the Big Red One, which since the First World War has been on
the frontlines of many a conflict. The game takes the familiar successful Call
of Duty gameplay formula and builds on it, making it a realistic and engaging
experience.
The gameplay in Call of Duty: Big Red One still
feels a lot like the other games in the series. You work closely with your
squadmates to complete missions, and they operate quite intelligently and wholly
separate from you.
The game takes place primarily in North Africa
and Italy, representing those areas very well. The graphics for the new areas
look fantastic and the environments can be somewhat destroyed by your gunfire
and explosions. The environments do a good job of portraying what the battle
situations must have been like, as the intensity level has noticeably been
raised in this game. The worlds will be a lot more populated, with more
non-playable characters on the battlefield than ever.
Graphically, the game will be a noticeable
improvement over Finest Hour. The gun and hand animator actually went down to
Las Vegas in order to fire all of the guns in the game, just to get a sense of
how the look and recoil in order to add authenticity to the gunfire. The
character models have also been cleaned up a lot, and the animations have been
improved. The damage that the areas can take is also pretty impressive.
Call of Duty: Big Red One is looking to improve
upon the original and give console gamers the Call of Duty game that they
deserve. Look for it this fall.
