Call of Duty (Mac)

Rating:
Summary: Awsome
Review: This is by far the best WW2 Shooter I have ever played so I really have to recomend this to any one in need of a shooter. It runs quite smooth on my low end eMac 1.25 which I was surprised about. The gameplay is fun and reilistic but loading times are kind of long and your health goes down pretty fast, fast enough for me to only give it four stars but this really is a top noch shooter that runs well on low end macs.

Rating:
Summary: Best War game...Ever.
Review: This is simply a fantastic game. It is incredibly realistic, and it has killer single and multiplayer components. A great addition for any Action gamer.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible game, extremely pleased
Review: This is the first WW2 game I've every played, and it was simply amazing. I read several reviews of Mac games in this genre, and chose Call of Duty over the Medal of Honor series. The voice acting is superb and multi-lingual (keep subtitles on!), the music appropriate and at times, beautifully orchestral. The graphics were also very impressive, even on my system which doesn't meet the minimum CPU requirements (dual 800 MHz G4, GeForce 3). The game was challenging and varied, never boring or routine. Sometimes I buy games and don't finish them. This one I finished and I'm quite pleased knowing there is a Mac expansion pack coming, "United Offensive", just announced. I highly recommend this game.

Rating:
Summary: Review for the Alaska Apple Users Group
Review: World War II shooters are everywhere these days. Wolfenstein, Metal of Honor, and even cheap knock-offs have flooded the market lately. Many of the best have found their way onto the Mac (...) and one in particular has garnered high praise.

Call of Duty is a popular team-oriented shooter that puts you in the roles of American, British, and Russian elite soldiers united against Nazi Germany. It takes a very patriotic approach and emphasizes realism in atmosphere, equipment, and missions.

That emphasis is evident throughout the game. Campaign briefings and mission load screens feature authentic orders, photos, and maps. Each time you die in-game you are presented a quote about the nature of war, each of which inspires you to try again or imparts some truth.

The game is very immersive and often feels like a movie. The opening cinematic is a good example and sets the patriotic theme immediately - "many nations unite... one goal... Berlin." Characters seem like actors with lots of dialog and great use of body language.

There are even effects borrowed from war movies. If you are near an explosion - an incoming mortar round, being in the same room as a grenade, or having a tank zero-in on your pillbox - you'll experience a stun effect like those seen on the big screen. If you're lucky enough to survive, that is! Things will get very quiet and you'll find yourself prone, moving slowly, and suffering from blurred vision.

The realism applies to behavior too. Soldiers jump over walls, take cover, and hold their helmets convincingly. The designers did draw a line, though. There is blood when a bullet hits a man, but the violence is not gratuitous. The more gross ugliness of war is omitted; expanding the game's audience emphasizing more important messages.

The most blatant of those messages is that "in the war that changed the world, no one fought alone." Teamwork is critical and Call of Duty drives this point home by making reckless attacks, and other techniques common to most first-person shooters, absolutely fatal.

In order to succeed you have to support, and be supported by, the members of your squad. They will ask for covering fire and if you don't provide it, they won't be alive to do you the same favor next time.

Teamwork is just as important to success online. A single shot doesn't always kill, but it's close. So it's good to have suppressing fire and often the only way to be certain of victory is to coordinate superior numbers. Unfortunately there are no vehicles (I won't give up Battlefield 1942 quite yet) but they're coming in the upcoming United Offensive expansion pack. In the mean time, fixed machine guns do add a little variety.

The multiplayer action is fast-paced and the maps are interesting, balanced, and quick to load. There's even a great feature called "kill cam." When you die, you immediately watch a replay of the last few seconds from the perspective of your killer - that'll teach ya!

Call of Duty features fabulous graphics and performance even on lower-end machines, teaches real lessons about war and history, emphasizes team work, and captivates with it's cinematic presentation. Not only that, but several difficulty settings, unlimited approaches to each mission, and expandable and addictive online play gives this game awesome replay value! It won't be coming out of my dock anytime soon!

Rating:
Summary: Great but Short-lived
Review: WW2 first-person shooters, bringing nostalgia, perhaps family history, as well as fantasy, have proven a rich genre for the software-jocks to make a good living.

Flashback 2 decades, I played the orginal Wolfenstein for Apple II. More recenty the Return for W, a couple of Dooms, Half-Life and Unreal Tournaments for PCs. Also X-box (but a joke as too many disk cache errors to play after very short while- gave the X-box away!).

Call of Duty took about 6 hours for a green-horn to complete to the end, with great team-play and cinematic experiences, scary moments, and really dumb AI for your squad and enemy. Needs about another 50 levels, and some medals (1942 overtones) to be value for money against latest Wolfenstein or the superb StarWars Knights of the Old Republic. Just because it's for Apple doesn't mean we should be desperate.