Call of Duty 3

By Matt Peckham
November 02, 2009 15:17 PM PST
Print
Email this!
Share
- Digg
- Yahoo Buzz!
- FaceBook
- StumbleUpon
- del.icio.us

Your arm hovers at your side, clutching your Wii-mote like a geeky gunslinger. You flick your wrist and your battlefield view whips around, sighting the just-visible helmet of a Nazi grunt hunkered behind a headstone. You bring your arm up, aim and carefully draw a bead. Your finger tenses on the trigger button and when the time is right, you shoot.

GamePro Score
User Score
Write your review!

But instead of a certified kill, your M1's crosshair suddenly jukes and jives, and the bullet goes flying harmlessly past your enemy's head. But why?

Ally Ally Nazi Free

PROTIP: Aim down your gun's sights for greater accuracy but when the heat's on, it might be easier to just spray and pray.

Simple: it's because the Wii version of Call of Duty 3 features an aiming mechanism that has no physical point of reference. For example: real riflemen use two hands to shoot- one to trigger, one to aim and steady. Even pistols require two hands, regardless of what Hollywood would have you believe. In PC first-person shooters, your pivoting wrist is buoyed by the flat plane of the desk. But with the Wii-mote, your trigger-arm floats in space, and whenever you thumb the D-pad to lob a grenade, hit the A-button to sight, or click the B-button to fire, your wrist invariably wobbles just enough to throw your aim fatally off; and that's with practice.

It's worth noting, though, that the Wii Remote is vastly superior to an analog stick when it comes to turning your head quickly and accurately. You can also pump the remote and nunchuck rapidly to throw off melee grapples, or loop it in circles to screw-in charge pins. For vehicles, you simply hold both remotes up like two-hands gripping and turning a wheel. Once you get the hang of driving, it's so natural that going back to an analog stick feels twitchy and sloppy.

PROTIP: The familiar radar can be a lifesaver, especially on a smoke-filled battlefield.

It's also no surprise that the low-res Wii version of CoD3 suffers from a lack of visual oomph, which is sorely missed when trying to spot enemies "peeking" at long range. Otherwise, the majority of the game plays like its other console peers but without multiplayer as it trades multi-front mini-campaigns for a single cinematic bocage-to-urban-center slog through Western Europe. Along the way, you'll scurry between crater holes and splintered buildings to assault enemy strongholds and pinning sticky grenades on Tigers.

A for Effort

While the mini-games are cool, you will sadly spend most of your time fighting to control your drunken gun sight, and practice only yields marginal improvements. You have to hand it to Treyarch for having the guts to take chances, but as far as CoD3 goes, this isn't the version to play unless you're flying Wii-only, and even then, it's only worth it to get a glimpse of what the future might hold.