Reviewed: October 7, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Gray Matter Studios

Released: September 14, 2004
Genre: FPS
Players: 32
ESRB: Teen

10
10
10
8
9.2

System Requirements

The folks at Activision, seeing a hit on their hands, quickly secured Gray Matter Studios to develop the obligatory expansion pack, and who better to waste some Nazi’s than the designers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. These guys have been around since the early days of the original Quake, and seeing as how Call of Duty uses the Quake III engine you can sit back and know the franchise is in good hands.

Call of Duty: United Offensive allows gamers to experience more of WWII’s most legendary conflicts through the eyes of Allied soldiers fighting for the liberation of Europe through 13 intense new single player missions. Featuring three all-new campaigns, the game lets players join the U.S. 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge, the British campaign as an airman shooting down German ME-109s from a B-17 bomber, and the Russian frontlines as a conscript in the crucial eight-day Battle of Kursk.

Additionally, United Offensive expands on the popular multiplayer experience of the original game. Players can go online for the ultimate battle between Axis and Allied powers, now including vehicle combat aboard tanks and jeeps as well as tank-and-foot-soldier combined arms action. The expanded multiplayer component offers 11 new maps and three new modes of play – including Base Assault; Capture the Flag, and Domination – where squads must take control of key locations while preventing enemy troops from advancing. And, a newly added ranking system now lets players earn additional weaponry upon completion of objectives, call in artillery support, and gain the respect of friends and foes alike.

The expansion pack also features a handful of enhancements, such as new realistic WWII weapons, including the German Flammenwerfer 35 Flamethrower and Panzerschrek anti-tank weapon, American M1A1 Bazooka, Russian Tokarev SVT-40 Self-Loading Rifle, portable deployable machine-guns, smoke grenades and more. Furthermore, Gray Matter has added an entirely new special effects system to Call of Duty: United Offensive, providing visually stunning moments to players with realistic explosions, weather and particle effects.

Exciting scripted events keeps the game flowing. In the case of the bomber mission you will have to cut-off fuel as wings take damage, manually crank open the bomb bay doors, and use a fire extinguisher to put out fires. Of course this is all while running from turret to turret trying to keep your plane in the air. The B-17 is perhaps the single best element of United Offensive which makes it only that much more disappointing when the 15-minute ride is over.

But that’s not to say the rest of the game is boring. In the very first mission I was left breathless as our initially melee with the enemy was interrupted by some tanks. After a crazy jeep ride to temporary safety I was then bouncing from foxhole to foxhole gunning down waves of soldiers, sniping turrets on the hillside, and blasting tanks with my bazooka, with the occasional stock-to-the-head attack on any enemy who made it into my foxhole.

United Offensive grabs you from the first moment and doesn’t let you go. The action is relentless. Enemies will spawn endlessly so if you cap that guy in the machinegun nest a “replacement” is only a few seconds away. There is no pacing yourself, or creeping through bombed out buildings looking around corners. This isn’t Splinter Cell.

From the moment you are in control of your soldier, it’s live or die in one of the most visceral representations of WWII ever. Even the difficulty has been ramped up to create a greatly improved challenge. You cannot “clear” a level. Enemies are infinite and you must survive through skill and a bit of luck to the next waypoint to trigger the next scripted event.

If United Offensive has any flaw it would be its heavy reliance on those scripted events. The single-player game unfolds in a very linear fashion, playing out the same way each time you play. It’s almost arcade in nature with heavy use of auto-save points, plenty of health packs scattered about, and a die and try again model of gameplay, as you learn the enemy’s patterns and spawn locations.

AI has been greatly improved, both your team and the enemy. I’ve been caught more than once sniping from an upstairs window unaware of the guy sneaking up on me from behind. Your team will instinctively move and fight and they don’t get in your line of fire nearly as much as they used to, but that still didn’t stop me from accidentally capping a few and being branded a “Traitor to the Mother Land”. Thankfully, your AI-controlled team is able to withstand a lot of damage before they go down for good.

The three campaigns are nicely balanced and each tells their own unique story. I was intrigued with the second campaign were I started off in the bomber then bailed out only to be left hanging in a tree until rescued by a search party on their way to blow up a bridge. I was quickly accepted into the group and even earned the right to push the plunger to blow up the bridge before it was all over.

United Offensive mixes traditional combat up with some sections that border on becoming mini-games. You can take over machine gun turrets, AA guns, and even a ship-mounted cannon for some arcade-style shooting segments. Defending the town square against a fleet of incoming bombers was probably the best part of the final campaign.

There are more vehicle segments in United Offensive but most of these have you riding and shooting, either on a boat, from a jeep, in a motorcycle sidecar, and of course, the bomber. The only thing you get to actually “drive” is a tank near the end of the game and that mission isn’t nearly as compelling as the tank mission in the original. It’s all out in the open and as long as you keep moving the enemy can’t even come close to hitting you.

In addition to exciting gameplay is great storytelling and cinematic presentation. After each chapter you get to relive the key events as they unfold through a wonderful cutscene that appears to be processed game footage – not your game mind you. That would be too cool for words. You’ll see nearly every major explosion, truck, jeep, or motorcycle chase, and even some boat combat on the high seas.

The biggest improvement has to be the explosions, which simply rock, and I’m not just talking about my sub-woofer. My favorite t “dazed and confused” effect remains intact from the original game. If you find yourself too close to a major explosion you are knocked to the ground and the screen does this “freeze” thing where the image sticks then streaks or smears as you move around. Combined with the muffled loss of hearing and a realistic ringing in your ears, you literally are “shell-shocked”. Just wait until you call in your first artillery strike.

Explosions now feature huge billowing plumes of smoke, dust, and debris rise up in a cone of destruction that envelops you and obscures your vision. The enemy will now lay down a cover of smoke grenades and you are left in uneasy anticipation in your foxhole waiting for the first soldier to emerge from the fog of war.

The three campaigns all take place in environmentally unique locales. You start off in a winter wonderland that is simply breathtaking then you find yourself being hustled out of a boxcar to fight on the Russian front lines, or cruising up to a cliff-side fortress in a fishing boat to blow up a lighthouse. As interesting as all these locations sound, the game remains just as realistic, dark, dirty, and dangerous as the original.

Character design is flawless with excellent models, detailed textures for the uniforms and realistic faces that convey a surprising amount of emotion and even some good lip-synching. There is a good mix of day and night missions and the missions that take place in the dark are especially thrilling when the sky lights up with a trailing flare, and burning buildings and explosions cast a warm but dangerous orange glow on the surroundings. Walking into a burned-out building you can actually see the pulsing embers glow in the ceiling, walls and floorboards.

And while it certainly has no bearing on the game itself, the closing credits are a very nice touch that will have you watching the sequence, even if you don’t read the words scrolling by on the right. They even include some fabricated wartime photos using images from the game. Nice touch!

Every weapon, whether it be a pistol or a tank, a machinegun or an flak cannon, sounds incredibly real and incredibly loud. This is a game that you will want to crank up and rattle the windows with. Interspersed with the gunfire and explosions you will hear your men barking orders, yelling for help, or often, just screaming in pain. It’s very intense and often quite horrific to see explosions send your comrades burning bodies flying through the air.

The soundtrack for Call of Duty is the obligatory military themes that are gratuitously used to evoke the appropriate emotional and even a patriotic response. Often you will forget the music is even there but as the countdown timer to reinforcement ticks to zero and the music swells, you can’t help but notice and appreciate it.

United Offensive is a feast for the ears. The original game was one of the first to make use of 7.1 surround, and although there are more games using surround sound these days, United Offensive remains a valid reason to justify purchasing a new SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS.

Multiplayer is where United Offensive really shines. The original game has a cult-like following of dedicated fans, level designers, and even programmers who have created mods like smoke grenades and anti-cheat software. Not only does United Offensive come with 11 new exciting multiplayer maps, there are new modes like the exciting Domination, and a complete editing package. You can now expect even more community support for Call of Duty unlike anything we’ve seen since Quake.

United Offensive is selling for $29, about the same price as the original now that it has been discounted. I’m sure a bundle is in the works for those of you who haven’t purchased the first game yet, so you might want to hang on. Veterans of the original should have no qualms about adding this expansion to their library immediately.

If you own the first then you must own the expansion, and while newcomers on a budget would be better served waiting for the bundle, even at $60 you won’t be disappointed with this series. United Offensive is an amazing ride, definitely more exciting than the original game, but probably not as unique since most of us already knew what to expect. With console versions of Call of Duty on the holiday horizon, this is one franchise that is destined to become as legendary as WWII itself.