Well following Zep's lead I downloaded the Deviance version of this little beauty. Now, I havent played a great deal of it yet and I have to admit it took me a while to get round to it because I managed to convince myself it wasnt gonna run very nice on my system.
I couldnt have been more wrong.
Its totally smooth. Yeah I get the same problem with the sort of ghosting effect but its not nearly as bad as HL2. The graphics are pretty sweet with nice facial animations, great movement for the majority of the time.
Im still playing the russian missions which take place mostly in the city with narrow streets, bombed buildings and no discernable front line. It starts off slightly linear so there isnt much opportunity to check out the quality of the enemy AI due to lack of flanking options and such. I can say though, it feels like you would expect real warfare to feel.
You dont really get much time to think about things and taking out one German nearly always results in another taking his place. Even soldiers you take down with a couple of shots can sometimes drag themselves away from you while randomly firing at you with their pistols like Tom Hanks in the end of Private Ryan shooting at the tank.
Stuff like that gives you a more realistic feeling where you always put a couple of extra shots into somebody you just took out to make sure they are truly dead.
Now, personally I think it could do with a bit more blood. A bit of spatter on the walls and floor would add to the realism but the red clouds of spray that fly out are pretty good and you can mostly tell when you've hit somebody unless they are really far away.
By far though, the most impressive thing about this game is the sound. Its absolute mayhem. Theres shots flying over your shoulder, explosions, richocheting bullets whizzing about and manic people shouting all around you pointing out areas of danger, new enemies and commands. Then theres the shouts from Fritz too! You can creep up on a room and hear them talking inside before luzzing a grenade in there and hearing the shouts of terror and surprise. Its totally overwhelming just as its supposed to be.
Pump up the speakers a bit and give that sub you got collecting dust under your desk a good workout because its totally worth it.
Now, Im only working with stereo speakers and a sub and even that is impressive enough!!
If you liked the original Call of Duty then this is just like that one x10. Better graphics by quite a long way, far superior sound and the feeling of the mayhem of warfare is so well done I just cant wait to get home tonight and play it some more.
In fact, I would much rather play this than creep around dropping logs in FEAR. Now isnt that something?
