Call of Duty Review

I am one of the few reviewers that gives N-Gage games a fair shot. I have given Ghost Recon, Ashen, Colin McRae, Tiger Woods 2004, and Crash Nitro Kart all high remarks. It is also my job to spot stinkers. The likes of Moto GP, Red Faction, and MLB Slam! should never reach the insert area of your N-Gage unit. Which category will Call of Duty fall under?

The levels in Call of Duty are especially large for a portable FPS. This plays as a deterrent from having a good time though, as you will often die. Without checkpoints, you will revert to the beginning of the level. Add to that, there is a set path, a clear path that you can not stray from, unless you want to die. This leaves little room for mistakes. You are punished for the somewhat confusing design, the unforeseen guards, and the lag.

In the first level alone, you will find yourself dying several times, not due to enemy fire, but due to blowing yourself up. The game lags, the controls are iffy at best, and the enemies have precision shooting. When you try to run from a bomb you place, you better not turn around, as that will take five seconds of your time right there. These kind of clumsy game mechanics are not acceptable.

Instead of holding a button to aim, then using the control pad to move the cursor, Nokia instituted a faulty system, where you move your crosshairs up or down. This means you will have to manually move sideways, aim up or down, and fire. To their credit, you can zoom in, but you will often forget about this. As I said, having button to where you could move the cursor would have been the route I would have taken.

Another fault, though a minor gripe compared to the other two, is that you need to press a button to pick up health, pick up documents, pick up weapons, and pick up ammunition. All of this should be picked up automatically, like in most other FPS’s where it is done for you. This slows the process, will make it more likely that you overlook something, and adds an element that does not need to be there.

From a graphical standpoint, Call of Duty doesn’t even stand out, when compared with Ghost Recon or Ashen. The characters are not very well detailed, the enemies are vaguely seen in the distance, and the game suffers from major lag and fogging. There are obviously physics issues, as you can sometimes shoot through walls at enemies. Bugs plague this game, and it is not as if the visuals will make up for any of the game’s many shortcomings.

The problem I had most with Call of Duty was its difficulty. The computer AI is not all that intelligent. That is not the problem though; it is the control issues that I outlined above, on top of the lag. The fact that it might take you a couple hours to get through the first couple levels is verification to why you should avoid this game at all costs.