 | | United Offensive kicks off in the snow capped forests of Bastogne |
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United Offensive is the new expansion pack for highly acclaimed first person shooter Call of Duty. Once again you're thrust back into three of the war's most harrowing periods, and once again you'll experience it through the eyes of American, British and Russian troops sequentially.
All in all it's a wee bit shorter than the original, features some improved graphical effects, and as an added bonus, comes with a whole heap load of new multiplayer enhancements designed to extend its online life too.
If you loved Call of Duty, it pretty much goes without saying that you'll enjoy United Offensive. I didn't quite love Call of Duty. The single player game was pretty good at times, but never captured the golden atmosphere of Allied Assault before it, and multiplayer just felt way too hectic and random to me. Perhaps that was CoD's way of creating wartime realism, where skill can only get you so far and luck has to take you the rest of the way, but for me, it just got terribly frustrating dieing so easily. Perhaps I just stunk at it.
You Sure Did
This expansion continues along exactly the same vain as the original, only chiselling and refining the experience to an even purer form. Additionally the more sneaky solo missions from the single player campaign appear to have been scrapped completely. What we're left with is a constant barrage of those enormous set pieces which made the original so well received, and if anything, they're actually beefed up slightly here.
I admit, you could never accuse the game of losing its touch when it comes to capturing those epic battles - United Offensive really does have them down to a T. Just check out the Battle of the Bulge tank assault that kicks off the game for evidence of that. But while the majority of them are fun enough to play, they oddly don't seem quite as awe-inspiring as they were in the original game. It appears I've become a bit immune to the whole thing.
I think it's fair to say that the Medal of Honor Omaha landing will always be remembered as the first of its kind to kick start this specific style of play, and sadly nothing here gave me the same thrill I had just in the first Call of Duty, let alone that beach.
All in all, the American campaign is nice enough but lacks any real standout moments, and is completely overshadowed by many of the Russian levels found later in the game.
Brown Wings
 | | This is just too much fun for words |
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The British campaign is a lot less impressive, but there is one mission I must pledge unbridled love for. The opening segment puts you on board a bomber on route to Holland, and a few minutes in you're ambushed by the Luftwaffe in a thrilling plane to plane fire fight quite unlike anything I've ever played before. As more planes show up, you're jostled around from each gunning position to the next in an attempt to take down the swarms surrounding you, and it's a genuine riot.
The feeling of the guns themselves is immense - they hammer out tracer shells with such sheer force that you truly feel like you're manning a vicious piece of vintage weaponry. Coupled with the smoky anti-AA explosions ringing out all around you and the fully destructible architecture of your grizzly throttling plane, it all adds up to the best part of the entire CoD series for me.
 | | Your plane will start falling apart around you as it takes more and more damage throughout the mission |
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Sadly you're back on ground for the most average of land based sequences after that, never to take to the air again, and it merely highlights how run of the mill the rest of the British missions are. The kind of sub-Spearhead night time stuff that's way too dated to get psyched up about here in 2004.
Finally we have the Russian campaign, and much like in Call of Duty itself, it's by far the best of the bunch. The architecture is stunning in places, and the amazing scope of the inter-city battles has to be seen to be believed (hence no screenshots here folks). As the game is pushed more and more to its extremes here though, more of the cracks start to show unfortunately.
Band of Buggered
 | | Ever see that one movie Stand By Me? |
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This expansion exposes some rather ropey AI that I hadn't noticed previously. I can live with somewhat moronic enemies, but when my own team mates start blocking my path and eventually getting me killed, I actually get quite bitter. You certainly won't feel like a brotherhood on that battlefield.
The biggest downer of all though, is the absolute lack of any type of freedom whatsoever. I'm not the kind of person who usually winces at scripted games - I mean Half-Life was
all scripted, yet it disguised that fact well and was a blast to play. Call of Duty on the other hand, is totally 100% completely linear from beginning to end, and just
wreaks of it.
You're basically pigeonholed into going the single exact route the computer wants you to go at all times, and everything else in the game, specifically your captain and your team mates, will just stand still, frozen in time, until you go where it wants.
 | | This guy's almost as disgusted by respawning enemies as I am |
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Annoyingly, the enemy waves will constantly respawn too, which completely takes away any kind of accomplishment you might have gained from the nerve-racking long distance shoot outs. Why bother killing anyone at all when another AI troop will run up and take his place a few seconds later? You're better off just sprinting forward most of the time, in a desperate search for that all important next trigger point.
At one point a Tiger Tank appeared further up the road from us and my Captain yelled at me to take it out. While getting bombarded with shells and unable to move, I studied the layout of the surrounding area and noticed a beautifully exposed flank to its right. Zooming off by myself, I attempted to swing around a nearby house to get behind him...but was met by just one of a million invisible walls. The game uses these to force you quite literally at gunpoint into doing exactly what it wants the entire time.
Underrated Gem
Let me tell you about a wee little game called Hidden & Dangerous 2 that came out last year. It's another World War II first person shooter, this time from the creators of gaming masterpiece Mafia. It was never that big, overshadowed by the likes of this very series and the hundreds of other clones and expansion packs of recent years, but it succeeds precisely where Call of Duty fails, in that it has the kind of beautiful open ended game design that allows you to tackle any situation anyway you want.
If this were Hidden & Dangerous 2 for instance, I could have sent two men off in one direction to draw the tank's fire, while I grabbed myself a bazooka and sneaked off around that same house and get behind it for the almighty death blow.
In Call of Duty what did I end up doing though? Sadly I had no choice but to charge in head first with minimal cover, and basically play the quicksave 'n' load mini game until I made it to the end without dieing. Hardly an immersive experience to say the least.
I bring this up because I've been playing a heck of a lot of Hidden & Dangerous 2 recently (much like everyone else I missed it on release), and in comparison Call of Duty feels like a 2D cartoon compared to this much more stimulating and tactical World War II adventure.
I understand that United Offensive is aiming for a more cinematic experience, but I'd still expect to be able to jump over a fence if I don't want to use the gate, or perhaps go left around that car, not right. At the absolute
least, I want to be able to open doors and not wait for some invisible checkpoint that makes my Captain kick them open for me.
United Defensive
 | | The amount of soldiers on screen at once still manages to impress |
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On the plus side, the online play does come off a lot more impressive this time round, with a slower and more open feel than before. It actually allows you to breath and somewhat get into it now. The use of vehicles is also a wonderful technical addition.
At the end of the day, Call of Duty was never a game that set out to be tactical and thoughtful - it's a series seemingly intent on just creating the craziest fire fights ever seen, and in that regard you could say this add-on is even better than the original and quite impressive.
I only bring these negative points up because while United Offensive does have some great moments, I don't think it's fair to dismiss its problems in light of all the flashy spectacle.
As an expansion pack, this is one of the better ones around I'd say, but for me personally, its superficial core is what holds it back.
