coolbeans

User Score
6.8

Presentation - 7.0
Gameplay - 7.5
Value - 6.0

Over 5 years have past since the original Call of Duty graced the PC receiving a good share of GOTY nominations and awards.  It was Activision's answer to the regarded Medal of Honor series and soon became a major competitor into the vast pool of great WW2 series.  As we all know, Infinity Ward has moved on to refreshen the series with great new Modern Warfare entries.  Now it comes time that Infinty Ward grace us in a history lesson of where the series first started off BUT is it worth the ride or should it have stayed in the textbooks?

Much has changed in the FPS' genre with the defining age of HD graphics to the new innovations (big or small) brought have it, quite probably, THE hardest genre to get a leg up in.  Which would make it more hard to believe a revival of the first Call of Duty would be able to be worth going back to for what it's worth.  I'm aware it's a nice treat to back for fans such as myself and consider it's an older game but it would've been nice to see an extra incentive or change that would've improved the gameplay from what it used to be instead of just pushing the outdated pixels to a 720-1080p definition with a smooth frame-rate and some achievements.  Unfortunately, the case is only true for the latter part of my last sentence furthermore bringing this revival to be something Infinty Ward hasn't heard for one of it's games for a long time: Sub-par. 

The campaign in CoD Classic revovles around 3 different soldiers overcoming different battles in WWII, most of which being fairly accurate with history.   You have control of Private Martin in the American campaign, Sergeant Evans for the British, and Private Ivanovich (who ranks up throughout the progression of his story) for the Russian.  Within each of the campaigns, you'll go from attacking fortified enemy positions, to holding out certain bases, to even taking shotgun in a vehicle and shooting enemies as they whiz by you.  There's nothing lackluster when it comes to action even with the consideration that it's a 5+ year old game.

The gameplay is basically the same of what it was back then: You can jump, croutch, go prone, and many of the things you can do in the newest CoD's when it comes to general gunplay save for sprinting and "choking" grenades.  You have a simple strafe lay-out with the d-pad which is proved to be very useful when on the harder difficulties.  The one very cool element I found enjoyable for a hardcore FPS is the lack of respawning health, while there's health packs that lay around there's no of which you can find on veteran difficulty which adds a great realism that can be annoying but still away from today's norm. 

When it comes to the story and level design, they certainly seemed quite solid for their time.  Before each mission, you're loading screen shows two pages of your character's recent journal entry upon which showing a sort of emotion you wouldn't expect from a simple loading screen.  This unique feature helped convey an interesting way of how to show the character's emotion or thoughts without having to use cinematic cutscenes drawing you a bit closer to your character, while not by much it's still a nice jump forward. 

When it came to the level design, I found it to be either really great with it's set of challenges to uneven with a heap of annoyance.  When on veteran, it's normally wise to reload from a certain save point with full health then to keep going with half when considering checkpoints are ever-changing, if you have low health but keep going with a save here or there BUT with full health the game rewards you with more checkpoints thus making your journey a little easier.  The problem with that is getting there.  With ideas of trying to diversify it's levels, it seems that their course of action was to have you get used to a well-able squad of friendly AI's in the American missions to then thrusting you into uneven Rambo levels of facing down sporadic enemy AI by yourself for many British missions.  It felt like playing a game to all it's strengths, only to stumble upon most of it's weaknesses for so much of the "middle-part" of the game which hurts the core of what's great about the campaign itself.

The MP seems to be one in the same of what PC version had to offer: 8 players online, leaderboards, and different game types.  For which it saddens me that it has remained unchanged.  It's certainly worthy of burning a few days in unless you played the PC version.  It's 8 player challenge keeps game's more tight and intense with it's formidable maps and is certainly enjoyable but not really worthwhile.

Conclusion:

6.8  While the different challenge offered by Classic (and CoD1) from the other CoDs is nice for an FPS fan, there was hardly enough built or changed upon it to make it even feel like a revision. 

Pro's                                                          Con's

Same enjoyable CoD                               Cost of 1200 MS points

Steady framerate                                     Some Uneven levels

Intense action and good sound effects    Felt like not much changed

A nice array of MP options