Customer Reviews

Call of Duty (Mac) (DVD Rom)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

World War II shooters are everywhere these days. Wolfenstein, Metal of Honor, and even cheap knock-offs have flooded the market lately. Many of the best have found their way onto the Mac (...) and one in particular has garnered high praise.

Call of Duty is a popular team-oriented shooter that puts you in the roles of American, British, and Russian elite soldiers united against Nazi Germany. It takes a very patriotic approach and emphasizes realism in atmosphere, equipment, and missions.

That emphasis is evident throughout the game. Campaign briefings and mission load screens feature authentic orders, photos, and maps. Each time you die in-game you are presented a quote about the nature of war, each of which inspires you to try again or imparts some truth.

The game is very immersive and often feels like a movie. The opening cinematic is a good example and sets the patriotic theme immediately - "many nations unite... one goal... Berlin." Characters seem like actors with lots of dialog and great use of body language.

There are even effects borrowed from war movies. If you are near an explosion - an incoming mortar round, being in the same room as a grenade, or having a tank zero-in on your pillbox - you'll experience a stun effect like those seen on the big screen. If you're lucky enough to survive, that is! Things will get very quiet and you'll find yourself prone, moving slowly, and suffering from blurred vision.

The realism applies to behavior too. Soldiers jump over walls, take cover, and hold their helmets convincingly. The designers did draw a line, though. There is blood when a bullet hits a man, but the violence is not gratuitous. The more gross ugliness of war is omitted; expanding the game's audience emphasizing more important messages.

The most blatant of those messages is that "in the war that changed the world, no one fought alone." Teamwork is critical and Call of Duty drives this point home by making reckless attacks, and other techniques common to most first-person shooters, absolutely fatal.

In order to succeed you have to support, and be supported by, the members of your squad. They will ask for covering fire and if you don't provide it, they won't be alive to do you the same favor next time.

Teamwork is just as important to success online. A single shot doesn't always kill, but it's close. So it's good to have suppressing fire and often the only way to be certain of victory is to coordinate superior numbers. Unfortunately there are no vehicles (I won't give up Battlefield 1942 quite yet) but they're coming in the upcoming United Offensive expansion pack. In the mean time, fixed machine guns do add a little variety.

The multiplayer action is fast-paced and the maps are interesting, balanced, and quick to load. There's even a great feature called "kill cam." When you die, you immediately watch a replay of the last few seconds from the perspective of your killer - that'll teach ya!

Call of Duty features fabulous graphics and performance even on lower-end machines, teaches real lessons about war and history, emphasizes team work, and captivates with it's cinematic presentation. Not only that, but several difficulty settings, unlimited approaches to each mission, and expandable and addictive online play gives this game awesome replay value! It won't be coming out of my dock anytime soon!

As some reviewers have mentioned, this game is what Medal of Honor should have been. The graphics (and sound effects) are really outstanding, and on the whole, the physics model and gameplay seems more realistic that MOHAA. It's a much more enveloping experience.

Bear in mind you need a relatively new, powerful Mac for this game to work as intended. I wouldn't bother even trying with anything less than a 64MB Radeon card or equivalent nVidia card. For example, I'm running mine on a dual G5 (Radeon 9600, cable internet) and during really congested battle scenes or dense multiplayer contests, it can get a little choppy... so have realistic expectations in mind, relative to your own machine.

The online multiplayer setup and server setup can be a little confusing, but performance is generally very good. Wish there were a few more maps but that's what the add-on packs are for, right? : ) Good integration with Punkbuster and as a result, far fewer hacks found on most servers IME.

Definitely worth your money!

This is by far the best WW2 Shooter I have ever played so I really have to recomend this to any one in need of a shooter. It runs quite smooth on my low end eMac 1.25 which I was surprised about. The gameplay is fun and reilistic but loading times are kind of long and your health goes down pretty fast, fast enough for me to only give it four stars but this really is a top noch shooter that runs well on low end macs.

This is an incredible simulation - graphics and sound are outstanding. In single player mode the enemy AI is very good. Some scenarios (particularly the battle for Stalingrad) take your breath away - you're running up a hill, with bullets and bombs flying all around you, not even carrying a gun (there aren't enough to go around), with the Germans trying to kill you ahead, and your own officers threatening to kill you if you retreat. If you've seen the opening scene from "Enemy at the Gates" it's exactly like that, only a lot more intense.

Everyone is right--this is MOHAA the correct way. I'm still a big fan of MOH, but this is extremely fun. (Especially the zooming through the french countryside in a "tin can" car. What a hoot!)

In defense of MOH--and although I don't know this to be the case--I would guess that MOH is easier on your system than COD. COD's graphics and sounds are UNEQUALED, so you need a beefy system to get the most out of it. (I'm running a G5 with a hefty video card.)

So, in a nutshell, this game rocks. I was skeptical of the 50 buck pricetag, but as soon as I post this review, I'm headed over to buy the expansion pack.

It's that good.

Trust me.

Bought Call of Duty 2 and had no issues. Purchased Call of Duty and had troubles with it not wanting to advance to the next level. Contacted Aspyr and they said it was because I have an imac with an Intel processor. They gave me a set of cheat codes to allow me to overcome the issue but it still wouldn't allow me to get into level 3 (Dawnville). Had no problems with any of the other levels. Go ahead and get the game but be aware of this issue.

This is a superb game. It runs smoothly on my mac (Powerbook G4 867, 640 RAM) most of the time, but I wouldn't recommend it if you have much below that. There's a wide variety of weapons and battle scenarios, and you fight as American and British paratroopers, and as a Russian sniper. They have obviously taken a lot of the battle scenes, landscapes, and plot ideas from Band of Brothers and Enemy at the Gates, which is neat if you've seen those. Unlike a lot of shooters you don't just run around and shoot everything in sight, in fact playing cowboy will just get you killed most of the time. You have to work with your squad to accomplish your objectives, and when someone tells you to cover them you damn well better, otherwise you're going to find yourself exposed and without backup later in the mission. My only complaint is that it is too short, I beat the game within 2 or 3 days. But, it's fun to go back and replay missions, and after you've finished with the original there's still an expansion pack and multi-player mode. If you're looking for a solid, fun, and realistic looking war game this is for you.

Call of duty 1 is one of my favorite WW2 games of all time. It is intense, and action-packed. Instead of just playing as a american, you play as many other countries too. It seemed like you where not a hero, but more of one soldier fighting in a endless war. This is a great game, but the reason i give it 4 stars is because the mac port of this game has a glitch. When you get to the level Dawnville (the 2nd or third i think) It comes up with a error message. Well I did some research and i found out that it's a bug in the mac port. Unfortunately, you can't play this level. But you can play the rest of the game by enabling the console, then opening it up by hitting ~, then typing map carride, that will take you to the next level after Dawnville.

I absolutly love CoD!!! It kicks MOHAA's ass in SP and esspecialy MP! The only complaint I have is that the single player campaign, to me at least, seemed rather short, but the amazing MP aspect easily makes up for this.

Smarter AI, excellent graphics, exciting game play. I can feel that I'm "in" the war and not just playing a game. It runs pretty decent on my TiBook G4/1Ghz/1GB RAM.