What looks like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault plays like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault but in fact isn't Medal of Honor: Allied Assault? :) Well, I will tell you. It's Call of Duty! Call of Duty is a World War II based first person shooter developed by Infinity Ward, a newly formed studio including 22 of the individuals, and all of the production leads, who worked on the original Medal of Honour: Allied Assault. (FYI, the original company that developed Allied Assault, is now developing the Vietnam-based Men of Valor for Vivendi). Call of Duty is done in a mostly similar style to their previous work, but this game includes more of the good and less of the bad.

The single player in Call of Duty gives you three parts (28 missions) - American, British, and Russian. The maps are played chronologically with you starting as a Pathfinder for the United States (101st Airborne) on the night before D-Day invasion. You then switch over to the British (6th Airborne Division) where you join the British Special Forces as Sergeant Evan and take part in the famous assault, Capture and Defence of Pegasus Bridge. Finally there’s the Russian campaign which starts in Stalingrad and ends with you raising the flag above the German Reichstach. Each of these three parts is a completely different experience with different settings, weapons and team mates. Each mission has markedly different objectives, ranging from the capture bunkers, destroy a battery of German anti-aircraft guns, daring rescue at the prison camp, capture intact a bridge crucial to the defense of the Normandy beach landings to sabotage the legendary battleship Tirpitz. Call of Duty also offers a few more densely scripted missions, such as an American level where you're riding in an old sedan, shooting Germans out the window. Another has you actually get to command a T-34 tank, controlling both its movement and turret.

Each side will have a wide arsenal of authentic weapons, including the Germans, whose weapons you can always pick up and use. Call of Duty features a wide arsenal of authentic American, British, Russian, and German WWII weapons, including various rifles, submachine guns, side arms, and grenades. For example, the US weaponry includes Thompson M1A1M, M1 Carbine, M1 Garand, BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), Colt M1911A1, the British weaponry includes Bren LMG Mark II, Lee Enfield Mark I Number IV, Mk V Sten Carbine, the German weaponry includes Mauser 98k, MP-40, Kar 98k, FG-42, MG-42, P08 Luger, Model 24 Stielhandgranate and finally the Russians weaponry includes M1938 Mosin-Nagant Carbine, PPSh-41, M1895 Nagant Revolver and Tokarev TT33.

Call of Duty is fast paced throughout generally, so expect hordes of enemies at times. Each mission is brilliantly paced and varies in style, so you never feel the repetitivenes, instead there are nice memorable moments such as Stalingrad opening where I've truly been made to think about the horrors of World War II. Try to imagine Volga under heavy fire from German dive-bombers and you are in a boat, this time crossing the river to Stalingrad with other "recruited" soldiers. They are pretty scared and one of your troop jump out of the boat in fear and was shot by his own officer in the water. After getting off the boat you start off with no weapon and are forced to be a runner drawing fire for snipers. There's a lots of explosions and dead bodies, as you hold back the German forces until your superiors can call in an artillery strike.

The game's AI is surprisingly great (though I found a few bugs). The soldiers in your squad take cover, deploy suppression fire and actually help you, as they're supposed to do so. Also the Enemies use cover well. In fact, if you fire and they duck behind a wall, they won't show themselves again until you stop shooting and they feel it's safe.

Call of Duty includes a surprisingly good multiplayer with 11 multiplayer maps based on missions from the single player campaigns. There are five multiplayer modes that range from standard, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, to some unique modes - Behind Enemy Lines (a very small team of Allied soldiers is outnumbered and surrounded by Axis soldiers behind enemy lines), Retrieval and Seek & Destroy (a team must plant bombs on targets on the map while the other team strives to defend the targets from the saboteurs). Most of these modes are enjoyable to play, mainly because the weapons, the basic combat model, the tech and the maps are all solid. In addition, the game does include an in-game server browser with pretty much all the features you've seen in Q3A and RTCW.

I've noticed that some people are trying to compare Call of Duty with Hidden & Dangerous 2 (I will try to review the game soon). I would like to note that you can't really compare Call of Duty and H&D 2 since Call of Duty is an action FPS genre and H&D 2 is just a representative of the tactical shooter genre. As you see, totally two different genres. Some people prefer action, some tactics. Although I'd say, forget the tactics and let's go to kill all the badies! :)

Overall, Call of Duty simply rocks. No joke. It's the most atmospheric game I've ever played in this genre, and while the gameplay may not be innovative, it's solidly implemented and very enjoyable. When comparing it to movies it was a mix of the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" and the beginning of "Enemy at the Gates". For those that haven't gotten there yet just crank up the speakers and enjoy! Is this game worth your money? Definitely!  Download playable demo1 / demo2.

Minimum System Requirements: Pentium III 600MHz / Athlon 600MHz or higher for systems with Win98/ME (at least 700Mhz for Win2k/XP), 128MB RAM, 3D Hardware Accelerator Card - 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible 32MB (ATI Radeon, GeForce, Parhelia), 8x CD-ROM drive (1200 K/sec sustained transfer rate), 1.4GB HDD space (+600MB swapfile), 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card