Call of Duty: United Offensive review

“One of the best WWII shooters titles to date”, “Complete and polished, drawing you into a world of combat”; “Frantic and well thought out missions that leave you satisfied.” Three quotes from our original Call of Duty review that sum up the general feeling on a game that many of you will have already played. Personally, I loved it, with the incredibly atmospheric sound, intense visuals and amazing variety of locations to shoot people (Daily Mail readers watch out!) it combined all of the best aspects of other games to provide an amazing experience. Now the expansion pack, United Offensive is upon us, and no doubt you’ll all be wondering whether it’s worth the RRP of £20 to re-immerse yourself.

Call of Duty: United Offensive contains another campaign for each of the three armies covered in the original game, first Americans then British and finally Russian, which seem to go even further than any you have played before. While you’ll need the original to play this expansion, you won’t find much repetition in terms of gameplay between the two products. Sure, you’ll be taking the passenger seat in a number of vehicles again, but with even more exciting set pieces including running around onboard a plane, manning various guns and taking out a hoard of German planes.

Will this war ever end?

This time, you’ll be taking part in the Battle of the Bulge, invading Sicily and even joining a huge Russian army to fight for control of Kharkov, and for the hours that you’ll spend doing it, the action practically never lets up. It plays pretty much identically to the original, literally just expanding on the amount of the war you can play through, which is perfect for fans of the original. Indeed there is literally no reason why anyone who had a blast with Sgt. Moody and Major Ingram in the previous campaigns wouldn’t have at least as much fun with them again (yes, the characters do return) here. If you’re new to the world of Call of Duty, check out our review, and consider purchasing the pack containing both it and United Offensive, because, to quote Cannon Fodder, ‘war has never been so much fun’.

Graphically United Offensive remains as solid as before, looking stunning at points of major action though understandably weaker than Doom 3 or the new Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. The vast areas portrayed and the variety of landscapes and settings do show off the quality of level design and effort that has been made to stop United Offensive from becoming little more than a map pack, and the added multiplayer maps and game types will amuse fans for quite some time. Although I won’t touch upon it too much, playing against a team of friends (or enemies) is one of the best online experiences I’ve had outside downloading large files with fast broadband (don’t deny that thrill!).

Ringing in the ears

As mentioned previously, the sound in Call of Duty United Offensive is nothing short of incredible. Bullets ricochet around you, gunfire rattles through your surroundings and tanks practically bulldoze through your speakers. The voice acting is excellent (and at least an effort has been made with lip synching), in some of the more emotional battles the rarely used music kicks in and adds to the hopelessness of your battle or patriotic determination, depending on how things are going and because it isn’t overused, it adds immense power to certain scenes. If you’ve played the original, you’ll remember how your hearing is affected if an explosion happens close by; an effect that remains to stun me in this expansion.

While everything seems to be in order, unfortunately, there were a few aspects of the game that I wasn’t so keen on, one of which is my pet hate within first person shoot ‘em-ups: re-spawning enemies.

‘They’re breeding in there’

There are only so many Germans that can emerge from a house, at least in my opinion. One segment of the game sees you and a group of your fellow troops advancing on an enemy area, where you can’t simply hang back and pick off all foes from a distance, finally moving in to clean up the remaining few, because they seem to keep re-spawning. Unless you advance on the area, more and more soldiers will run in to take the place of any you take out, which removes the choice of how best to deal with them. It did frustrate me while playing as I reloaded after wasting hundreds of bullets on massacring what seemed like the whole of the Third Reich at once, only to have my efforts rewarded by more enemies. In this one circumstance though, I’m willing to let it go, because of how much fun forcing your way forward ended up being, once I’d adapted my playing style and worked out why they wouldn’t all just die.

The game does throw a lot of different gameplay styles at you with some group combat (at some points, you may not have to fire a shot, merely escorting the others while they take out everyone else), massive group combat (armies of soldiers that question how your computer can handle that many at once) and of course some solo action when you begin to notice that your superiors seem to be picking on you to do everything (hey, it wouldn’t be much fun if you held back while others blew up bridges, lighthouses and the like).

Exactly what it says on the tin

Call of Duty: United Offensive is pretty much what I expected: more of the same, expanded upon. It’s enormous fun if you’re a fan and atmospheric in a way very different from Doom 3 - a horror of another kind. Although slightly shorter than before, the end is just as dramatic and intense as Stalingrad, and is perhaps a campaign with better flow overall. I’m off to start the campaign on the third difficulty level now (which is more challenging than Call of Duty’s, so should be played afterwards). I’m still up for playing through the game again, not to mention the addictive multiplayer that will last you quite some time.

The intermittent crashing that I experienced in the original game (apparently something to do with my ATI card) is still present, more so in the lighthouse level, but nothing too show-stopping. The gameplay is still all there and that’s surely what counts. United Offensive is well worth purchasing.