Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

What is it about the dull corridor nature of Call of Duty that makes children think it's the best game they've seen since the last one?

Is there something beyond the repetitive multiplayer that I'm missing? Is there some secret to playing the same levels over and over and over that suddenly makes them fun?

Generic, yearly update, titles like Call of Duty demonstrate everything that is wrong about the First Person genre… games like Far Cry 3 show how you can do so much better.

Once you've played through the intro missions to take control of your first outpost the game opens up like you'd never believe, and it's this free roam nature that saves the game from being just another dull jomp through the game.

It's all too easy to get carried away with opening up the map, collecting relics, lost letters and memory cards… capturing outposts, unlocking radio towers, killing all sorts of exotic wildlife to increase your carrying capacity… all can be done almost from the outset… and all of them make the game.

Capturing 34 Outposts may seem excessive, but as you progress it becomes obvious that you can't just rush in and slaughter everybody and hope to survive… towards the end a high amount of stealth and tactical thought have to go into each one… entering the camp near an alarm box so this can be sabotaged to stop them calling reinforcements… freeing any caged animals to take care of a couple of guards for you… picking the snipers off at range to stop them spotting your slow but deliberate approach… all of it good.

The missions are all clichéd RPG style fodder… Person A won't give you Object B until you've been to Location C to kill D before returning via Location E to trade for Object F… but these are saved by the wonderful characterisation of the protagonists.

The missions for Buck are fairly annoying, towards the end of them you really want to smash his bearded Australian face to a bloody pulp… but if the character and mannerisms of Buck hadn't been so wonderfully crafted then you'd be just going through the motions.

Even the rather disappointing boss battles are elevated beyond the norm by the characterisation that has been put into them… there is nothing better than killing someone who you've grown to despise by his very actions… not something that happens too often in a First Person Shooter.

The game isn't perfect… there are escort missions where you goal is to keep a bullet magnet from getting splattered, a couple too many missions where you are the sole defender of a third party while wave after wave of enemies pour towards you from all directions and there are very few choices to be made that affect the story line (basically just one and that is so late into the game it almost doesn't count) that you always know, in the back of your mind, that you are just following the script laid down by the writers.

There are a few moments that make you jump or gasp, dropping into a pool of water to hunt down a relic only to be grabbed by a crocodile, or crawling through the foliage to come face to face with a Tiger or a disgruntled bear… there are always moments that make you want to pull your hair out with frustration (such as using a parachute or a glider the first time) but the game rises above these to be more than the sum of its parts… and that can only be a good thing.