Read for a rant review of this dissappointingly short solo campaign.
Let's get over the graphics already. Yes the grass blows in the wind, and lays flat after you walk over it. Yes the particle effects look great, and the water effects have improved. But ask yourself this........Does making everyone's uniform AS WRINKLEY AS FREAKIN POSSIBLE actually add to the realism? Apparently adding more wrinkles equals more details, which means more realism to those who believe it. Unfortunately, when the uniforms are wet, they look like unrealistically wrinkled rubber outfits (say that 10 times fast). Some of the levels are amazing to look at, but the majority aren't particularly fun or interesting in terms of design.
Speaking of design, I think for every one thing Treyarch did right, they did three things wrong. First off, I wish that FRIENDLY FIRE WAS TOLERATED! Seriously, your artificial squadmates are so stupid, they will love to trap you from all sides while you get shot to death. Did I mention they love to jump in front of your gun every time you try to shoot? They did a better job of hindering my performance then helping, which means they were a useless addition in terms of gameplay.
Can I pick up the weapons of my fallen comrades? Of coarse not, that would make sense, and we can't have that. But we can force you to sit through horribly acted cut scenes that you can't skip. Even worse is when you turn on your 360 to load your last checkpoint, and you have to watch the unskippable beginning cutscene yet again before you can begin where you left off. Let's not even talk about the shoddy hit-detection from your gun to your enemies.
Ok, let's. Sometimes you will be aiming your weapon directly at an enemies head, and after firing multiple shots, nothing happens. This happens mostly when you aim through a window, or a hole in the wall, and after adjusting your position, sometimes your bullet actually reaches the enemy. Other times, your bullets won't hit the enemies, even though your aim is dead on. However, if you move about three feet closer, your bullets now magically reach the intended target. Because there isn't an explanation for this, it often leads to confusing moments where you simply can't understand why this is happening.
Enemies, comrades, weapons, and just about everything will clip and fall through walls, floors, and any solid object. Not matter how good the graphics are, this type of glitching immediately takes you out of the realism, and let's you know you're playing a buggy game. Your squadmates will often get stuck, forgetting what they were programmed to do, and you will wait for minutes until the A.I. allows you to move on. Example: In one level, my objectives told me to meet back at the jeep. I went to the jeep, but my comrades were over by a barn, shooting at nothing in the sky. I didn't want to restart the mission, so I pushed into them, moving them until they all glitched and remembered to go to the jeep. After several minutes of crappy programming, we were all in the jeep, and the mission continued.
COD3 tries too hard to be cinematic, and most of this results in uninteresting moments where you spend more time watching than playing. Treyarch tried to spruce things up by making minigames out of trivial tasks such as placing explosive charges, aiming a mortar gun, and even the ridiculous close combat encounters with the enemy. While the intentions were good, these moments don't add any depth or realism to the game, especially since they walk you through the process every time your faced with one of these tasks.
The story and progression is all over the place, constantly jumping from country to country, and becoming harder to follow (or maybe it's so convoluted that you don't care because you just want to shoot things and blow them up). The missions seem less focused, and every level becomes a shoot-a-thon with countless enemies that can take a ridiculous amount of damage before dying. COD2's levels felt like they were well planned out, offering variety in mission, pacing, and action. Every level in COD3 feels like a crazy combat zone, where you're constantly shot from every direction, and most of the time you won't know why you died, or who even shot you.
Just as this game begins, it's over, and there's nothing worth seeing at the end of this one. In fact, the end credits are perhaps the most boring, uneventful, un-rewarding credits ever made. I've also never seen so many pointless entries in a game's credits before. I was waiting for the names of Activision's janitors, dentists, name of manager of local Burger King, people who saw the commercial on tv, made-up names, names that Activision thinks are funny, names of their pets, friends of cousins who knew someone who talked to a brother of a developer for COD3, etc. After 15 minutes of waiting you get nothing........nothing but the feeling of having $60 more tacked on to your credit card bill.
COD3 has it's moments, and if multiplayer is your thing, you will most likely get your money's worth out of this one. Personally I'd rather have no multiplayer, and have a longer, beefier solo player campaign. Veterans of the series will blow through this game in one or two sittings, and there isn't a whole lot to keep you playing the solo campaign again. The game is far less polished than the last entry on 360, and not even the improved visuals can make this the better game. If you don't have COD2, get that game instead, and you won't be dissappointed.