Call of Duty 3 is a Wii launch game, so it's bound to have flaws, but nothing excuses some issues present in this game.
However, if I had played Call of Duty 3 first, I might not have enjoyed the later games. On the contrary, I'd have been put off even investing in them beyond belief.
I bought this game to fill the small period of time between World at War and Modern Warfare; Reflex, thinking that it would be the same or at least a similar experience. The truth is the game itself should be pretty good as it's the standard World War II affair. The actual graphics are decent for a circa 2006 PlayStation Port, and the setting, characters and sound all make you feel as if you're there fighting the Nazi's- albeit through the eyes of a film director. The controls also show a glimpse of promise, but that's not enough to make this game anything particularly special mind, and to make things worse, it's marred by many bugs due to the fact that it's a lazy port.
Firstly, I've seen many reviews which state how good the controls for this game are- they're awful. There's no dead zone, so any movement swings your character about madly. There's also a boundary at the side of the screen where if you enter it with your cursor, your character spins around wildly. This would be alright if you could change the speed of the boundary box, but you can't. You can only change the speed of your characters half-turn, which you need as slow as possible to compensate for having no dead zone whatsoever. This means that the game is very hard to control, and it's something you never fully get used to.
Secondly, the button layouts aren't customisable at all. This wouldn't be a problem if the four preset options weren't so horrid. Not one of them gives you a decent button layout, and many button placements make things extremely awkward, like using the directional pad to throw grenades- you have to move your hand up the control to do so, and this then sways your aim. You could tell they were on their way to getting the hang of making viable controls, as they even mapped the Z button to zoom, and the B button to fire, but that's where any good ends.
The game also suffers from horrible slowdown. Even in the first battle, as you climb over the entrance wall, you're stopped from making proper movements or firing your weapon. The battle is intense and it's just too much for the poorly ported game to handle. If you hold forward and the game has too much going on, your character will stay moving forward until the slowdown has stopped, even if your thumb is removed from the control stick. The same applies to any other button you press (or try desperately to) or any bit of movement you make, meaning that in big fire fights (of which there are a lot of) you can't track your enemy or move suitably at all, which almost guarantees death. The PS2 version breezes by this, but the Wii- a far more powerful console which can run Modern Warfare 3 without compromise- can't.
Lastly, there's also no 60htz mode option, meaning that it looks jagged and blurry. Even Sonic Adventure 2 Battle- a GameCube launch title- had this option. It looks even worse on an LCD TV, which is pretty much the standard TV set nowadays.
Overall, these issues totally ruin what might have been a decent campaign experience, and the lack of any sort of multiplayer functionality completes the utter disappointment you might feel when playing this game.
It's not horrendous, but it's not good either. Buy it on PS2. Even better, buy it for PS3, Xbox 360 or PC. Actually, just buy any other Call of Duty for Wii, they have far superior controls to any of the other versions, online multiplayer, AND you get to play on the Wii, the reason why you bought, or were thinking of buying this game in the first place, right?