Publication Date: 18/09/2025
Call of Duty 3
Playing through the history of a game on a particular console is fascinating. You see the roughness of its initial entry, before wondering if they can polish the diamond in the rough or just continue to roll with its innate issues. Whilst the original Call of Duty ‘trilogy’ on the PS2-era isn’t nearly as good as what would come on the very next generation of consoles, it’s very much an example of a team iterating on what worked and reworking what didn’t. The premise of this review is simple - pound for pound, this is the best Call of Duty on the console, vastly outstripping the gameplay of the heavily flawed Finest Hour and improving on the very solid - if not mind-blowing - level of quality presented in Big Red One. Conversely, whilst it still doesn’t quite manage to match the general tone and depiction of war showcased in the console’s debut entry, Call of Duty 3 is still a far more interesting title both narratively and thematically when compared to the outright uninteresting and forgettable equivalents in Big Red One. It’s simply a far more balanced product at a foundational level, and the one easiest to recommend to the average player. But even more so, Call of Duty 3 feels like the first time that the series has found its identity. Rather than feeling like ‘just’ an alternative to something like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty 3 takes its place as a far more cinematic, high-octane experience that whilst isn’t my favourite on the console, easily is the most smoothed out, satisfying experience.
Let’s do away with the preamble - I’m willing to bet a decent amount of you reading this have already read my reviews of Call of Duty: Finest Hour and 2: Big Red One, so I don’t expect I need to reiterate the strange history of Call of Duty on the PS2, with them being ‘demake’ ports then direct ports of the PC games. The biggest surprise within this unofficial PS2 trilogy is the fact that Call of Duty 3, unlike the first two games, isn’t a straight port of the original PC version of the game, nor an alternate experience to its parent titles. For the first time on console, Call of Duty 3 IS the original version of the game. Seemingly due to the game’s tight developmental timeline - with Treyarch getting less than a year to develop the title - they must’ve realised developing Call of Duty solely for a suite of consoles rather than additionally doing PC was a more profitable endeavour. The decision to stick with Treyarch for the next big entry of Call of Duty was certainly a good one, as the third main entry in the series really does feel like the one that began to really develop the bombastic, nearly over-the-top action that has practically become synonymous with the franchise.
Our World At War
Now, as crazy as it is to say this about Call of Duty of all things, beyond having serviceable gameplay, I’m looking for how it depicts and honours the tone of humanity’s darkest days. My biggest problem with Big Red One was its sole focus on a division of US troops making its way through various theaters of the Second World War. It wasn’t exactly a happy-go-lucky experience, but it felt a lot more ‘America-hoorah!’ then I otherwise prefer. It paled in comparison to Finest Hour’s sobering, rather dark depiction of warfare across both the Western and Eastern Europe fronts. When I discovered that Call of Duty 3 falls more into the format of the original game I was delighted. Instead of focusing on a sole division, the story jumps between the perspectives of both American and Canadian divisions operating in the open throughout France, but also French and British operatives engaging in guerilla warfare within occupied France. It’s certainly a game depicting a far smaller scale than either of its two predecessors; the entire game takes place within the liberation of France following Operation Overlord, but it delivers in spades in creating a more ‘complete picture’ in regards to the French theater of the Eastern Front from beginning to end. It bookends itself swimmingly, as Finest Hour and Big Red One kind of ends with that part of the war still ongoing. At the end of Call of Duty 3 the war against Germany isn't over, but at the very least, France has been saved.
But back to how the game *feels*, something which is core to the overall experience of any Call of Duty game for me. War in Call of Duty 3 is perpetually depicted - as it should be - as a dirty, dangerous, and soul-evaporating endeavour. It feels less like an action movie, and more like a genuine depiction of the war.There’s very little celebration or jubilation in regards to warfare depicted within this game; casualties amongst the various squads are frequent, battles are dingy, brutal, room-to-room and street-to-street affairs, and disaster consistently nips at your heels. I had nothing but bad things to stay about the American cast of Big Red One, but whilst I never really learnt the names or whatnot of the American counterparts in 3, the weight of war and death that begins to drag them down by the final missions is positively heartwrenching to witness, conveyed in some really, really solid voice acting. Voice acting was still a somewhat blooming art in the realm of video games at this time, and I’m realising that this is maybe one of the earlier games that I can place as having - whilst not stellar or super realistic - didn’t feel too over-the-top or silly, as it could frequently be in previous games (especially Finest Hour, with its ridiculous Russian faux-accents).
Overall, whilst the vibes never quite hit moments like the Battle of Stalingrad from Finest Hour, this was still the earliest Call of Duty I’ve played that feels like it has the iconic, large-scale set pieces the series has become synonymous with. The first two games felt very ‘game’, whilst this begins to embody the ‘Hollywood movie’ aesthetic, thankfully not to the detriment of the game’s general atmosphere. However, whilst the expanded scope of the game is far more enjoyable to experience then Big Red One’s sole point of view, the fact is it still bounces around various, unrelated subplots rather than having the straight, linear campaigns Finest Hour provided isn’t quite to my taste. It just ends up with me forgetting specific soldiers' identities or what targets/locations they’re currently after, but this is a Call of Duty game - a pre-Modern Warfare Call of Duty game, at that - so the narrative isn’t quite what I’m here for.
Consistency, At Last
But of course, Call of Duty’s gameplay and gunplay is the foundation these games (at least for most people) are judged on, and there isn’t really much to critique in regards to the fundamentals in either direction. Of all the FPS series of the last two decades, I’d say Call of Duty, sans perhaps Halo, has remained the most consistently *good* shooter, especially in the realm of more realistic FPSs, and I feel that’s pretty much always been the case since Big Red One. Compared to that, CoD 3 just feels that little bit tighter, little bit more solid. Previous games I’d complained that my shots didn’t feel like they were constantly landing or were just overall inaccurate; here, everything that was designed to be accurate felt so, whilst more spammy weaponry, like the Bren, felt useless until I was up in a foe’s face, and *then* felt devastating. But the bottom line is that the base gameplay hasn’t fundamentally changed since Big Red One; but if I hadn’t pretty much played these three games back-to-back-to-back I don’t think I’d have particularly noticed any real difference between the latter two entries at all. If I have to be honest, I was starting to get just a little bored of the game towards the end of my time with this game, but the fact of the matter is that Call of Duty games were never meant to be played chained together in such a way, and so I don’t think it’s fair to really dock points because of those particular thoughts.
The variety of levels are the best in the PS2 trilogy, no doubt. Whilst, obviously, the boots on the ground, ‘generic’ (non-prejorative) gameplay remains the bulk of the experience, the contexts, objectives and environments in which they occur are kept varied enough that it’s barely an issue. Sometimes it’ll be the standard ‘push forward at all costs’, whilst others will throw endless waves at you as you try to clear specific objectives. This also ties in with Call of Duty 3 having a variety of point of views from different nations, with each of them almost feeling like they have a bit of a different genre to them. The American missions generally take place in larger-scale settings, taking towns by siege and whatnot, whilst the French/British missions almost had a stealthy, isolated vibe to some of the levels to really sell the guerilla warfare premise. Diegetic isn’t quite the word I’m looking for, but the way these elements feel like they blend together, mission and tone, really worked for me. In regards to the different styles of missions, to some, the amount of ‘defend this point’ stages and encounters are perhaps a little overwhelming, but as someone who loves that kind of ‘last stand’ style of gameplay I couldn’t be happier. Having an entire level where your fellow army is being utterly devastated by the Germans, being forced step by step as your defences crumble one after another until relief finally comes is probably my highlight of the entire game. Those Polish campaign missions are *really* good, y’all. The visual variety is also kept at a really strong level; whilst there’s a lot of the bombed out cities and whatnot you’ll always get in any military FPS, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of industrial and woodland locales I was battling through. I do miss the snowy Russian levels, though, but I’m very biased towards snow.
Quick Little Annoyances
Then again, just because Call of Duty 3 is doing some different things to its predecessors, it’s not always the enjoyable kind of different. These days, Call of Duty is chock full of quicktime events to better swell the idea of these campaigns feeling like an action movie, and Call of Duty 3 really feels like the birth of that ideal, though these mostly come in the form of throwing a heaping of low-octane quick time events at you at frequently annoying times. You’ll be randomly wandering through occupied buildings, turning a corner, and you’ll be beset upon by a German who’ll leap upon you and grapple you into melee combat. You’ll slap some buttons, maybe spin some analog sticks, and you’ll fight him off. It’s genuinely quite cool and exciting the first handful of times, but the fact that they’re all *exactly* the same makes them wear out their welcome very, very quickly. Similarly, certain missions will have you arming bombs or fiddling with gears or whatnot, and again, you’ll be spinning analog sticks or spamming buttons, and whilst in isolation these are… fine, I suppose, in the game’s more difficult sections having to repeat them just makes the entire mechanic feel repetitive and ancillary to the overall experience of the game. The stage “Falise Road” has a fairly intense, dramatic set piece where you have to defend yourself from four different directions where you have to do a number of these QTEs. Maybe I just suck, but the fact I died more then a couple of times and had to pull out these QTEs again and again made me kind of hate them very, very quickly.
Saying that, the difficulty does overall feel a lot more balanced than Big Red One. Even on Hard Mode, the time to kill from incoming fire feels that little bit higher, which can feel like a godsend in the more dramatically high-octane moments of the game. If your aim is right, though, you can 100% shred through enemies, which is thankful considering how many damn enemies they’ll throw at you from time to time. There are a handful of moments that still feel a bit unfair. These are normally set pieces that pit you against literal endless waves of foes until you complete an objective, whilst also providing you with little in the way of cover and even less in the form of checkpoints. It never felt quite as bad as similar moments in the previous games, because the checkpointing is just a whole lot better.
At the end of the day, whilst I might prefer the overall tone and ideas presented by Call of Duty: Finest Hour - even if many of those more gameplay ideals fell flat on its face - Call of Duty 3 is the perfect balance between the mismatched tones of the first and second games, whilst being a positive improvement over everything that came before. It’s the first time Call of Duty really feels like it has its own voice, and whilst not everything that would become synonymous with Call of Duty in the years that would pass - namely, its QTEs and narrative chops - is quite up to snuff, it’s still probably the best Call of Duty in this era of consoles, and probably amongst the better FPS titles on the PS2 as a whole.