When Duty calls

One genre that doesn’t suffer from a lack of choice is the 1st person shooter and sometimes I think how little things have moved on from Doom, graphics aside of course.  So as life is to too short to play cookie cutter shooters it got me wondering whilst playing Call of Duty 3 last night why some compel me to finish and others I start yawning even before I’ve finished the first level, after all the mechanics are all pretty much the same…pick up guns etc, run around and shoot stuff before it shoots/eats you. 

The best way I can describe it is ‘atmosphere’.  Does it in some small way make you feel as if you’re there?  As much as a video game can do without the smell and the body parts.  It doesn’t have to be much just something that causes you to pause and think that something else apart from the graphics, sound or gameplay are at work here.  I had it with Doom, Quake, Half Life, Halo and GRAW and more recently with Call of Duty 2.  CoD 3 does the same thing in spades, the start of the game captures exactly the experience I mentioned and despite the odd bug/physics/AI it is an intense a shooter as you can get.  On the 360 it looks stunning, almost movie like on occasions and the sound is incredible.

So get it not for the graphics, sound or gameplay but because for a moment at least you’re not just in front of the TV.