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Call of Duty (released on October 29, 2003) is a first-person shooter video game based on the Quake III engine. This war game simulates the infantry and combined arms warfare of World War II. The game was produced by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward.

In September 2004 an expansion pack to Call of Duty was released titled Call of Duty: United Offensive. It was produced by Activision and developed by Gray Matter Interactive. The Apple Macintosh version was ported by Aspyr Media, Inc. In Late 2004, the N-Gage version was developed by Nokia and published by Activision. Other versions were released for PC, including Collector's Edition (with soundtrack and strategy guide), Game of the Year Edition (includes game updates), and the Deluxe Edition (which contains United Offensive expansion and soundtrack).

A sequel, Call of Duty 2, is currently in development by Infinity Ward to be released in late 2005. There are also Call of Duty games developed for consoles, but with separate storylines, such as Call of Duty: Finest Hour by Spark Unlimited and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One by Gray Matter Interactive and Treyarch.

Overview

Call of Duty is similar in theme and gameplay to Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. It includes various singleplayer campaigns and missions, from the perspective of a soldier by the name of Pvt. Martin of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, Sgt. Jack Evans in the British 6th Airborne Division and Special Operations Executive, and Sgt. Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in the 13th Guards Division.

The American campaign begins with Pvt. Martin parachuting into France on D-Day, with echos of Band of Brothers and the Brécourt Manor Assault, and ends with a rescue mission at a Prisoner of war (POW) camp. The British campaign begins Sgt. Evans assisting in the capturing of Pegasus Bridge, as seen in The Longest Day, and ends with a sabotage mission of a V-2 rocket base. Evans also helps sabotage AAA defenses around the Eder Dam, in preperation for a followup Dambusters Raid (Operation Chastise). The Russian campaign begins with a scene almost identical (with very similar dialogue) to a scene in the movie, Enemy at the Gates, and ends with the raising of the Soviet flag above the ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin.

Famous actors like Jason Statham and Giovanni Ribisi, as well as voice actor Steven Blum, contributed to this game with their voices in the roles of Sgt. Waters (British), Pvt. Elder (American) and Cpt. Foley (American). Michael Giacchino, who previously worked on the Medal of Honor franchise, composed the soundtrack.

The weapons portrayed in this game include the M1 Garand, the Kar98k, the Mosin-Nagant, and the Lee-Enfield (the four main long rifles of World War II) along with the Thompson submachine gun, MP40, Sten and Pistolet-pulemet submachine guns. The machine guns featured in the game are the Bren, Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and the Sturmgewehr 44. The game's two pistols are the Luger and Colt M1911. The Kar98k, Mosin-Nagant, and Springfield 1903 rifle are also featured as scoped sniper rifles. Various other weapons, including Flak cannons, Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons, M1 Carbine, FG 42, and MG42s are used.

Call of Duty also has a feature called "Shellshock", which when the player is close to an explosion, their vision is blurred, time moves slower, and sound is muffled, similar to some scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan.

Multiplayer modes

The multiplayer mode of this game is similar to that of many first-person shooters; with arbitrary respawning in deathmatch mode, selection of weapons at the start of the game (and the possibility of selecting to respawn with a different weapon), and relatively fast-paced gameplay.

Also, the multiplayer game includes the following modes of game play:

Behind Enemy Lines

Players are automatically assigned to either the Axis or the Allied team. The Allied team is "behind the lines". There are just a few Allied players (one or more) who must evade the Axis and survive as long as possible. Staying alive for a certain amount of time adds points to your score. The Axis must hunt down the Allies via compass markers and eliminate them. When an Axis player successfully finds and kills one of the Allied team, the players switch teams, and the hunter becomes the hunted. The winner is the first player to reach the specified points threshold, or has the most points when time runs out.

Deathmatch

In Deathmatch, players attack each other in a free for all format and at the end of the time limit, the player with the most points(kills) wins.

Team deathmatch

Players are on one of two teams and attack the other team. The game ends at the end of a specified time limit. The team with the most points(kills) wins. A notable feature of Call of Duty team deathmatch is that in contrast to most team deathmatch modes of first-person shooters, where the teams will always spawn in the same place; the spawns change depending on the location of teammates. Thus, it is possible to drive the enemy out of a position and have teammates begin to spawn there; at the same time the enemy will begin to spawn in a different place.

Retrieval

The retrieval gametype is a team mode similar to classic capture the flag modes except the object must be retrieved within a round meaning players who die are out of the game until the following round. If all the members of either team are eliminated or the object is retrieved then the round also ends with the winning team receiving a point. The mode is generally played with numerous rounds on each map and the team with the specified amount of wins according to the server wins the match.

Search & Destroy

This round-based gametype sees players split into attacking and defending teams. Players who are killed will not respawn until the following round. A round ends when all the players of one team have been eliminated or an objective has been completed, the winning team received a point and these points are used to decide the winner when the game is played over multiple rounds. The objective for the attackers is to plant a time bomb on a compass-directed target. The bomb starts its countdown once planted next to the target. The defenders must protect the object either by keeping the bomb from being planted or defusing it while it is counting down. All official maps have two separate objects which can be attacked, although only one bomb may be planted. Players plant or defuse the bomb simply by pressing the use key.

Headquarters

Headquarters was added into the game with the version 1.2 patch. The mode consists of teams of players attempting to capture radios which appear around the map. A radio is captured by standing by it when no enemies are nearby. The team who last captured the radio holds it and gains 45 points per 45 seconds (time and point rate can be changed). When the opposing team destroys the radio, a new, neutral radio appears elsewhere on the map. The winner is the team with the most points when time runs out.

Modding

The game has a number of modifications of various levels of content and development. See List of Call of Duty mods.

Awards

• 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards
  • Excellence in Audio
• 2003 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
  • Game of the Year

See also

• Free First-Person Shooters
• first-person shooters

External links

• CallOfDuty.com (official site)
• Infinity Ward site
• Collection of reviews of Call of Duty
• IWNation.com(Official Infinity Ward forums, fan site)
• Activision site
• CallOfDutyElement.com (fansite)
• Category at ODP - A valuable collection of information not available at Misplaced Pages
• Punkbuster.com (official site)
• IGN PC review

Admining resources

• FPSadmin.com (forum)
• Boodizm.net/cod/ (CoD scripting section)
• PBbans.com (anticheat community)
• TheCheatPolice.com (anticheat community)
• Call of Duty Game Servers (multiplayer server provider)
• ClanCon (distributed administration tool)

• 2003 computer and video games
• Electronic sports
• First-person shooters
• Multiplayer online games
• Activision games
• Windows games
• Apple Macintosh games
• N-Gage games