Call of Duty: Big Red One

Last night I cracked open Call of Duty Big Red One. I made it through the first mission before I had to stop. At this point I wasn’t too impressed.

It seemed as if you have a very specific, narrow path to take throughout the mission. It starts with you having to run down a hill into a small village where the enemy is rolling in from the apposite side. You cannot chose the path in which you want to attack. There is the roadway that you have to travel down, which is all out in the open. Now I stopped and saw my men heading down the roadway, it looked more like The Green Mile than a strategic path for an experienced soldier like me. Now, I don’t know about you but I’d rather take the unbeaten path down the side that is littered with a blown up truck and tank. Hmm, something to hide behind as a Panzer tank is pelting me? Sounds like a good idea. But no, the invisible fence won’t let you go the direction any sensible life loving person would go.

The path you HAVE to take isn’t well defined either. I found a few times when I seemed to be shooting some fools and they just kept coming and coming. Then I realized I needed to stand in a specific spot to get my men to continue to the next point. So, you eventually get to a building to take cover where you call in an air strike. Stay alive and the mission is over. Very short mission, just when I started to get into it.

So all in all, visually it was good. Audio was great, game play was decent. But the map layout was pretty lame. The map looked good but was lacking in freedom to roam.

I started the beginning of the second. The beginning was cool, starting on a transport. Your gunner gets taken out and your next to die. Later in the level I entered a building to take out some blond hair blue eyed idiot with a machine gun, who was gunning down my guys like he was at the county fair shooting ducks. Okay, so you bust down the door and there is a hallway the snakes around. So I’m thinking, “I know where the gunner is so I’m gonna avoid all these other doors and head straight for the one he’s behind.” But the funny thing is, the door won’t open. Since I’ve only been playing the game for a minute or two, I pause and scramble through the manual to see how to open doors. Hmm, that’s not an option. Then I realize my guys didn’t follow me this far, so I head back down the EMPTY hallway. And after a few turns there are my guys, now getting nailed buy some dudes in a room (a door I went right by).

Well now I’m in a pickle. Five of my guys have been standing at the door for three minutes or so, dukeing it out with three dumbo’s in this room. Now, I can see them, but I can’t shoot them. Why, you ask? Cause my guys who are really bad shots will not give me room to take a shot. For some reason friendly fire seems to be a bad thing. I mean, if I survive who cares about anyone else right? So I do what any true military hero would do. I bulldoze my way through my guys Rambo style, run up to each of the three goofballs in the room and take’em out. BLAM BLAM BLAM.

It gets worse. Now that I have cleared the room my guys come in to my rescue. Then, “Shh, there’s someone on the other side of this other door”. The door flies open, there’s a hole bunch of them on the other side. But wait, the hallway looks familiar. That’s the far end of the hallway I was just in not ten seconds ago. The one that was EMPTY. SO LAME.

After I took a minute to laugh, I took out the group of goons in the hallway. All the while my guys couldn’t take out one of them. But I don’t know who shot worse because the goons couldn’t kill any of my men either.