In a Gaming Mood 3 - Shoot the Bastards

Some might say that shooting people is always a good idea. And true, it does have a tendency to solve problems from time to time. When it's not creating more of them. It's kinda like alcohol that way. Of course, shooting without any discrimination at all is never a good thing. Except maybe when those you're shooting are the Nazis.

Hail Friends, this is Drakai of the House of Nidhogg, and I couldn't find any good pictures from the first game so Call of Duty 2 will have to do.

Continuing the trend of firsts, Call of Duty was actually the first FPS I ever played. Sure, Medal of Honor was there as well, but I somehow tended to skip that. And I never even heard of Doom at that age.

The setup was pretty basic. You good guy, shoot bad guys. The bad guys were Nazis (well, German, but still)
, fitting the WWII theme of the game. And they were evil. Well, probably. I don't think any one of them was even named. But, again, Nazis. They probably deserved it.

They did have cool weapons, though.

The single player campaign was rather simple through both games. There were three parts: America, British and Russian. Set in beautifully pixelated versions of Europe and the Sahara. And there were also parts where you got to drive a tank. It... wasn't as fun as it sounds.

The sequel followed a similar story, if adding a little bit more of Africa and Russia. The campaign felt longer, at least. And both parts had some memorable missions.

Like the time you had to rescue a British soldier form a castle. Or the time you had to free another British soldier from a prison camp. Or the assault on a hill in Germany. Or... y'know, D-Day.

I actually wanted to put a few pictures of the player character getting shot here, but surprisingly there aren't any.

After the second game there was apparently another, but I only leaned about that one when number four was released. It was either that or they skipped a step. That one also might've been WWII, but I'm not sure. Then there was World at War, which featured not just German enemies, but also... Japanese, maybe? Asian in any case.

After that things got a more modern turn. The action moved to modern, urban settings, the enemies became some terrorist group or another, and the weapons followed suit.

I played through some of them, but I didn't care for them much. Most every shooter is in a modern setting. It was refreshing to actually have one set earlier in the 20th century. I hear the new Battlefield is before even CoD 1, but... we'll see.

I'm not done with these firsts. There's still a few more before I move on to other topics. So I'll see you a week from now with a new game that introduced me to... something. Or, if you really can't wait, Friday.