Call of Duty

Call of Duty (released October 29, 2003) is a first-person shooter video game based on the Quake III: Team Arena engine. This war game simulates the infantry and combined arms warfare of World War II. The game was published by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward.^[2] It was accompanied in September 2004 by an expansion pack, Call of Duty: United Offensive, which was produced by Activision, and developed by Gray Matter Interactive, with contributions from Pi Studios. The Mac OS X version of Call of Duty was ported by Aspyr Media. 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 in the USA. In Europe the soundtrack is not included).

Since November 12, 2007, the game and its sequels have been available for purchase via Valve’s content delivery platform, Steam.

Gameplay

Call of Duty is similar in theme and gameplay to Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and like the latter includes various single player campaigns and missions. However, unlike Medal of Honor, the war is seen not just from the viewpoint of an American soldier but also from the viewpoint of British and Soviet soldiers, and the fact that you can aim with ironsights instead of using cross hairs.

The game is somewhat unusual in that throughout the single-player mode, the player is joined by computer-controlled allies who range in quantity from two infantrymen (in some of the British missions) to an entire regiment of tanks (in the Soviet missions). The computer-controlled allies will support the actual player during the missions (notable in this is the AI’s effectiveness compared to other games like Medal of Honor). They also further the game’s goal of providing a truly immersive and realistic experience; that is, soldiers in World War II were usually part of a larger group, as opposed to the “lone wolf” seen in video games such as Wolfenstein 3D. However, ironically, despite the game slogan ‘No One Fights Alone’, there are many levels which see you set off by yourself without any comrades. This was most notable in the British and Russian campaigns.

The American campaign begins with Pvt. Joey Martin of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division parachuting into France as a pathfinder of the 101st Airborne Division on D-Day for the Battle of Normandy, echoing the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. The series continues with a night assault on the town of Sainte-Mère-ÉgliseBrécourt Manor Assault, and two special missions to rescue captured British officers. after reuniting with his squadmates, a defense of the town against a counter attack by German Panzer units, a car chase through German lines, the

The British campaign begins with Sgt. Jack Evans of the British 6th Airborne Division and Special Air Service, assisting in the capture of Pegasus Bridge, as seen in The Longest Day, sabotage the German battleship Tirpitz and ends with a sabotage mission of a V-2 rocket base. Evans also sabotages anti-air defenses single-handedly around the Eder Dam, in preparation for a follow up Dambusters Raid (Operation Chastise).

The Soviet campaign begins with the Battle of Stalingrad, first with weaponless scenes very much reminiscent of the opening of Enemy at the Gates, a 2001 movie about the battle, then simulating close combat in an underground sewer system and a recreation of the battle for Pavlov’s House through the eyes of Pvt. (later promoted to Sgt.) Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in the 13th Guards Rifle Division and 150th Rifle Division. The Soviet campaign continues with the liberation of Poland, followed by a role as a tank commander. The Soviet campaign ends as an infantry soldier in Berlin with the raising of the Soviet flag above the ruins of the Reichstag. After raising the Soviet flag, a short video of the aftermath of the War is shown.

Actors Jason Statham and Giovanni Ribisi, as well as voice actor Steven Blum, provided voice-overs for the roles of Sgt. Waters (British), Pvt. Elder (American) and Cpt.Foley (American), respectively. Michael Giacchino, who previously worked on the Medal of Honor franchise, composed the soundtrack.

Call of Duty also featured “shellshock” (not to be confused with the psychological condition of the same name), where when the player is close to an explosion, his vision is blurred, the player and time moves slower, and sound is muffled, similar to some scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan.When you shoot in shellshock it is also slow motion and you are very prone to injury.

Multiplayer

There are a total of six multiplayer game modes in Call of Duty: Behind Enemy Lines, where a few Allied soldiers must stay alive for as long as possible; Deathmatch, a free-for-all, every man for himself; Team Deathmatch, a deathmatch game with teams; Retrieval, a game similar to capture the flag; Search and Destroy, a game similar to Counter-Strike’s bomb defusal; and Headquarters, added into the 1.2 patch where radios are held by different teams.

Reception

Call of Duty received critical acclaim, upon its release, with a 91% average on Metacritic^[6] and GameRankings.

Call of Duty won “Game of the Year” for 2003 from several reviewers. It was the recipient of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 2004 “Game of the Year” award, defeating games including Command & Conquer: Generals, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, and Rise of Nations. The game also received “Computer Game of the Year” and “Computer First Person Action Game of the Year”, and was nominated for “Outstanding Innovation in Computer Gaming”, “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition”, and “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design”.

Call of Duty was also nominated for “Best Game” at the 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards. While it did not receive that award, it did win Infinity Ward the “Rookie Studio of the Year”. Chuck Russom was also presented with the “Excellence in Audio” award for his work on the game.

Review website IGN rated Call of Duty 9.3 out of 10, with reviewer Dan Adams saying “You have to love a game that glues you to your seat and keeps you interested… A thrilling piece of software that action fans should grab a hold of and love fiercely.” His only negative critique was on the short length of the game, a flaw which many reviewers pointed out.

A unique feature of the multiplayer was the “Killcam,” through which a defeated player could view the last 5 seconds of their life through the eyes of their opponent who just killed them. This was received favorably by critics, who saw this as a method to identify hackers.

Sequels

See Call of Duty (series) for information on the series as a whole.

Because of Call of Duty’s success, it spawned numerous sequels. Call of Duty 2, was developed by Infinity Ward and was released in October 2005. Some Call of Duty games were developed exclusively for consoles, such as Call of Duty: Finest Hour by Spark Unlimited and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One by Gray Matter Interactive and Treyarch. Call of Duty 3, the first numeric sequel to appear on consoles only, was released in November 2006 and developed by Treyarch and Pi Studios. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC. A handheld version was also produced for the Nintendo DS. Another handheld game, Call of Duty: Roads to Victory was released March 14, 2007 for the PlayStation Portable, the N-Gage, and the Pocket PC. On December 3, 2007 it was announced that Call of Duty 5 would be published by Activision Blizzard. The Call of duty Real-Time Card Game is currently under development and is planned for a Fall 2008 release.

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Counter Strike

Counter-Strike (commonly abbreviated to CS) is a tactical first-person shooter video game which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jess “Cliffe” Cliffe. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Anthology and Counter-Strike on Xbox. Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2.

The game is almost entirely based on the dynamically streamlined multiplayer experience activated via Steam, and is currently the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy.

Counter-Strike was developed first as a Half-Life modification. Therefore named “Half-Life: Counter-Strike.” The original version was a 3rd-party Half-Life modification, but since then it has grown into a commercial mod and later advertised as separate game in itself. It still uses and runs on the Half-Life game engine and is based on its unchanged structure.

Version history

On 24 March 1999 Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits.

On June 18, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further “beta” releases.

On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up. Counter-Strike 1.0 was released around Christmas 2000.

On January 25, 2003, a world wide competition was held by Valve and hosted by Dell. Numerous Dell desktops and laptops were awarded in the competition which attracted over 10,000 participants. The competition was held over a two week period, with the winner (“b0b”) being announced on February 15 on Valve’s website.

Gameplay

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team (or becomes a spectator). Each team attempts to complete their mission objective and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, usually at opposite ends of the map from each other. A player can choose to play as one of eight different default character models (four for each side, although Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as “freeze time”) to prepare and buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or walk/move (a player can still take damage, having the player drop from a certain height during freeze time was the only way somebody could control the players starting “HP”). They can return to the buy area within a set amount of time to buy more equipment (some custom maps included neutral “buy zones” that could be used by both teams). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; players who were killed begin the next round with the basic default starting equipment.

Standard monetary bonuses are awarded for winning a round, losing a round, killing an enemy, being the first to instruct a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting the bomb.

The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, kills, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds). The scoreboard also indicates whether a player is dead, carrying the bomb (on bomb maps), or is the VIP (on assassination maps), although information on players on the opposing team is hidden from a player until his/her death, as this information can be important.

Killed players become “spectators” for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names until they spawn (come alive) again, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and voice chat can only be received from live players and not sent to them (unless the cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). Spectators are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IPTeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This technique is known as “ghosting”.

Warcraft III

Warcraft III is a real-time strategy computer game released by Blizzard Entertainment in July 2002. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and it is the third game set in the Warcraft Universe An expansion pack, The Frozen Throne, was released in 2003.

Warcraft III contains four playable races:Humans and Orcs, which had previously appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II Tides Of Darkness, and the Night Elves and Undead, which are new to the Warcraft mythos.^[Warcraft III’s single-player campaign is laid out similarly to that of StarCraft, being told through all four of the game’s races in a progressive manner. Multiplayer mode allows for play against other people, via the internet, instead of playing against computer-controlled characters as is done in the single-player custom game mode.

The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including “Game of the Year” from more than six different publications

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Warcraft III

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (War3 or WC3 or RoC) is a real-time strategy computer game released by Blizzard Entertainment in July 2002. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and it is the third game set in the Warcraft Universe An expansion pack, The Frozen Throne, was released in 2003.

Warcraft III contains four playable races:Humans and Orcs, which had previously appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II Tides Of Darkness, and the Night Elves and Undead, which are new to the Warcraft mythos.^[Warcraft III’s single-player campaign is laid out similarly to that of StarCraft, being told through all four of the game’s races in a progressive manner. Multiplayer mode allows for play against other people, via the internet, instead of playing against computer-controlled characters as is done in the single-player custom game mode.

The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including “Game of the Year” from more than six different publications

For Information Visit Homepage here