The first game in the Call of Duty series was developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision in 2003. Call of Duty uses the id Tech 3 engine to recreate famous battles of World War II, and uses AI-controlled team members to simulate squad play.

At the time of Call of Duty‘s initial release the general concensus was that it was a decent shooter, and did bring some new ideas to the FPS genre, but few thought that it was a classic, and no one really anticipated how big the franchise would later become.

Gameplay-wise, in campaign one you are Private Martin, a United States’ soldier active during the D-Day invasion of Normandy on 6th June 1944. Your missions range from pathfinding, search and destroy, to protect and hold, and your ever-changing objectives are shown whenever you hold down the Tab key.

During battle, you can switch out your primary weapon with any other that you find, including using machine gun emplacements and Panzerfausts (German anti-tank rockets).

There’s a British campaign in act two, and the third act is a Soviet campaign. So a fairly lengthy single-player game.

Playing Call of Duty now, the action is still decent and the challenge – on default dfficulty – is still considerable. This is a game that you’re definitely going to die in – a lot. In that regard, the developers have managed to capture some of the risk of a real battle, in that if you stick your head above cover at the wrong time, you’re likely to get killed…

This very first instalment in the Call of Duty series has been described by some as the weakest, and that may be the case. That doesn’t make it bad, it just means that the sequels were almost always better. Call of Duty is still worth playing today, though. Especially if you like WWII shooters.

More: Call of Duty on Wikipedia
Steam: Call of Duty on Steam