Call of Duty: United Offensive [PC]

Last year, Call of Duty blitzkrieg'd onto the scene, featuring Band of Brothers-inspired WWII action in the vein pioneered by EA's Medal of Honor series. This wasn't surprising, considering that developer Infinity Ward was composed of ex-MOH developers. The new expansion once again takes place in the European front from three different country's point of view. There's the Battle of the Bulge for the Yanks, the British invasion of Sicily, and the terrible battle of Kurks for the Soviets. Those and a handful of new multiplayer modes make up the bulk of United Offensive, and it all means a lot more fun for WWII first-person grognards.

The new missions still use the series' trademark scripting. Levels feature lots of comrades and enemies, and the game models the sheer chaos of combat well. However, one can't shake the feeling that the player is constantly being led by the nose. This helps make you feel like you're in a war, but there's this constant pressure to do what the game wants you to do. Improvisation is impossible. This lends the otherwise excellent missions a "puzzle-like" feel that breaks the game's realism.

Overall, the missions aren't quite as good as the original game. There's too much trial and error and not enough "surprise and react" going on here. Still, some areas are improved. Enemy and friendly AI has been enhanced; bad guys snipe, go prone, and react well to suppressing fire.

Mission variety is very good. On the U.S. side, the player is tasked with several harrowing missions, most of them huge, where you have to take over a town, lay siege to a bridge, and commandeer a chateau, and then hold it against overwhelming opposition. As the Brits, the player begins as a B-17 gunner on a daylight mission knocking Messerschmidts out of the sky and eventually takes on Italian Fascists. Kursk showcases the often forgotten fact that the Russians had it worst during the war. The Russians get a cool bonus mission that lets the player drive a tank.

Multiplayer is enhanced with 11 new maps (a nice mix of urban and rural settings) and three new modes of play. Capture the flag, a domination style mode that requires teams to capture and hold key locations, and base assault, which challenges one team to conquer and the other to hold them off. New weapons include a wicked flamethrower and vehicles like the jeep. After winning a round or two, players gain ranks that let them rain fiery death on their enemies by calling in air strikes. Very cool... unless it happens to you!

With United Offensive, Call of Duty takes another step away from pure action and goes toward being a first-person wargame. It's realistic, it's chaotic, it's immersive, it's beautiful, but players are going to have to get used to a lot of trial-and-error gameplay. So it's teeth-grindingly unforgiving at times, but war is, indeed, hell.