Call of Duty 3

Overview

Call of Duty 3 is a 2006 first-person shooter developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It is the third major game in the Call of Duty series and came out for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii. It was a launch title for the PlayStation 3 and the Wii in North America, Europe and Australia, and it is the only major Call of Duty game that never came to PC.

It is a historical shooter that plays much like the game before it. You fight alongside computer-controlled squadmates against enemies who take cover and fall back to better positions. You can stand, crouch or go prone, carry two guns, and for the first time throw live grenades back at the enemy. Health comes back by itself when you are not taking fire, and the edges of the screen turn red when you are low.

The campaign is set in Normandy in the summer of 1944 and has 14 missions. You play American, British, Canadian and Polish soldiers across four Allied campaigns, in the fighting around the Falaise Pocket. Missions include manning a tank, marking targets for air strikes and defending a hill. Call of Duty 3 added scripted close combat fights and button-press actions such as arming explosives.

Multiplayer on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 supports up to 24 players in a match, while the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions top out at 16. It was the first Call of Duty to offer two different play styles, including a Normalized mode meant to help console players adjust to the small kill boxes of the earlier games. The Wii version has no online multiplayer.

Activision showed the game shortly before E3 2006, and Treyarch built it on its own NGL engine. A senior producer on a later Treyarch game said the team had about eight months to make it. It was Treyarch's second Call of Duty after Big Red One.

Reviews were generally positive on every platform except the Wii, and the game won several best shooter and sound design awards, including a sound design award at the 10th Interactive Achievement Awards. Looking back, critics have been harsher and say it brought little that was new after the two games before it. Some point out that vehicles, bigger multiplayer maps and button-press melee fights, which later games kept, started here.

It was among the best selling games of November 2006 in the United States and sold about 1.1 million copies there by the end of the year, and 2 million by early February 2007. By November 2013 it had sold 7.2 million copies worldwide.

Screenshots

Game details

Genres

First-person shooter

Developer

Treyarch

Publisher

Activision

Series

Call of Duty

Engine

Treyarch NGL

Composers

Joel Goldsmith

Writers

Marc Guggenheim

Producers

Jason Blundell, Nick Falzon

Directors

Richard Farrelly

Modes

Single player

Yes

Local multiplayer

No

Online multiplayer

24

Release dates

Editions

Buy this game

Trophies

Platinum

0

Gold

0

Silver

0

Bronze

0

Total

0

Points

0

DLC

The three downloadable map packs (Champs, Valor and Bravo) were released for Xbox 360. No PS3 map packs are listed.

Playable today

Reception

Aggregates

Outlet	Platform	Score	Scale
Metacritic	PS3	80	100

Critics

Outlet	Score	Scale
IGN	8.8	10
GameSpot	8.2	10
Eurogamer	7	10
G4	3	5

Staff and cast

Staff

Role	Name
Developer	Treyarch
Publisher	Activision
Director	Richard Farrelly
Writer	Marc Guggenheim
Composer	Joel Goldsmith
Producer	Jason Blundell
Producer	Nick Falzon

Notes for collectors

• It is the only main Call of Duty game that was never released on PC.
• The PS3 version has no trophies. It came out in 2006, about two years before PS3 trophies existed, and no later patch added them.
• The PS3 release was staggered: North America on November 17, 2006, Europe on March 23, 2007 and Japan on June 14, 2007.
• Each of the four campaigns has its own squad: American, British with the French Resistance, Canadian and Polish.
• There are five known disc IDs for PS3: BLUS30012 (North America), BLES00016, BLES00017 and BLES00021 (Europe) and BLJM60027 (Japan). Sony lists no patches for any of them.

Credits

Region

US

Time to beat

about 8 hours