Release Date: August 28, 2007
Developer(s): Danger Close, Digital Illusions CE Los Angeles
Publisher(s): Electronic Arts
System Requirements:
- OS: Windows XP or Vista 32bit (64bit versions not supported)
- CPU: 3.0GHz Intel or +3800 AMD
- GPU: 6600GT / X1300 Pro ATI with at least 128MB VRAM
- RAM: 1GB
- Storage: 9GB
- Other: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound
Graphics:
Upon launching the game an option setup menu comes up on the screen and here you get to select your resolution (that ranges from 800x600 to my native 2560x1440). You can choose to enable Vsync and adjust a handful of settings. You can only adjust the graphical settings in this menu, outside of the game. There are not graphical setting options when the game is running.
Player models are decent looking and so is the surroundings; buildings, vehicles, guns and so on. The overall visuals are still pretty decent looking for game that is push 17 years.
Explosions are a bit lackluster in visual department. Throw out a grenade and you hear the audio cue of it exploding, but the actual visual aspect of it exploding isn’t that gratifying. When you plant charges on objectives and they explode, they are much more satisfying to see. As it goes the explosions are kind of hit or miss.
Audio:
Spoken audio is great. You can hear the urgency in the voices while you’re going through your intro to parachuting as you jump from planes. Guns have okay sounds to them, but overall they do sound a little weak. The sniper rifles are very quiet when you fire them, almost like they have a silencer on them. Then you have the explosions, they are sorely lacking unless you’re right up close and personal with them.
Gameplay:
Starting the campaign you are first tasked with selecting a difficulty level of the game, there are three options:
No other information is given about how each difficulty actually impacts the game, but based on a quick test of each left me to feel that increasing the difficulty means you take damage easier, the bad guys are a bit more accurate and harder to kill.
Before you start a mission you have a loadout screen. Here you can choose what weapons you want to carry into combat; a primary, secondary and sidearm. Once you make your decisions you soon find yourself on a plane as you get closer your jump location. When you do jump your main goal is to land in or at least near the green smoke, these areas are considered safe zones. You’re less likely to land in the lap of the enemy at these spots. Once you hit the ground you and your NPC companions will work on progressing your way through the level to reach and complete your objectives.
Combat feels so-so. You don’t feel like you’re actually in combat. Everything just feels muted, almost like it was after thought in a first person shooter game based around WWII. When I’m firing my guns they clearly have kickback, but they don’t feel like there is any actual real feedback – the gun kickback animation just feels like it goes through the motion that it kicks back and that is all.
As for weapons there are a wide variety of them that you can take into the mission and that you can pick up on the field as you need. The more you use a weapon and get kills with it the faster you will level up the weapon and receive a bonus. For example, as you use the shotgun you will receive buckshot ammo that is an upgrade to the ammo it starts off with. This ammo is a replacement, there is no need to try and swap out ammo types. The buckshot ammo gives you slightly more powerful shots. Some weapons do have a secondary attack that can be unlocked as you level up your weapons.
When you do level up a weapon the game goes in super slow motion as the commendation award is brought up on the screen and you’re also shown the bonus for the weapon that you’re granted. The weapon is also auto-reloaded
The atmosphere feels hectic as you’re trying to move from cover to cover in hopes to stay alive and kill the bad guys, but at times if you’re not moving forward and just killing it seems the bad guys keep coming and coming. The only way to stop them from spawning over and over again is that you have to be the one that pushes forward to trigger the game that you are progressing. Your NPC paratroopers help shoot and kill, but the story/progression doesn’t move forward if you’re not the one doing it.
One of the big upsides to this game that I do like is the ability to drop into any location you want as you’re parachuting in. You can aim for the green smoke zones that are safe or you can drop right into the thick of things to see if you have what it takes to survive. This drop in mechanic also allows you to decide on how you want to handle the objectives and in what order you want to do them.
As you traverse the mission areas you will find “skill drops” where you can try to test your parachuting aiming and landing skills. Some of these locations will put you into niche areas that are harder to get to on foot and sometimes will find you a fun weapon to use such as a Panzerschreck.
Health is handled by finding first aid packs - you cannot mistake them, a white bag with a big red cross on them. Your health bar has 4 parts to it, each one can be lowered by a small amount to right down to the nub and as long as that part is flashing, if you can find a spot to hide from taking more damage that portion of your health bar will refill on its own.
Time to complete is roughly 4.5 hours from my personal playthrough on normal difficulty. If you’re a completionist it may take you at least 2 playthroughs to level up all weapons and attempt to earn all medals/badges and you may get 10-12 hours.
Controls:
You get your standard FPS controls; WASD for movement, LMB to shoot, RMB to aim (ironsights) and so on. You can remap all the controls to better suit your needs should you want to. Always a great addition to a game.
While the controls are responsive things feel slightly off, slightly slow. Adjusting the mouse sensitivity can increase the camera speed for you as you look around, but that doesn’t change that the overall feeling of controlling your character is kind of hampered, especially when aiming down the ironsights. After a bit of playing you should become used to it.
Scoped rifles have an adjustable zoom and as you’re looking through the scope if you hold the SPACE BAR to hold your breath so you can steady your aim.
If you're up close and personal or simply run out of ammo or are between clips you can melee using the "F" key. Melee is not an instant kill on Nazis from what I've found from testing with any old gun you're lugging around. However, the third upgrade to the shotgun gives you a bayonet that's mounted under the barrel and using the melee attack with the bayonet on the shotgun is a great way to drop Nazis with one hit.
Story:
You play as Boyd Travers (fictional character), a paratrooper of the US 82nd Airbone Division. Your job is to drop in and complete the tasks at hand with the rest of your division. You will have 6 missions to get through that will take you through a handful of locations in Italy, Germany and France.
Replay Value:
Low.
If you’re just into this for a single player game the replay value for this is just not there and sadly that is all that this game has to offer anymore because upon researching I have come to find that EA has officially shut down online multiplayer servers. The multiplayer servers were taken offline on the 16th of February back in 2023.
Singleplayer campaign just isn’t enough, at least not for me, to want to have this be a game that I will come back to for any kind of replay value.
Technical Info/Issues/Bugs:
First issue I ran into was getting the game to install off the disc.
The game will not install after it asks for the game key. I enter in the game key and a couple of windows quickly flash across the monitor screen and nothing else happens. After a bit of digging I found out that if you’re using Nvidia and have the current PhysX from Nvidia installed, the game freaks out and stops trying to install because it wants to install the version of PhysX that came with the game. Steps to resolve the issue:
- You need to go to your Add/Remove Program and uninstall the current version of Nvidia PhysX
- Run the install for the game
- Then update the Nvidia PhysX to the most current version that you can do by running the install of your current Nvidia driver or by downloading the most recent PhysX version here.
Clipping of shots through walls, this becomes irritating. It usually happens more so in doorways, but don’t be surprised when you’re hiding behind the corner of a brick wall and shots are still clipping through and hitting you.
Melee, you can easily succumb to death from melee, especially if you land near a bad guy. They will pummel you to death extremely fast. If you’re lucky enough to survive it’ll most likely be with almost no health.
A few times I got to see some rubber banding on character models, they do give you a good laugh at times (see image below)
Availability:
The game is readily available for digital download from
EA if you care for a digital version. You can also find a physical copy for the PC off of sites such as Ebay or Amazon.
Rating/Score:
- Graphics: 4
- Audio: 3
- Gameplay: 3
- Controls: 4
- Story: 3
- Replay Value: 1
- Technical Issues/Info: 3
Overall rating: 3
Conclusion:
I remember this game being more entertaining years ago when I first played it. On the other hand I did play the game online with my brother so maybe me remembering the gameplay being more engaging was due to the fact that him and I were playing together. Singleplayer is just okay. The game feels like a second class citizen when compared to Call of Duty 2 that released almost 2 years earlier. I’m pretty sure I’m rather bias against this game because as I play it I cannot help but compare it to Call of Duty 2.
One of my favorite things to do is to cook grenades and try to time my throws so the grenades explode right as they get over the heads of my target area. I’d have to say that that is probably my only favorite thing to do. The next closest thing is to blast guys at close range with the shotgun, you do get some pretty decent ragdoll kills if you’re up and close when you shoot them. The rest of the game is mostly a mediocre FPS.
If you’re looking for an okay FPS from the WWII era and want to kill 4 to 6 hours this game should be decent enough to entertain you, but probably not for more than the single play through. I don't know if the game is worth $10 on EA, but if you ever see it on sale for $5 or less, it just may be a worthwhile purchase to kill a few hours.
View attachment 342542 View attachment 342543
View attachment 342544 View attachment 342545
View attachment 342546 View attachment 342547
View attachment 342548 View attachment 342549
View attachment 342550 View attachment 342551
View attachment 342552 View attachment 342553
View attachment 342554 View attachment 342555
