Call of Duty 3

Call of Duty 3 took the series into the final months of World War II - the player goes through the liberation of France, the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, and other key operations from the perspective of American, Canadian, British, and Polish soldiers. Treyarch, the studio that has since held the role of the series' second main developer alongside Infinity Ward, built the game on a familiar recipe: scripted, cinematically directed battles where the player is guided along a narrow corridor of action. The campaign also offered, for the first time in the series, man-to-man duels controlled by quick button sequences and simple commands for squadmates, who can be signaled by gesture to advance or provide cover, meant to give the battles greater dynamism and cinematic flair. Over its course, the player alternates between the roles of soldiers from four different Allied armies, meant to underline the multinational character of the campaign in Western Europe, and besides infantry action, there are occasional passages involving vehicle operation.

The PlayStation 2 version was released together with the other editions for what was by then an aging console generation and had to cope with hardware significantly weaker than what the new PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 offered. Textures are noticeably coarser, soldier models simpler, and the battlefield's colors less vivid; the game also runs at lower resolution, with more limited draw distance and sparser vegetation on the battlefield. The number of players in multiplayer and the scope of the maps are more modest compared to the next-gen versions, yet it's still a complete port with the same campaign and main modes, just with a noticeably more modest audiovisual coat befitting the older console generation.

Call of Duty 3 is also the only main installment of the series that never came out on PC - Activision decided at the time to leave that platform to the previous installment only and shift its attention to next-gen consoles. The PlayStation 2 version, together with the ports for Xbox, Wii, and PlayStation 3, thus remains the only way to still play the game today, albeit in the technically most modest form of all the released editions.

Why play it: For players wanting to play the only main installment of the series that never came out on PC, this, together with the Xbox, Wii, and PlayStation 3 versions, is the only available way to access this game, albeit in its technically most modest form.