Call of Duty: United Offensive Expansion Pack - PC (Deluxe) Reviews

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As I stated in an earlier review "Call Of Duty" is one of the best First Person Shooters I have ever played, and the unquestioned best in the World War II sub-genre of FPS's. So you could imagine my excitement when "United Offensive" was announced, a 13 mission single player expansion with revamped multiplayer features. I was sure to pick it up the day it came out, and I haven't stopped playing it since.

Let's start with the single player missions. Right off the bat it's clear this expansion's campaign was intended for those who played through the original and were looking for a more prominent challenge. Since I hate it when people reveal later missions in the game I wont tell you what to expect later on, I can however tell you this. In the first mission you find yourself on patrol with members of the American 101st Airborne in the woods of Bastogne. Bam, out of nowehre you're suddenly caught in the middle of a relentless German push foward, for those of you who may not be World War II buffs this is part of the infamous Battle Of The Bulge.

All of the original elements of the inthralling single player from the first one are still here, the AI still responds well, both enemy and friendly. You'll without a doubt find yourself barking out orders to your comrades as if they were standing right next to you, and your heart will race as you charge enemy positions in a bloody attempt to secure strategical areas. As with the original you play through three campaigns as the Americans, British and Russian forces in different theaters of operation. You may have seen previews in which you take control of a gun turret during a British bombing mission over Holand. I can tell you now, this is without a doubt one of the most intense moments of the game, and it provides a nice break from the squad based infantry combat. You'll also get to drive tanks in several missions as in the original, all of these missions are equally amazing as well, but as I promised I will reveal no more, you must find out for yourself.

Now to confront the issue of the completly revamped multiplay. I've been an online gamer for years, I've played everything from Warcraft II to mostly all of the Half Life modifications. The original Call Of Duty's multiplayer was fun at best, but didn't provide a lasting quality, it was something you played every once and a while. United Offensive is a much, much different story. For starters the developers made better levels, complete with jeeps and tanks at your disposal. This alone is amazing, I can't tell you how much fun I've playing with others in the short time this game has been out. Nothing beats a tank push with 4 or 5 of your teammates, while the rest of the team advances on the flanks with jeeps and infantry. All of the games new weapons, including the Flamethrower, are available for use, and this time around you can put the Bazooka to good use against an advancing enemy Panzer. For those of you concerned about balancing issues fear not, the game is easy enough for new players (noobs) to pick up and provides enough of challenge for veterans to more than enjoy. One of the key features is the ability to call in an airstrike on an enemy position with your binoculars, though to do this you must achieve a certain high score and also be one of the highest ranked members on your team. Another great addition is new modes of gameplay such as base defense and capture the flag, both multiplayer classics now brought to the COD universe. To call the multiplay for this game an improvement from the last would be an understatement, it almost feels like a different game.

To sum it up the Call Of Duty team has done it again, and then some. This expansion more than satisfied my hunger for a great expansion to an amazing game. Keep your fingers crossed that this trend will be kept up because if it is we're looking at even more dropping games...no, no, even more jaw dropping experiences in the future.

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I really enjoyed COD and played it through several times. The missions in this expansion pack however seem overly scripted and frankly, poorly designed. It's as if the A team of level/mission designers was devoted to the new console version of the game, leaving United Offensive to the second string. Many of the missions are laced with hackneyed "sandwich" puzzles, where, to proceed you have to run around looking for the hidden bazooka or panzerfaust, and then return 3 and 4 times to the same place in order keep retrieving the same device (or ammo for it) in a frustrating exercise in tedium. If I wanted to play a cheezy puzzle game, I'd have bought Myst 12 or Kings Quest 53. Some missions are so poorly conceived that you end up back-tracking through half the level to talk to a guy who only tells you to pick up the documents in the room you've already searched, just in order for a new section to open up. Makes you wonder how well they tested the thing. Another mission leaves you with some guy yelling at you for "coordinates" without ever telling you how to find or convey such a thing.

All that said, COD United Offensive is still good fun. It's just not up to the level of the original when it comes to single player mission design.

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There are few games that give me a lasting impression. Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: United Offensive. No, I didn't forget the original Call of Duty although it's a great game, I liked the whole MOH series better than COD. United Offensive on the other hand is a work of art! UO could have easily been a stand alone game and I think it should have been. For only $30 you get allot over the original. 11 new maps, new weapons, a new rank system in MP mode and last but certainly not least UO adds vehicles! We're talking tanks and Jeeps. You can also control flak cannons too.

That may not seem like much on the surface but adding those few elements completely changes the game. The part that really changes the game are the vehicles and the new ranking system. You start out as a private and have very little ammo and you "level up" by killing then you gain more ammo. That includes more grenades (frag and smoke) and even something called "Satchel Charge". A satchel charge is like having 3 or 4 grenades explode at one time. Finally when you reach the highest level which is a Platoon Sergeant. When you reach that rank, you can call in a artillery strike which will decimate everyone (friend or foe) within the blast radius which is considerable!

Driving the vehicles are very pleasant and easy to operate! A medium tank can handle two occupants. A drive which operates the main turret and a submachine gun within the tank and a secondary person to operate the main machinegun. A Jeep can handle 3 occupants. A driver, a passenger which operates the machinegun and another passenger riding shotgun who can fire is own weapon.

Let me just say that Call of Duty: United Offensive is the best multiplayer game out so far this year by far! The single player mode it excellent too of course but it's the MP that really shines.

The only real competition COD: UO has is Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and Half-Life 2. If your a FPS fan then you definitely want UO! Just remember that you must have the original COD to play UO!

Update:

Since I wrote this review, I've had the chance to play Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source and the MP demo to Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.

UO is much much better than MOH: PA in oh so many ways. It has some high points but the point is that UO owns it in nearly every category!

Comparing it to Counter-Strike Source or CSS is a little bit more difficult because CSS looks SOOO good now that Valve has updated CSS to the Source engine. That said, COD: UO still beats it; albeit by a very slim margin. Of course a true FPS gamer would buy both ;).

If you like FPS games at all you need to buy Call of Duty: United Offensive. Again don't forget that you need to own the original Call of Duty in order to play United Offensive since UO is an expansion pack.

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I really enjoyed this game. What made COD so great is also found here in this game.

You have very intense action, great graphics and sound, and pretty good missions. The action was so intense at times that it almost wasn't fun because you couldn't really enjoy the scenery.

I see some reviews talking about how they don't like it because it is scripted. News flash: Every game is scripted. Only the games that are coming out now (though not released yet) like Half Life 2 and Medal of Honor Pacific Assault are not gonna be scripted. As for all other like RTCW, MOHAA, and Doom 3, they are scripted. So don't let that deter you because this games action never stops.

My only real complaint is that the SP is too short. You have 13 missions, but no mission last much more than maybe 30 minutes. You have maybe 6 hours of game time here not including the reloading you will have to do when you die. And this game is hard. That is probably why most don't like it. It is hard on every setting.

As for MP, it is a little better now. The aiming of the gun for SMG's still sucks, but the maps are better designed and a lot better to play. Some of the new weapons are cool too. They also have a sprint key you can use now to run quickly for a few seconds until you are "rested". The new modes aren't anything great, but are still fun. If they would have just fix the aiming, this would be even better.

Overall, this expansion pack rocks. If you haven't gotten the origianl COD yet, wait unitl they put both COD and this expansion together and buy it. It will be worth the money. If you have COD, get this expansion. You will only be dissappointed in how short the games is.

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this expansion pack is amazing and provides great improvements to the regular call of duty game. don't buy it for the single player buy it for the amazing multiplayer. the graphics and movement have improved greatly. you can now run instead of just walk, and use smoke bombs, a great improvement. the weapons feel better the action is fast-paced and more realistic.

however, it's not perfect. many of the maps are so-called "tank maps" because they revolve around the use of tanks and jeeps. the jeeps are pretty cool, but these are a detriment to the game. you're better off not playing any tank maps at all. tanks are useless in that if you get in one, you'll almost instantly be blown to smithereens. in addition, the tanks keep spawning so this lame idea of "fun" is repeated ad nauseum. also the maps are much bigger and you spawn far away from the action, so there's too much walking or driving in UO.

other negatives sniper rifles are much much less useful than in regular COD. why? well, people can sprint and the faster people move, the harder they are to hit. also, smoke bombs cloud the sniper's vision. (still, the smoke is simply amazing).

one more negative artillery. artillery is a feature where when you reach a certain rank, you point with your binoculars and planes drop huge bombs on the enemy. for the most part it's cool, except there's simply too much artillery and when one team uses it on the other team's spawn point, the game is virtually over, because you can't stop from being killed by it. this is a stupid oversight on the part of the makers of UO.

other positives new types of games, especially capture the flag, my personal favorite, greatly add to the fun, instead of playing old boring team deathmatch. also, make sure you turn your search filter on to search for "mods" so you can play new modifications and maps that people created. this adds to the freshness and excitement of the game. also turn "auto-downloads" on so you can download these new maps when you click on the server.

despite the negatives, i still play this game almost every day. even though i've played it for countless hours, it's still sooo fun. i think this qualifies as the best video game created to date.