Recently I moved to Russia and since I have little to do in my free time now I purchased Call of Duty 1, and United Offensive. On XBox back in the States I played Big Red One and Finest Hour. To be honest, I LOVE the control, the ATTEMPT to portray armies other than just American and German, and the general “feel” of the game.
Now we can always nitpick the inaccuracies but what really pisses me off is the ongoing tendency of designers to rip-off movies to get their ideas. Hell, if they actually did some RESEARCH instead of renting Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the Gates, they wouldn’t HAVE half of those inaccuracies. Big Red One did Omaha Beach a little better since it takes longer to finish the mission, and there is a possible time lapse when your landing craft gets hit. But in the original CoD and to a lesser extent Finest Hour, the Stalingrad level is COMPLETELY RIPPED OFF from Enemy at the Gates for some reason.
Strangely I remember reading some interview with the makers of Finest Hour claiming that they actually WENT to Volgagrad to do research! Seeing as how the opening scene of that level is near-identical to Enemy at the Gates I think they should have stayed home and read Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad. Maybe then they would have realized that the 13th Guards division was rather well-equipped when it crossed the Volga.
The other problem with Soviet missions in these games is that the designers don’t seem to realize that the USSR had special units other than anonymous foot soldiers and tankers. Yes Virginia, they had Marines, special naval commandos, shock infantry(with body armor!), NKVD partisan leaders, and paratroopers. Maybe if they discovered someone like Viktor Leonov they wouldn’t have to keep rehashing the same battles in every incarnation of the game.
WWII nerds like us shouldn’t let these jackasses get away with obvious plagiarism in games anymore. They wouldn’t get away with it in the film industry.