United Offensive is the expansion for the original Call of Duty, developed by one of the teams which eventually became Treyarch. Oh, and I totally forgot to take any screenshots until the very last mission, which was a rubbish shot anyway. My bad.
So, I guess I missed this one out when I did my Call of Duty round-up before, and I've been on a bit of a CoD streak lately, so thought I would just give you all some quick thoughts on it. It follows the same structure as its predecessor, with you playing a soldier from each of the three main Allies, America, Britain and the USSR, so there's little surprise there. However, it does go to some more interesting theatres than the original, with Bastogne for the Americans, the Netherlands and Sicily as the Brit, and the Steppes of Russia and the battle of Kursk for your Russian dude.
There's not a major difference between UO and the original in terms of game-play or graphics. They do add a sprint button to be fair, but that's not a massive paradigm-shifting change now is it. But it's solid, that's pretty much the best way to describe it. It takes the familiar CoD formula, and makes a decent expansion with it. It also has quite possibly the best turret section of all turret sections ever, as a gunner on a B-17 which comes under attack from the Luftwaffe. Notable mainly because it actually lets you run around the plane. Think of the one from World at War, but without the quick-time events and way better in almost every possible way. It's cinematic, it's intense and it's atmospheric.
The battles also seem to be a whole lot bigger than they are in the first game. The American and British campaigns still cover relatively small battles, but the Russian one goes to a massive extreme, with quite possibly the largest battles of all the games. This also means that UO is tough. I mean, replaying this and the original, they are not easy games, and UO goes to an extreme on this front. It's not frustrating per sé, it's just that some sections can present you with a tough problem to crack. Generally it's the defensive missions, of which there are three to my memory, as you're invariably a small force fighting a much larger German contingent. But, it's still pretty cool just to take part in fairly large battles really.
There's not a lot really more to say on UO to be quite honest. It's a good game, not as good as 1 or 2, and maybe on a par with 4 (which, having replayed it, is not as good as I remember it being). To be honest just get the game of the year edition of 1, which comes with UO. It'll last you a decent while (unlike the later games) and runs on pretty much anything these days (although in the past I've had troubles with Vista so be warned). Probably have a more interesting post next week, but I've been preoccupied on Civilization V again.
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