Call of Duty Classic Review

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What's most apparent is how little the Call of Duty series has actually changed over its five subsequent iterations. Almost every element is already in place here, from the fondness for bombastic set-pieces to the rather pompous quotes propping up the loading screens. This is not a game of great narrative depth or insight, only really a few beats away from the daft run-and-gun action of Wolfenstein, so these snatches of war-related wisdom from Churchill, Hemingway and Voltaire seem even more incongruous.

There are three tales, following US, British and Soviet forces, but these play out one after another rather than being shuffled up like later titles in the series. As always, these stories are little more than an excuse to drop you into short, sharp encounters with numerous enemies. It's lighter on the first-person situational gimmickry than we're now used to - there are no sections where you have to shoot enemies with a crossbow while riding on a jet-ski inside a blimp that's crashing into a volcano, for instance.

The hunt for Vladimir's lost contact lens provided a welcome distraction from the brutality of war.

But it's easy to see why it so bowled people over six years ago. An early car chase is exhilarating (if hampered by the way your soldier can still rotate through a complete circle while leaning out of the window - perhaps he's just a torso on a turntable) while story sections use the first-person view to put you in high-concept scenarios like a glider crash-landing behind enemy lines or bluffing your way aboard a German battleship.

The giddy core of the game is right there from the start. This isn't a series that evolved into a blockbuster - it was born with explosions and blood and oh my god that plane crashed right next to me; thrill-seeking already thrashing around in its DNA. The upside to this is that Call of Duty Classic is still an absolute blast to play, albeit one with a lot more rough edges than you might expect.

It's nothing special graphically, and often looks downright ugly. Character models are bloaty and unconvincing, and the rudimentary AI is even more transparent than in its current ancestors. Race ahead of the game's crude signposting and you can find NPCs standing rigidly waiting to be activated by the presence of someone else or, worse, find empty areas that magically fill with enemies when the correct trigger point is hit.

In the first real story level, for example, you can dash across the first field without waiting for your fellow paratroopers to land. Do this, and you can reach the house at the end and lob grenades through the window before the German machine-gunners even exist, let alone get a chance to shoot you.

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