Games that feature open world travelling, multiple quests and story lines to take and physics puzzles are so dull. You are often left totally directionless, they have too many bugs, the puzzles are too hard to solve, make you bored and often run slow on the almighty 360 and PS3. These titles just are not fair and should be pulled from the shelves. Somebody, somewhere, has taken notice of this problem and finally released our wanted solution!
Review of Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm
Released earlier this week was the latest war game that will redefine the genre like never before. The Calm Before the Storm is the first title in the Duty Calls series and sets a uniquely compelling and very heart touching story line that is also open to many more sequels to follow in the franchise.
Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm is set in modern Russia, in the unchanging war scenario where a terrorist who possesses a nuclear missile bomb has horrifically taken the United States hostage. The unsung hero, the player, is the only man on Earth with the shooter abilities in his thumbs to take down, on his own, this terrorist group and save the world from complete nuclear annihilation. When duty calls, he responds, with a vengeance.
First up, we would expect a game in a series like this to cost all of those who keenly follow the series around $120 for the standard edition and upwards of $250 for the packages that come with the game in a tin and a few pieces of cheap junk you won’t actually find any use with, as well as a paper back book with the same concept art printed in it as what you had seen online for months before the game was released. Much to our surprise, the PC version of Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm has been released for free. Actions by the developers such as this shows that they still remain loyal and dedicated to PC gamers because if it were not free then there would be a community outcry and it would be pirated anyway.
The visuals of the game are mind-blowingly realistic. In fact we must say that this is the most realistic any game could possibly get. Accurately captured at FULL HD 1080P and complete 60FPS are all the jagged edges on objects, motion blur when you slowly turn your head around, the field of view that would normally only be seen if you were using binoculars to look around, depth of field and bloom effects that take place so often in photography that they must be real, linear paths to follow through the world, and realistic portrayal of modern day Russia. Duty Calls is not going to be subject to racial or overly general stereotypes that are too often presented in other war shooters, such as the Call of Duty franchise. Much like high class journalism, all that is presented in Duty Calls is fact and taken very seriously.
Thankfully this game supports Xbox 360 controllers, because playing shooters with a mouse and keyboard is incredibly backwards, too complicated, and so very 1990s. In fact, this game convinced us to show the Razer Mamba to the bin and play everything with the Xbox controller from now on. Every armchair gamer these days knows that aiming awkwardly with a thumbstick is where it is at and there is no parallel to compare this experience with.
With an orchestral epic as a soundtrack playing through the game there is not a moment where the action ever feels like it dies down. The opposing force is always jumping out from behind crates with nerves of steel or paratrooping down at the player from the cloudy sky.
For those who care so much about ranks and stats, you have not been left out in the cold with this amazing game. Duty Calls not only offers a revolutionary rank, class, and stat tracking system in their Call of Duty killer multiplayer, but this system is included in offline single player as well. Now there is a no need for you to worry about not having your ranks and kill streaks go unnoticed when you are not killing your buddies on PSN or Live.
Voice acting in the game is amazing. The talent really drives the story along so emotively. Enemies ferociously introduce themselves while they pop out from cover, are very adaptive to the combat situation and behave just like real people.
Been shot? Not to worry, just stay to the side of the action for a moment while the bullets fall out and wounds heal up instantly. Much like realistic combat once again. From the first mission of Duty Calls we were mesmerised by how intense getting shot is, and an in-game announcer hypes up the action to be even more worthwhile and satisfyingly fun.
For bonus gamer score there are rewards for gamers with the super keen eye or a really good 100inch TV screen compatible with their system. Carefully hidden in the levels are parts of enemy intelligence, disguised as every day objects. Without spoiling the surprise, we will say that finding all of them in the first level gives a credible award.
The cutscenes are incredible. This is movie direction quality stuff. Duty Calls is entertaining enough in the cutscenes for those who are not playing the game to feel like they are just watching a really good war movie. They appear frequently in levels to give your thumbs a break from all that intense action they were previously doshing out on the enemies of the United States. Kindly, during scenes in the game where a quick action is required to take an enemy out who is moving too quickly, the game will change into slow motion. Watching your bullets move in a style unlike that we all saw in The Matrix in 1999 is another reason why this game will be the Call of Duty killer. Quick time events in games are the future of gaming. You have the power to control a win or loss in a cinematic part of the game, and that has to count for something.
At the end of Duty Calls it really brought a tears to our eyes. This was not just because the somewhat short, but amazing single player had come to an end, but because of the spectacular twist the player will get caught up in. It is a much more positive ending then the one put in Call of Duty 4, because bombs going off in your face and the United States failing at the invasions of another country is simply not possible.
The multiplayer is so great that it is yet to be implemented in the game. This should not actually be a disappointment because we all know that buying a game on launch day means you have to expect a few bugs. A patch is due out some time this month with the promise to put the multiplayer into that game that was accidently left out of the final published version. No multiplayer is better than laggy multiplayer in Black Ops, right? When multiplayer arrives this will make Duty Calls the game of the year.
All over this represents the perfect 10/10 game that the hardcore gamers have wanted since they were born, or even before they were born. Duty Calls has been a game well worth waiting for and should be bought, not pirated. $0 is not much to pay for a game these days compared to the $120 launch price of everything else. The breathtaking visuals, the professional voice acting, the realistic setting and heart touching story makes it our game of the year, and the year has only just begun. War never changes, but game representations of them can only get better.
