Tuesday26 September 2006
The Wii version of Call of Duty 3 will take full advantage of the machine's motion-sensitive controllers - although, incredibly, the missions will be the same as those of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
"We were quite surprised that we didn't have to adapt the single-player game," says the World War II shooter's executive producer Marcus Iremonger. "There are a few minor changes we had to do, but not gameplay-wise. It works pretty well: you're not in any way hindered, compared with a normal controller."
Iremonger admits that the Wii controller is "very, very different" but says that "it feels very natural". Developer Treyarch had little difficulty in deciding how to configure the Wii-mote for its highly anticipated threequel.
"You pick it up and it's obvious how to play it," continues Iremonger. "You have this pointing device. Well, what are you going to do with it? You're going to aim a weapon. This whole synergy between what you are doing in front of your television and what your character appears to be doing on-screen is the biggest strength of that platform."
As well as the main on-foot sections, the game will also feature a slew of vehicles and, for the first time in the CoD series, hand-to-hand 'battle actions'. "With the vehicles, you'll be holding the controls and mimicking it as if it was a steering wheel. And with the battle actions, when there's a struggle between you and a German soldier over a weapon, you will be really struggling, physically, with the controller back and forth until you can shake the guy off."
The main concession to the Wii interface, says Iremonger, is that "you have to keep things relatively simple on it. You need to make sure that, if you're adding in gestures, they're easy to do. We're trying to make sure we don't create some crazy flurry of movement that people aren't going to be able to do quickly enough."
Click here to read our exclusive hands-on preview of the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 3.
