The original Call of Duty game was such an improvement on the Medal of Honor series. I will give credit where credit is due though, the opening mission in Medal of Honor: Frontline was pretty incredible and I liked the pacing, but overall I disliked the "lonewolf" American soldier who single-handedly won World War II. I know this was in the time when programming friendly A.I. wasn't easy, but still, the opening two levels gave you this great mental image of fighting alongside other soldiers, but after you beat the second level and board the sub, you're pretty much on your own for the rest of the game.
Call of Duty really fixed all of that with the squad and the memorable characters, like Sgt. Moody. There was one early mission where you're with a throwaway Private and Sgt. Moody and you're driving along the French country side in some little blue tin can car performing drive-bys on Nazis, it's easily one of my most enduring memories of the series.
Anyhow I just finished "playing" the commercial release of Dear Esther, a remake of a source mod that came out in 2008. It's not really a game so much as it is an experimentation in storytelling through the minimal use of gameplay. The only thing you really do is walk around this seemingly abandoned island while there's a voice-over narration at moments that spell out the plot. You pretty much just walk around and listen to this story, while trying to piece together what it's all about. It's a neat experiment but without much to do gameplay wise I can't help but think it's really limiting its audience. It worked well as a free downloadable mod, but the polish done for the commercial release really doesn't warrant the $10 price tag. If it sounds intriguing, download the mod and "play" it, and then if you really want to check out the commercial version, wait for it to go on special. That said though, there are some really unsettling moments that do a great job of building tension without the need of slavering monsters and disembodiment.
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