The United Offensive expansion pack includes several new weapons in its multiplayer mode; at least one per nationality (American, British, Russian and German). Anyone who is familiar with the first game knows how critical weapon selection is to success. Some weapons are better for certain types of tactics. If you are blitzing a bunker, you’ll want to have a highly mobile sub-machine gun but you’ll be forced to give up accuracy. If you are defending, you may select a weapon with more accuracy like a sniper rifle.

In this expansion, all of the nations have the ability to select squad support weapons prior to spawning. These weapons take a significant amount of time to deploy (considering you have to unfold the tripod and set it on something solid) but once you do you have a devastating machine gun that will rip through your opponent’s offense like a hot knife through butter. Your character also comes equipped with smoke grenades that let you bypass areas that are being covered by sniper fire. These, like the fragmentation grenades, are automatically included in your character’s equipment.

In addition to the weapons your character spawns with, there are several new weapons you can pick up from around the maps. The most important of these are the rocket launcher type weapons. Since the multiplayer now lets you command tanks and jeeps, the defense will use these to stop you in your tracks. There are also satchel charges that you can sneak under a tank’s tracks to blow it up from underneath (provided you can sneak up on it) and there are flamethrowers that can be devastating when used to clear out enemy bunkers.

One of the reasons this type of game does so well is because it is fundamentally based on historical events. Actually participating in the epic battle of World War II can be an exciting and emotional experience. United Offensive adds several new missions and maps that are all representations of real battles or cities and manage not to duplicate anything in the original game. After playing the game, it’s unlikely that you could be considered a World War II historian, but you may recognize names like “The Battle Of The Bulge” and be a little more informed about how and where it went down. The Battle of the Bulge just so happens to be one of the thirteen new single player missions divided among American, British and Russian campaigns. All of these missions are fun in there own interesting ways, but one mission in particular was so fun to play that it deserves special mention. After completing the first campaign as an American, you assume the role of a British soldier named Doyle. Your first job as Doyle is manning a turret on a B-17 bomber on its way to bomb the city of Rotterdam. You navigate through the cramped space inside the bomber and take over the dorsal turret. Once inside the turret you have a breath taking view of the sky and the other bombers and escort fighters that make up your squadron. Soon you are attacked by what appears to be the entire Luftwaffe (German air force). You do your best to defend your bomber against the endless onslaught of German aircraft, sometimes making repairs to the bomber itself, sometimes changing turrets to meet attacks from different directions. The whole time the other bombers in your squadron are being shot down and all you can do is watch helplessly as they plummet to their deaths. It is exactly this kind of realism and emotional impact that makes games like Call Of Duty stick with us long after we’ve put them down.

But you can take the notion of realism too far in a game. The best example of this is the finale mission in each of the three campaigns. Maybe Gray Matter wanted to make the final missions more challenging for its hard-core audience, but they ended up going overboard. Each of the finale missions is essentially impossible without lots and lots of loading saved games. It is understood that war is harsh and chances for survival are slim, but it is still a video game. Someone with a decent amount of skill at FPS style games should be able to complete the missions without having to save every 30 seconds. It’s very realistic to be in a situation where wave after wave of German soldiers are storming the chateau you are holed up in. It’s also very realistic in war to just be screwed. How can you be expected to stop Germans from getting to the house if immediately after you kill one, the nine next to him take aim and end you? So you basically complete the finale missions cowering in fear in a secluded room and only venturing out when you are given a specific objective. It’s not a very heroic way to end your character’s story, it’s frustrating, and it devastates the immersion you experience on all the other missions.

Call Of Duty: United Offensive includes four new character abilities that have an incredible impact on how enjoyable the game is. These abilities exist in both the single player and the multiplayer modes and greatly improve the game experience. In United Offensive you now have the ability to sprint, while standing, for a limited amount of time. This ability is crucial for being able to rush from cover to cover when in the middle of a firefight. It adds a level of realism to your characters movement that after using it makes the original game hard to deal with.

Second, you can now “cook off” grenades before you throw them. Cooking off simply means you can hold on to the grenade while it’s ticking to make it go off in the air or near where it hits the ground. Other games have done this and I’m glad to see Call of Duty put it in. With out this ability, the grenades are essentially useless. You can see the guy throwing one at you and have several seconds to get out of the way. Now, if your grenade aim is on par and you can properly guess how long the grenade needs to fly (still not easy) you can be pretty damn lethal.

The third new ability in COD: UO is the ability to call for artillery support. In the single player game, there are missions where you are required to sneak through buildings in order to get line of sight on heavy targets. You get into position, call for fire support, and watch the exciting show as fiery hell is rained down on the target.

The single player mode takes advantage of scripting to control when you are allowed to call for artillery support. The multiplayer mode can’t really do that, so they figured out another way to control when you can call for artillery. The server keeps track of how well you are doing with respect to the rest of the members of the server by assigning you a rank (based on the number of points earned). Only when you reach the rank of platoon sergeant, are you given the ability to call for artillery support. Once you have this ability, you can clear out a bunker or destroy a wave of enemy armor. Gray Matter did it right; they intentionally designed it this way so artillery couldn’t be called in by just anyone. It has to be someone serious enough about the present game to have achieved the required rank. You wont see Internet tools on your server calling for fire support every five seconds because they think it’s funny. It just doesn’t happen. When it does happen it is awesome. It is deliberate, it is devastating, and it is incredible. Just try not to get stuck in the middle of it. Artillery shells can’t tell the difference between friends and foes.

Finally, Call of Duty: United Offensive lets you drive vehicles, tanks and jeeps to be specific. With the exception of the Heavy tanks (which do sick amounts of damage, but are incredibly slow) all vehicles accommodate multiple people. For instance, if you are driving a jeep, you can stop for a minute and let a buddy jump in the back and man the machine gun. A third guy can jump in the passenger seat and use his normal guns or mount a squad automatic weapon on the dashboard. In the tanks, one person drives and fires the main gun and a second person sits in the commander’s spot and fires the commander’s machine gun. Although they aren’t considered vehicles, you can also man various anti-armor flak cannons that are located near many of the bunkers. With these you can fend off attacking tanks and jeeps while your offense tries to gain ground.

In addition to the original game types, United Offensive now offers three new ones. Domination, Capture the Flag and Base Assault. In Domination, there are five to seven areas on the map that have flagpoles in them. The object of this game type is to capture the different zones by running your flag up the flagpole. If a team manages to take over all of the zones the game is over and they are the winners. If the time runs out, who ever has the most zones is the winner.

Capture the Flag is a typical implementation of this classic game type. You infiltrate the enemy’s base, steal their flag and deposit it on top of yours. This of course means you have to go get your flag if the enemy has it before you can successfully capture theirs.

Base Assault is my favorite of the three because it requires the use of armor. Each team has three bases. In each base there is a bunker you must breach and then destroy with explosives. You can see the health of the bunker on the heads up display and the bunkers show up on the radar. You attack the bunker with whatever heavy weapons you have available: satchel charges, tank rounds, artillery strikes, bazookas, you name it. After hammering on a bunker for several minutes, you successfully breach its exterior defenses. Your next task is to get inside, plant charges and defend your handiwork. The enemy forces will try to disarm your explosives because if they fail and the base is destroyed, they can no longer spawn at that base making the launch of a successful offense that much harder.

Overall, United Offensive is a well-rounded expansion to an already stellar game. If you liked Call of Duty and you haven’t yet purchased the United Offensive expansion pack, you should get it. If you are into first person shooters (single player or multiplayer), or love WWII action games, you should get the original game and the expansion pack because it is just that good.