Call of Duty® (2003)

The shooting mechanics feel incredibly satisfying, which is a main aspect that sets it apart from other WWII shooting games.

📅 Date Completed: August 30, 2023

🏆 C Tier Game

TL;DR: The game really does show its age. While I can appreciate what it achieved, playing it 20 years later makes it hard to overlook its dated mechanics. Would have likely been a higher-tier experience for me had I played it much closer to release, but that’s all I can really grade it by.

🎮 Gameplay & Mechanics

This was the first time I played an FPS with a mouse and keyboard instead of a controller, which was a unique adjustment. The lack of sprinting is bizarre by modern standards, but the gunplay is still acceptable. Playing as three different soldiers, one from each country keeps the campaign fresh. The Soviet section stands out as the best part by far just because of the unique circumstances it puts the player in comapred to the other countries.

🌆 Story & Atmosphere

Having recently watched Band of Brothers and The Pacific TV shows, the game’s setting felt even more immersive. The campaign does a great job of portraying battles with chaotic moments. The Stalingrad mission where you start off with no weapon was the most memorable, and the game ends on a strong note. The storytelling is effective, making for a fun WWII gaming experience.

📟 Steam Deck Experience

I did not try it since it does not support controller inputs, so it probably wouldn’t work. I don't know.

🏁 Final Verdict

Recommendation: Yes but only on sale. Worth playing if you want to see how the franchise started out, but it was hard to fully appreciate the game in 2023.
Price Paid: $7.99
Worth It at That Price: Yes

Just a simple fun game Is all I can really put this. It's got some very cool moments and fun parts on this game and I can definitely see how this Is a Important game In the entire because duh It's the first game that started the franchise. My biggest gripes with this game Is the complete different health mechanic this game has unlike every other title. No sprinting In this game Is rather annoying. and that's about It I guess. But In the end, If you love the older cod games but haven't tried the first one, I definitely recommend trying It out.

Such a great classic! i love this series. Finally i totally played and saw the end . But it's just the end of beginning :D

I decided to relive some childhood memories, and honestly, I didn't expect the game to still look so good graphically. Some scenes, like when US soldiers open a hatch and take out a tank with a hand grenade, are truly timeless.

Fun fact: If you play on Veteran difficulty, the game disables medkits but still doesn't have health regen, so once you get hit, you're stuck with red health for the entire mission. 😆 That was a bit too hardcore for me, so I switched to Hardened—perfect difficulty for this COD. It's a great reminder of what games used to be like, and honestly, it would be amazing if this kind of game design made a comeback. 🙂

Also perfectly playable on Windows 11, you can even go widescreen with manual change in config :)

If you can get this on sale, GET IT.

The campaign is AWESOME - the gameplay is smooth and easy to pick up in the modern day.
I'd recommend making some changes in the graphics settings for modern PCs and monitors, as some guides will detail.

The campaign is an absolute beast - you start with simple training, so you think the first mission will be simple.
NOPE. You're thrown into the US invasion on Omaha beach in Normandy and (assuming you have headphones on) it is genuinely terrifying. Even though the graphics and sound (which can be improved in the settings) are eh compared to modern Call of Duty games, I've never played a COD campaign that felt this visceral.

Still, this game is not worth $20. The campaign is only a few hours long on the easy difficulty, and multiplayer isn't for everyone - it's a bit janky, and a lot of servers have a lot of mods.

I'd reccomend this game, but not for everyone.

Definitely worth experiencing for the first time, or just for nostalgia purposes but certainly not worth full price. Even the common discounted rate of £7.49/$10 is still pushing it.

There are a few entertaining missions, some frustrating ones and a couple that truly infuriate particularly on veteran, but on the whole the game is still very playable despite its age. The story is nothing special but its a good mix of action and plenty of gunplay that will keep you going for 6 or so hours.

I do think Medal of Honor: Allied Assault offered more in terms of variety and atmosphere but this is a superb and more action-focused alternative. £3.49/$4.99 would be a much fairer price though.

very nostalgic and good campaign

Maybe revealing my age a bit but this was my first Call of Duty experience back in the day on my family's Compaq home computer. I remember really enjoying the campaign and so I waited for it to go on sale to pick it up again 20+ years later to relive the nostalgia. The enemy AI is pretty inconsistent, there are a few missions involving "holding your ground until reinforcements arrive" that can be frustrating, and it's a little annoying that the game won't let me use regular Kar98k ammo for my *scoped* Kar98k...but it still feels pretty good to shoot nazis in 2025. Def wait until it goes on sale if you want to give it a try!

7/10

Great start to a legendary franchise. I was surprised at how good the atmosphere is and the attention to detail and overall immersion. The gunplay is solid. Not really any interesting characters except for Price and the pesky Brits, none of which are developed at all. Really cool mission variety with interesting locations. Each mission felt unique and some offer novel gameplay elements like vehicles or tanks.

Amazing game, it was very immersive. I really felt like that I was actually there in the battle.

The OG. Surprisingly replayable, much fun despite being 20 years old.

Game is a classic, truly impressive what they did with this in 2003. Still holds together pretty well. Playing on veteran is a crazy hard challenge but fun to do

This is a timeless gem, along with Finest Hour, Big Red One, World at War, and other older COD games.

Played this game back when it was new. Mostly played the multiplayer and loved it back in the day. I eventually played the single player years later on the Xbox 360 called Call of Duty Classic. I didn't really care for that version, it never felt right playing with a controller and the game was way too dark. Finally went back to this game in 2025 and played on a modern PC. The single player was short but the missions were all fun. Each mission shouldn't take you more than 5 to 10 minutes to complete. This made for a pretty short game but I don't mind playing a game that you can beat in an afternoon or weekend.

I felt the best missions were the sniping missions. The guns all felt satisfying to use but the sniper rifles were my favorite to use by far. The graphics don't hold up all that well but they're fine for a game that was released in 2003. The sound was maybe the biggest let down. There's plenty of explosions but they sound pretty muddy by today's standards. I played on the normal difficulty and the game felt fair. There was a few points were the game had severe difficulty spikes but it never felt overwhelming. The biggest complaints I had were the spawning of enemies out of nowhere and the poor AI of your teammates.

I didn't experience any technical issues playing on a modern PC and would recommend playing through the game. The online multiplayer is still available but there's very few people active. If you do find an active lobby, the game play is simple but satisfying and I personally think the maps are great.

Overall I would rate the game a 7/10

This is a fantastic game. I liked it when it came out, but I just bought it again in 2025. Really I just bought it for the sale, but I played for like 3 hrs in a row last night. IDK what is so great exactly, but this game is so much more fun than the modern shooters. I think it is the AI, and how the AI positions and reacts to your pushes. I have not tried MP because my internet is not the best right now. The last few modern shooters I bought received great reviews and were fun for me for a bit, but I never finish them and get bored. This game really is a masterpiece of the single player shooter game type. Maybe my most favorite single player shooter ever and it is so old. LOL.

Over the years, I have replayed the classics CoD games many times, and all of them hold up pretty well, but especially CoD2 and WaW, I was never big on the Multiplayer before the OG MW, but the campaigns were the top!

A must try for FPS campaign fans imho.

First COD game released! Great throwback and interesting to see how much things have changed over the years.

Loved it, revolutionary (sorta not really halo was better), didnt know what they started

Pure Amazing even today, played it on easy, medium, hard, had amazing fun still, new games have a lot to learn from master pieces such as this game, anyone hasn't played MUST, Win11 x64 no issues but end movie for me didn't play so I just googled it. Played it so many times enough said even prior to steam old cd days lol.

I never play games on hard ever, but I enjoyed this game so much that I did and while it was at times super hard, it was I feel the best level to play it at, it was insane esp with corpses up to max, you had a sense of you felt like you actually survived and earnt the right too, defiantly use cover, I had the most fun on hard, which surprised me as I never play on hard.

Nice to find the roots of my favorite franchise. Often when we hear of Call of Duty the name becomes a bit redundant, yet with this being the very first game, from the poster alone we get what that title really meant from the beginning; The Call of Duty.

Good ol' classic. Keep returning for a playthrough every couple of years to feel the nostalgia.

My gaming experience thus far had been Nintendo DS (Pokemon, MarioKart) and a laptop (Skyrim, New Vegas, HuniePop, etc). So my genre tastes never led me to experiencing the CoD franchise growing up. That said, this game gives me a nostalgia as if I had.

It was beyond easy to pick up despite having very little shooter experience other than a brief month on CS:GO back in 2017, and VATS-assisted attacks in Fallout NV and 4. I really only died to my own idiocy (not using cover, standing still while reloading, etc.). There were no performance issues or glitches, though it doesn't want to Alt-Tab when full screened.

Personal note: I had a moment during the tutorial when they describe how the minimap and objective markers work, because it's so easy to forget that the things we take for granted in games had to start somewhere. Yellow/white parkour starters or interactibles, even button keybinds that are the standard today, all had to start as a conscious choice.

My recommendation: get it....but not for this price.
I have 3 thoughts on the game:

1. Works surprisingly well
   
2. Higher difficulties are literal hell....but man if I'm not a sucker for classic, WWII FPS .
   
3. It is nuts to see mechanics that exist in some of the most recent COD games in this game.
   

And then I have 2 thoughts on the price:

1. Maybe COD games should be the global currency, since their value is apparently the most stable thing in the economy.
   
2. SteamDB has price history....so there's that
   
[*]The COD Warchest comes with COD 2 and the United Offensive DLC for this game, which is almost 3 games. Even if that's not a fair price, its a better deal than this.

Pegasus Bridge Mission is awesome if youve read the book. Missions are pretty accurate. Game is amazing for its time.

This shit is the best cod hands down, great gameplay, great cutscenes, great characters and amazing how they put in real world war 2 footage into the game.

I had a blast playing this masterpiece and I also really liked how history accurate the game was, nothing like the more recent CODs sadly...
There are only like 10 players on multiplayer, but they're not toxic at all, other than that the only actual downside of this game is the price and if you don't think the same way then definitely buy the game, it's really good and you won't be sorry for doing so.

This was the first Call of Duty I played as a kid and it's as good as I remember it to be but I don't remember it being as hard as it is maybe I'm getting to old lul! There was a lot of things broken and buggy with the game it took many different fixes to get the game up and running properly but after dealing with all that the game ran great and I had a lot of fun playing it. I made a guide for all the problems and fixes that I had to deal with if you need to check out the guide you can find it on my profile!

Old school, classic, WW2 shooter. You can tell the age of this game by looking at the structure of the campaign. The campaign feels more like the old Medal of Honor, another classic WW2 shooter. I would not recommend this if you are quickly frustrated because some parts of this game is extremely frustrating.

Definitely worth going back to and appreciating it for what it started. Sure, its dated and you'll find yourself overwhelmed easily even on the regular difficulty setting particularly in the Pavlov's House level. All the missions are based on the actual military operations that were going on at the time and it's charming to look at actual pictures of the places you visit in the game and seeing them line up with the photographs. There's still a couple of servers still active surprisingly and it's no issue getting a game started up.

this was the BEST first person shooter I have ever played. the gameplay was fun but also a little hard, the single player was amazing, i like how we took the perspective of paratroopers instead of the main sea invasion. every single level was great, but the only level that felt like a nightmare was the dam, so if your thinking of buying the classic Cod, then be careful because there are germans around ever corner but the game was overall GREAT. even if the game was 22 years old (at the time of writing this) it still is a great game and i think classic Cods need more attention like this one, everything is great i its the best first person shoot i have played so far.

my dad had the exact same game back then (obviously jackass), I remember murdering countless nazis with a M1 Garand on veteran, he'd laugh everytime I got stuck on the crossroads. 10/10 nostalgic I broke the CD when I was 5 years old because I was experimenting shit. next

Good game for the first call of duty ever the story was not that great and the gameplay is a bit dated with the repeating defend a point for 5 minuites mission structure but overall a good game.

I’ve spent countless hours playing the non-Steam version, but charging such a high price for a game released over 20 years ago feels scummy.

maybe ill recommend this game bc its pretty old and its still a good game. ill still play cod bo6 but ngl this game is really good this is why ill recommend it
1. I played alot of levels and the levels are pretty good and fun.
2. it has its own multiplayer and team deathmatch, just like BO6.
3. its better than fortnite. kind of...

The original CoD shooter follows several stories of actual combat, re-imagined and presented for YOU to enjoy. Missions scale dramatically in difficulty with each campaign: The Americans have well-coordinated missions where your equipment and guns are superior; The British feature challenging missions where survival has more to do with your wits and reflexes; the Soviets feature brutal missions where survival has much to do about luck and serious understanding of your position.

where it all began

Recommandations:

-->Play this on hardened difficulty

-->Check the steam comunity page to set the game up properly regarding screen resolution

Such a great experience this was. This is a game that's filled with memorable action set pieces and knows how to make you feel the way it wants to, one moment you might be a bad-ass commando wiping out Nazis and sabotaging weapons of mass destruction, another you might be a grunt, barely having any ammunition to get to the next point in the battlefield, you might pilot a tank and cause mayhem, or pray to God the next shell doesn't hit you while you crawl across an open field trying your hardest to get to the next building while the enemy rains hell fire upon you.

I have a good start with the franchise. I really liked the atmosphere in the game

Good game I like the timer mechanic on satchel charges and the fact that it is playable despite being the first cod game

Cool Game. They should make a sequal one day. I wish this game had more players

anyone saying this is good is coping, does not age well at all

better than you would expect. this game is better than half the new fps games coming out these days

It used to be a very different game.

1. Muzzle Flash - The muzzle flash is so obscuring I can't see what I am shooting at and if it is dead or not.
2. Inconsistent TTK - Both yours and enemies TTK is very inconsistent and feels just random.
3. Friendly AI - Friendlies don't shoot at enemy AI and enemy specifically targets you and ignores others most of the time. If a friendly is not shooting at an enemy and is not getting shot at, I assume that it is safe to move up that is not the case in COD 1. I died so many times because I thought the coast was clear because everyone stopped firing.
4. Health Bar - This Call of Duty is very different from all other call of duty in the series mostly due to the presence of the health bar. It encourages a more slow and methodical gameplay where you stay in cover, clear all enemies and then move up. I am kind of used to the pace of the newer ones in the series and I died a lot until it clicked.
5. Animation jank and other jank - Certain enemy animations like leaning out of cover is unnatural and janky. I got stuck in teammates and terrain a lot and died.
6. Gamma and resolution - Gamma slider is broken and no widescreen support. Editing the config files didnt help either.

Don't buy unless you are feeling nostalgic, it aged poorly. I remember when I originally played it, I liked it so much I slept with it under my pillow.

It's a good game and i only played training mission. so 6.7/10 and i'm giving a yes because i wouldn't let it down.

Great game! Still, it's lacking in a few areas. No battlepass or microtransactions, kinda dumb.

It's a nostalgic game. I definitely recommend it, even if you haven't played it before.

I'm limited to older low system req games due to my cheap laptop and living in Europe temporarily and this one is a timeless classic. Playing it while living in Germany was an eerie vibe though I must say. 10/10, my first time playing the OG Call of Duty.

Can't believe this just came out!! Really refreshing after playing Medal of Honor. I think it has a lot of potential for a sequel!

The single greatest call of duty game ever. Period.