CoD United Offensive

Call of Duty's PC expansion, United Offensive, is being developed by Grey Matter Studios, of Return to Castle Wolfenstein fame. Grey Matter has adopted a simple strategy with CoD: United Offensive - deliver more of Call of Duty. On top of that, they're making a few changes to the graphics engine and multiplayer.

On the technical end, Grey Matter has revamped the particle system which seems to have had positive consequences for the explosions (no more giant marijuana leaf) and permitted the use of a flamethrower. They've also modified the game engine to permit a mission where the player acts as a turret gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.

Multiplayer is going to see a major enhancement with the addition of vehicle combat (read: tanks), though they'll be only available on some of the 9 new maps. Vehicles are going to be easy to operate like in Battlefield 1942, rather than requiring realistic crews of 3-5 people. The flamethrower was quite impressive, improving even on the already-spectacular version from RTCW. Whether or not it makes the transition to multiplayer is still being decided.

The singleplayer is being expanded with three more campaigns that again follow American, British and Russian soldiers. In most instances the game will be dealing with new characters, however there will be several that return for extra tours in United Offensive. Grey Matter went on record stating that there will be "more" than 10 missions, but exactly how many is as yet unclear.


At the conference the developers demoed one level, and immediately dispelled any doubts that they could follow in Infinity Ward's footsteps. The deviation from the CoD formula was non-existent. The map started off with the player, a Russian, beating off waves of German soldiers in a recreation of the battle of Kursk. After stopping the assault, the counter-attack had the Russians moving forward up to plant dynamite on Elefant tank destroyers, which, in accordance with history, lacked a machine gun at the time. The level seemed quite expansive, and lacked none of the intensity of the original.