Attempts to lengthen it by shooting my fellow soldiers in the head at point blank range (so that hopefully I'd get sent home to Annapolis for the duration of the war, rather than shot down in a hail of lead) proved fruitless, as they appeared to be wearing incredibly effective headgear. The brevity of the training section has been decried on some other web-sites as providing inadequate opportunity to familiarise oneself with the control system. I disagree, the control system used by CoDWii is (for me) so much more intuitive than the traditional joy-pad method that I felt much more effective and in-control within minutes than I ever do on the PS or Xbox versions.
Once you leave the training camp, it's all action. This is a game that barely pauses to let you catch breath before pushing you headfirst into another hail of bullets and explosions. It's one long onslaught of shooting at this and blowing up that, punctuated occasionally by cowering behind tanks and getting shot at.
So, you're let free in a field full of G.I.s somewhere in occupied France. You have to shoot a few helmets off some sticks and wang a few grenades through a barn window (very respectful of the occupied farmer’s property and rural agrarian lifestyle - ironically your character's bastard great grandchildren will likely buy the wreck in the early 21st century to convert it into a bijou fly-to-let). So, now you can pull a trigger and hoick a pineapple, it's time to go get your head shot off, for President and country, and for the European Coca-Cola market endangered by Nazi occupation.
Unlike in a real war, when you get shot, it's not a short trip from the battlefield to gangrene and early death, in Call of Duty, getting shot merely causes a red warning symbol to appear at the edge of the screen, the area that glows and specifically the little arrows on it indicate where you are getting shot from. Either find cover, kill the enemy or prepare to see the Mission Failed screen, where you’ll be treated to a witty and motivating slogan about how war is hell and only those whose parents got them in the National Guard stand a sure chance of surviving it.
The key to success in Call of Duty is strategy. It's not a simple run and shoot game, and it's not a slow progress crawl and snipe game. There are times when discretion will be the better part of valour, and times when an all-out assault is necessary. Most often, when one is called for, the other will not suffice. Usually, the way to triumph (or at least survive) is to take the right route through the battlefield, making maximum use of available cover. It's not a one-man game either, your squad will swarm around and ahead of you, taking out enemy targets, and covering your back.
As I stated, the basic navigation control model of the Wii version of Call of Duty is very impressive - but there's better and worse to come in the control interface.
The Nunchuck controller has two "trigger" buttons on the front, the main one – [Z] that falls most naturally below your finger, is used to swap between standing, crouched and prone positions. The second [C] button is used to jump over low obstacles that get in your way. Both fall immediately to hand.
