Call of Duty 3

It's a soldier's life for me. It's not as if I can help it, either. There seem to be battalions of military games heading to mobile at the moment. There's the excellent Company of Heroes and the decent Brothers In Arms: Earned In Blood, for example, which are soon to be joined by EA's Medal of Honor and Most Wanted's Joint Task Force Action. And now Call of Duty 3, which is based on the barnstorming console game which came out earlier this month.

It's a World War II action game, putting you in the trench-infested boots (yes, I know that's World War I, but don't spoil a weak metaphor) of a heroic soldier, and is set during the Normandy Breakout campaign. There are eight missions to play, based on those of the console game, with plenty of variety along the way.

Although you're part of a four-man platoon, you only directly control one character. Meanwhile, the rest of your crew buzz around you shooting at enemies, taking cover and generally being soldiery. On one level, this is great, as it makes you feel part of the action, rather than being some god-like being moving everyone around like chess pieces.

On the other hand, it can leave you feeling a bit… useless. A flashing star tells you where to go next, but often as long as you're in the right place, your platoon will do all the hard work for you, leaving you to simply lead them to the next waypoint and then hang back smoking a fag while they get on with the serious business. Maybe that's what it's really like in war, but the onus is on you to make sure you get your share of action.

The biggest pitfall for military games can be the controls, but Call of Duty 3 deserves a medal for its efforts. There's a good tutorial level which teaches you to move, shoot and take cover – lessons which are immediately put into practice when you walk into an ambush.

On paper, combat sounds a bit fiddly. You press the left softkey to change stance to a crawl, find cover, hold down the '5' key to target an enemy, press the left softkey again to stand up, and press '5' again to fire. In practice, it's a pretty seamless process.

Hands On has clearly made an effort to keep things interesting, too. The first level sees you escorting a tank, for example, the second introduces binoculars, which you use to pick out enemies for an air strike, and the third gives you a Bloody Great Big Gun (I think that's the official army term) to take out enemy tanks. This variety continues throughout the game.

The storyline is also kept motoring along by pop-up mugshots of your commanding officer, who tells you what to do next, with a welcome dash of humour creeping in every so often. Having orders barked at you also solves another problem for this genre – knowing what to do next. The downside is that there's little room for initiative, finding a different way to complete a task.

Meanwhile, the game takes the now-standard top-down perspective, and while the graphics are functional rather than spectacular, there's some lovely little touches, like the blood that spurts out as enemy soldiers go down. Well, not lovely, maybe, but you know what I mean.

Call of Duty 3 is certainly worth getting if you're into your (virtual) toy soldiers. The eight missions are tough enough to present a challenge, and it romps along nicely. If pushed, we'd still opt for the more cerebral strategy of Company of Heroes. But that doesn't detract from this being a polished addition to the genre.