Call of Duty 2

"Probably the most intense game I've ever played."

As far as launch titles for the Xbox 360 go, things could have defiantly been a lot better. While most of the launch titles where good not many of the launch titles really stood out and even fewer really did anything new. Call of duty 2 is one of the few launch titles that goes beyond simply being good. It goes beyond the call of duty you could say.

Call of Duty games have always been about delivering the cinematic intensity of the second world war, what Infinity Ward wanted to do when they developed call of duty was to actually make the player feel that they where playing a movie. Although I don't really believe the game managed to get that far Call of Duty is still probably the most intense game I have ever played.

Graphically Call of Duty 2 does well and while its visuals are not particularly outstanding they get the job done. There are however a couple of abnormalities with the graphics, namely the fact that there are no rag doll physics, even though the bodies posses several different death animations the lack of rag dolls is quite noticeable especially in a next generation title such as this one. So in conclusion Call of Duty is good graphics wise but the graphics will hardly ever take the focus away from the gameplay like in games such as Half Life 2.(Except the smoke screen effects, they look awesome)

The sound however is on a whole different level to the graphics, on the first play through at least. The sound effect suck as gunfire and explosions all sound realistic and as you would expect them to sound. Where Call of Duty's sound really shines however is in the hundreds of lines spoken by the different soldiers.
“When the first bullet is fired on the battlefield” said Infinity Ward “Nobody ever stops talking.”
The many lines spoken by your team-mates not only add to the intense experience delivered by Call of Duty 2, but they can actually help you in game. For example in the middle of a fire fight a squad mate may shout “Enemy troops on the second floor.” As you can imagine if you didn't know there where enemy troops on the second floor hearing this from a squad mate would be quite helpful, if not life saving. Your squad mates lines can also get more complicated then this however, during one mission I heard one of my comrades shout “Enemy sniper on the 1st floor of the red building.” I assumed this was a scripted sequence but when I played this part of the mission again I was given another location for the sniper. Although chatter from your team mates really adds to the atmosphere of the game it still does get repetitive especially on multiple runs through the game.

The gameplay of Call of Duty 2 varies between the difficulty settings on the easier modes you can bunny hop through levels as if you where playing an Unreal Tournament game and get away with it whereas if you where to crank the difficulty up to veteran you would have to think much more tactically. The thing with Call of Duty 2 is that the vast difference in the difficulty levels make it an accessible game to seasoned pros and newcomers alike. When I first started playing the game myself I had it completed in a couple of sittings, naturally I was disappointed and began to think I had wasted my money. Then I played the Veteran difficulty and it was like playing a totally different game, I had to think like a real soldier and when I made a mistake I would nearly always end up dead. Dieing on Call of Duty is by no means the end of the world however , checkpoints are awarded after almost every skirmish with enemy troops , some readers may think that so many checkpoints would make the game easy but if you start dieing from as little as 3 bullets you'll be glad of a checkpoint to fall back on. The health system makes the game much more fair too, when you take a few shots your screen will glow red, get hit a couple more times and you die, however if you manage to get some cover and avoid taking any more hits your screen returns to normal and you recover back to full health. While this may shamelessly rip off the shield system of Halo 2 you'll often find yourself thankful that you don't have to worry about heath bars and health kits in the heat of a battle. So although Call Of Duty 2 can be immensely difficult on the harder difficulty settings you should never really feel that you've been “cheated” as is the case in games such as Medal of Honour or Perfect Dark: Zero.

Now that I've finished talking about the difficulty level I can move on to the actual gameplay. Throughout the game you will experience the front lines of the second world war through the eyes of 4 different characters a Russian private, a British Sergeant, a British tank commander. And an American Corporal.
Although playing as several different soldiers is a good idea, it would have been nice for them each to have their own backstory. Throughout the game you find out next to nothing about the characters you play as. That said WW2 shooters are not really famed for their storylines. The majority of Call of Duty will see you fighting on the ground on your own two feet, but there are some breaks from this, for example in one mission you will have to command a tank and in another you will take up the gunner position on an armoured car. The majority of Call of Duty 2's objectives however, involve capturing a certain building or area from the German forces and then defending the position from a counter attack, while this may sound repetitive the variety of the attacking and defending should keep you interested.

The battles of call of Duty 2 are often on a very large scale, with hundreds of troops (friendly and hostile) battling it out on screen things can get very intense. While the AI isn't brilliant it does get the job done. The biggest problem with the AI I found was the fact that the soldiers could be far too suicidal. Many a time I've seen a German troop rushing across the battlefield completely uncovered from my team-mates shots making an attempt to flank me. That being said the AI is still quite a lot better then some shooters out there.

The weaponry in Call of Duty is that of what you have come to expect in world war 2 titles and although I have no personal experience with second world war weaponry, I found that the weapons seam to shoot, reload, and handle a you would expect them to. Each different side has its own share of weaponry but there isn't really too much variety between the different armies and most guns have a very similar counterpart in each of the other armies. Another noticeable aspect of the weaponry in Call of Duty 2, would be the ability to aim down the sights of your weapon. While you can shoot without aiming it is quite inaccurate, so most of the time you will find you have to stop and aim before shooting. This makes the game experience a little different to that of quite a lot of shooters out there.

While Call of Duty 2's controls do not use the “Halo Style” Controls that most shooters have used lately they are easy to adjust to, and shouldn't provide any problems for the player.

Finally I will talk about the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty 2, particularly the online play. The online play of Cal of Duty has caused quite a lot of upset within the online community these past few months. Basically the fact that you are unable to host your own rooms ,(instead you join up with 8 random people) has meant that people from different countries are forced to play on the same servers, hosts are also chosen at random. As you can imagine the lag is very bad. Often players are booted from games for no good reason and most of the time lag makes the games unplayable. When the multiplayer does work it can be quite fun but the trouble is the battles are on quite a small scale because of the 8 players limit. The PC version sports up to 64 players so the battlefields do feel quite empty in the Xbox 360 version. There is talk of a patch that will fix the lag issue and boost the amount of players in a game. So Xbox live enthusiasts may want to wait before picking up Call of Duty 2.

So in conclusion people who want an intense first person shooter experience or fans of world war 2 shooters should defiantly look into this game. If your not so sure about the game you should at least give it a rental, you never know you might be surprised. As I said before if your looking to play online you should probably wait for a patch before committing yourself.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/06